Kotli; AJK; March 2024: The District Education Officer, Elementary and Secondary (Males) has issued a circular to schools that as per the Act of 1974 of the Government of Pakistan, Ahmadis are non-Muslims, as such Ahmadi teachers should not be assigned to teach the Arabic language. He also directed the schools to provide him with their list of non-Muslim teacher’s staff in each school. The DEO’s circular is highly inappropriate and uncalled for while clearly violating the Constitutional protection provided to the minorities.
This DEO might like to revisit his policy on faith, education, governance and may take guidance from the following:
Freedom of faith and beliefs and its protection, freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, human rights and fundamental rights; principle of equality, denominational neutrality, religious pluralism; reformation, renaissance, tolerance through religious education, developing shared values and common citizenship, humanism, interfaith dialogue; the rule of law, humanitarian law, International human rights standards; ostentatious religiosity, Islamic radicalism, extreme fundamentalism, symphony of church and state, Islam vs Islamism, sectarianism, extremism, ultra-conservatism leading to extremism (then to terrorism), terrorism; ICCPR (1966), ICESCR (1966), general information on 2001 UN Conference in Madrid on School Education in Relations with Freedom of Religion and Belief, Tolerance and Non-discrimination (available at w.w.w.unhchr.ch/; Articles 2.2 and 14.1 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), etc.
