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Zealots declare new plan against Ahmadiyyas

Islamist zealots yesterday announced a yearlong agitation programme to press the government to declare Ahmadiyyas non-Muslim.

“We’re giving a final ultimatum to the government… the government will have to take the responsibility for any situation if our demand is not fulfilled by that time,” said Nazmul Haq, secretary general of International Khatme Nabuwat Movement, Bangladesh (IKNMB), a platform of Islamist fanatics that stirred anti-Ahmadiyya movement in November last year.

“The government has no right to ignore people’s demand for declaring Ahmadiyyas non-Muslim by giving in to any pressure by any foreign nation or country,” he said during a press conference at a city hotel yesterday.

The IKNMB will launch the agitation through laying siege to the Ahmadiyya concentration in Bogra town on February 25 next year.

They will also besiege Ahmadiyya-inhabited areas in Sylhet, Comilla, Mymensingh and Narsingdi in the next eight months.

The IKNMB will hold ‘grand rallies’ and bring out burial processions carrying shroud in six divisional headquarters. It will also hold similar programmes in all district and upazila towns between January and September.

The IKNMB will hold Khatme Nabuawat mahfil and bring out burial processions in all police station areas in the capital in October and November.

In a bid to mount pressure on the government, the IKNMB will march to parliament when it is in session.

The agitators will bring their programme to a close by holding a ‘grand rally’ in Dhaka and laying siege to Ahmadiyya headquarters at Bakshibazar on December 23.

They announced to replace the signboard at the Ahmadiyya concentration by one reading: “This is a place of worship for the Kadianis (Ahmadiyyas). Do not mistake it for a mosque.”

Declaring 2005 as ‘Khatme Nabuwat Year’, Nazmul Haq said, “The government ban on Ahmadiyya books was merely an eyewash as the government is yet to implement it.”

“We don’t want to drive the Kadianis from this land but we don’t want them to introduce themselves as Muslims,” said IKNMB Amir Mahmudul Hasan Mumtazi. “We’ll leave the street if the government passes a law declaring them non-Muslim.”

The IKNMB leaders, meanwhile, asked civil society leaders to stop standing beside Ahmadiyyas.

Claiming that civil society leaders Prof Kabir Chowdhury, Shahriar Kabir and Hena Das, and journalist ABM Musa have no association with common people, the IKNMB leaders threatened them of dire consequences.

“You are experts in your own subjects and pass your time doing research. Don’t interfere with religious matters, it is not your subject,” Nazmul Haq said, pointing to them.