Protest for the prophet: The production and performance of the anti-Ahmadi movement

Abstract

This study of the anti-Ahmadi movement charts a history of the exclusion of lower middle class Punjabi Muslims from the structures of the colonial and postcolonial states. Kept out by the state elite, they were able to manipulate the structures of the state to carve out new channels of power. Relying on these channels, which included recourse to the popular and the transnational, anti-Ahmadi activists were able to shape the very state that excluded them. In 1974, they successfully pressured the Bhutto government to pass the Second Amendment to Pakistan's constitution, denying the Ahmadi community legal standing as Muslims. That this excluded section of society ultimately forced the state to effect another exclusion—that of the Ahmadi community—is the tragic paradox at the center of this work.