The news first emerged mid afternoon, on 29 December 2015. Soon, it was all that prime time talk shows and newscasters in Pakistan could talk about. Two senior religious clerics, both bearded, both well-regarded among their followers, had used their fists rather than their words, to settle an argument during the 201 meeting of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), Pakistan’s top Islamic advisory body. News outlets were salivating. Leaked videos of the brawl emerged. The incident was unusual; religious hardliners are more likely to face-off against liberals than one of their own. “I am stronger than him,” boasted the pot-bellied Maulana Tahir Ashrafi while talking to a television crew. He held back, he insisted, out of respect for his opponent, the 78-year-old Maulana Sheerani, also the chairman of the advisory body, who grabbed his collar and ripped out the buttons.
The two came to blows after the council reopened debate for the legal status of the already persecuted Ahmadis—declared non-Muslims under a parliament amendment in 1974—on whether they should instead be categorised as murtads (those who renounce Islam and are punishable by death according to Sharia). It was a dangerous suggestion that could put the minority community more at risk of being hunted and killed.
During the meeting, Ashrafi spoke first, and loudly. He challenged Sheerani’s decision to focus on topics which were controversial and could potentially lead to a bigger fall-out in society. “There is a dictatorship within the body,” a frazzled Ashrafi told us over the phone on 13 May. “The environment is such that no scope for dissent is left.” The new chairman, he argued, had made the body unnecessarily notorious.
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