Abdus Salam, the Pakistani Scientist, Persecuted in his Home Land

Printer-friendly versionSend to friendPDF versionBy: Dr Radhasyam Brahmachari It is really shocking that a Nobel Laureate scientist like Dr Abdus Salam, who was the first Muslim honoured with Nobel Prize in physics in 1979, is now a victim of intense religious persecution and insult in Pakistan as he belonged to the minority Ahmedia community. In 2006, the year of his  10^th death anniversary, there were no observances of the occasion in Pakistan, as Ahmedias are no longer considered Muslims in Pakistan. By a constitutional amendment in 1974, the minority Ahmedia community has been declared non-Muslim  by the government and hence all the members of the community turned instantly into kafirs. Then onwards, the Pakistani Government is mentioning this information in the passports of the members of this community, so that they may not enter either Mecca or Medina as a Hajj pilgrim. Before the said 1974 constitution amendment, Dr Salam was a member of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, a member of the Scientific Commission of Pakistan. And from 1961, he was the Chief Scientific Advisor to the President. But after the said 1974 amendment, he was stripped of all such responsibilities. When he died in 1996, his burial took place at their family graveyard in his home town Rabwa, without any state honour. Soon after his burial, fanatic Sunni clerics went to the spot so that no one can pray to Allah for this kafir and inscribe either a message of the Koran an Islamic symbol on the cenotaph. The local Magistrate expressed his desire to inscribe the words -"Abdus Salam the First Muslim Nobel Laureate"- on the tombstone. But the clerics dropped the word "Muslim" and the tombstone now reads "Abdus Salam the First Nobel Laureate". It was the Prime Minister Z A Bhutto, who, after the above 1974 constitution amendment, initiated the persecution of the Ahmedias, which was later on intensified by the military dictator Zia-ul-Haq. And, the said persecution was at its peak when Dr Salam received the Nobel Prize. Just after receiving the Nobel Prize, he was invited by the faculty of the Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad to deliver a lecture, but he was denied entry into the University campus by the Islamist student organisations. But India offered him a grand welcome, when he came to this country, especially the scientific community of Kolkata gave him a hero's welcome. We still remember his meeting with his aged teacher and placing the medal around his neck. On the next day we read that news and saw the photograph with moistened eyes. In Pakistan today, Shias are also persecuted and killed like the Ahmedias. All these developments shows that the creed of Islam is an extremely sectarian and communal. More pointedly, Islam is a doctrine of hate. It divides the entire humanity into two groups- those who believe in the Koran and the Prophet hood of Mohammad are Muslims or Momens and those who do not are kafir. In the eye of Allah, these kafirs are no better than animals and He instructs the Muslims, through Koran, to heap any type of oppression, torture or humiliation on the kafirs - to kill them, to rape their women, to set their house on fire, to occupy their land, to loot their valuables, to smash the skull of their children on stones and so on. So it is not difficult to understand what kind of brutality the Muslims of Pakistan could unleash on them, after they have been officially declared apostates by the government. ****************************************************************** Dr Radhasyam Brahmachari Professor, Department of Applied Physics, University of Calcutta