THE demand for a state declaration of the Ahmadiyyas as non-Muslims, raised by Islamists from various political and religious organisations at the International Khatme Nabuwat Conference in Suhrawardy Udyan in Dhaka on November 15, is problematic. Khatme Nabuwat Parishad, the organiser, has also launched a year-long programme to push the demand. Yet, it is neither the duty of the state nor of any government to declare adherents of any Islamic sect to be non-Muslims, nor is such a demand rooted in Islamic doctrine. That this demand was directly or indirectly endorsed by Islamist political parties and even some centrist parties, now when the country is struggling to transition towards a meaningful democracy after the fall of the authoritarian Awami League regime of a decade and a half, is alarming. Such manoeuvring risks further destabilising an already fragile political environment. Islam, for different obvious and often overlapping reasons, has many sects and groups with divergent and sometimes irreconcilable interpretations of the scripture, theology and history. The practice of one sect branding another as un-Islamic and its followers as non-Muslims has for long fuelled unrest, contradicting Islam鈥檚 historic claim to peace. Such labelling and the targeting of one group by another have only served to tarnish the broader image of Islam.
Neither governments nor individuals have the authority to declare someone a non-Muslim when that person professes themselves to be Muslim. In Islamic belief, only God is the ultimate judge and arbiter of faith. Any attempt to impose identity from outside is, therefore, an exercise in religious identity politics, often pursued for political rather than religious ends; and, history shows that such politics has repeatedly destabilised societies and states. The debate over the Ahmadiyyas, also known as Qadiyanis, which began in the 1950s in Pakistan, achieved nothing for Muslims or for Islam as a religion. Instead, it triggered severe unrest and helped to create a condition ripe for military intervention in state power. It is also worth noting that some of the very Islamists, including Jamaat-e-Islami鈥檚 founder Abul Ala Maududi, who called for the state to declare the Ahmadiyyas non-Muslim, remain controversial figures in the eyes of other Islamic scholars. In Bangladesh, the Ahmadiyyas are already a targeted minority, often subjected to predatory religious fanaticism. Over decades, the community has been attacked multiple times, the most recent being the assaults carried out by groups of religious bigots in several neighbourhoods in Panchagarh between March 2 and 4, 2023, which left two people dead and dozens injured.
The government and political parties should recognise the threats that religious identity politics poses and the likely consequences of such politics for a democratic dispensation. They must, therefore, refrain from entertaining such demands and the politics that fuels them.
