An Ahmadi community official was shot dead in Pakistan’s Mandi Bahauddin district on 2 September, the latest fatal attack on members of the religious minority in an area that has seen mounting anti-Ahmadi threats and violence.
Mirza Safdar Mahmood, 65, was on his way to an Ahmadi place of worship in Mandi Bahauddin city when a gunman opened fire near the Eidgah gate. Mahmood was killed at the scene and the attacker escaped.
No motive has been established for the killing. Mahmood was not known to have any personal enmity or dispute that could have led to the attack.
His death comes against a backdrop of increasingly hostile rhetoric against Ahmadis in Mandi Bahauddin. Religious clerics in the district have openly targeted members of the community in public speeches, including threatening to kill an Ahmadi police officer after he was posted to the area.
Other inflammatory speeches have targeted Ahmadi women, including pregnant women, adding to concerns over the increasingly explicit nature of anti-Ahmadi rhetoric in the district.
The threats have coincided with deadly violence. On 8 June 2024, two Ahmadis were shot dead in separate attacks in Sadullahpur, also in Mandi Bahauddin district.
Ahmadis are subject to some of Pakistan’s most extensive legal restrictions on religious practice. Pakistan amended its constitution in 1974 to declare Ahmadis non-Muslims for the purposes of law, and legislation introduced a decade later criminalised Ahmadis describing themselves as Muslims and restricted their use of Islamic terminology and forms of worship.
Mahmood, who is survived by his wife and two sons, was buried in Rabwah.
