Communities on the margins in Pakistan face challenges as COVID-19 spreads and right-wing organizations continue to fan hatred against them.

Minarat-ul-Massih and the Liwa-e-Ahmadiyya in Qadian (Wikimedia)

As the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) spreads in Pakistan, residents of major cities such as Lahore and Karachi encountered an unusual event. The five-times daily call to prayer, which usually concludes at sunset, began again at 10 p.m. Local muezzins recited the azan from mosque loudspeakers and citizens echoed the call from rooftops and balconies.

An azan like this usually occurs at a time of difficulty, when Muslims call for God’s mercy and protection. For many cloistered and isolated in their homes with social media as their only outlet, the late-night azan offered both comfort and solidarity.

Pakistan now has 4,263 confirmed coronavirus cases and 61 have died. After waffling for a few weeks, the federal government deployed the army to assist provincial governments with their partial lockdowns on March 23, expected to continue until April 14. Prime Minister Imran Khan had hesitated to institute a full shutdown partly because the majority of Pakistanis rely on daily wages to survive.

But for many Pakistanis, especially religious and gender minorities, the immunocompromised, and the poor, the pandemic is the least of their worries in comparison to the reality of possible or definite starvation, unemployment, violence, and bigotry. As the newly isolated unite in various forms, whether to help each other or simply to listen to the azan from their rooftops, minority groups face a renewed set of challenges, meeting their basic needs while the state and society keep them at arm’s length — all against the backdrop of right-wing organizations that continue to fan the flames of hatred against them.

One of the most discriminated minority groups in Pakistan is the Ahmadis. The Ahmadiyya community identifies as a Muslim sect and follows the teachings of the Quran, but Pakistani law rejects their faith. Pakistan views the Ahmadi recognition of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad — who founded the sect in 1889 in British-controlled India — as a Messiah as blasphemous, and, for many orthodox Muslims, a violation of the Islamic tenet that Muhammad was the last messenger of God.

Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian (1835-1908). The photograph was taken November 28, 1907 by a traveler from Russia named Dickson (or Dixon).

A March news story reported that, at an annual conference, influential right-wing clerics were downplaying the coronavirus and targeting the Ahmadiyya community instead. “Qadiani (a pejorative term for Ahmadis) virus is more dangerous than the coronavirus,” the article said.

Anti-Ahmadi bigotry is par for the course in Pakistan, from right-wing religious groups who call for Ahmadis to be killed, to merchants who don’t want Ahmadis in their shops. In Pakistan, Ahmadis can be fined or face up to three years in prison for referring to themselves as Muslim, calling their places of worship “mosques,” or reciting the azan. There are around 600,000 Ahmadis in Pakistan, several million around the world, and thousands who have fled from Pakistan over the years. In 1947, the community moved its religious headquarters from the town of Qadian in India to Rabwah in Pakistan. Rabwah is Pakistan’s only Ahmadi-majority city, with around 70,000 residents.

For Usman Ahmad, a resident of Rabwah, the late-night call to prayer and the national unity it inspired reinforced the state’s erasure of his religious identity as an Ahmadi.

But this didn’t stop him from helping his fellow Pakistanis. Ahmad noticed complaints on social media about how coronavirus-related information about hygiene and social distancing was in English, a language most Pakistanis don’t speak or read. With the help of graphic designer Arsalaan Qamar, Ahmad put together a series of informational posters in Punjabi and Urdu that went viral. After receiving more requests, the duo released posters in Seraiki and Pashto as well.

“Love of country is a part of our faith,” Ahmad told me. “Despite everything thrown at you...you uphold your faith by doing what you can for your country.”

Even without a government-mandated shutdown, work has dried up for the poorest in the country, many of whom cannot afford to go into social isolation. As a result, the federal government has announced that it will distribute Rs. 12,000 ($75) each to 12 million low-income families, which would benefit 67 million across the country. The government of the Punjab province also announced that it will provide free rations to 100,000 poor families.

In Rabwah, the Ahmadiyya community has set up a helpline offering support to the needy and immunocompromised. “Volunteers are running errands, getting groceries. If people find it difficult to cook, they are offering [to deliver] biryani…this help is given to anyone, even non-Ahmadis,” Ahmad told me.

For Saleem ud Din, spokesperson of Jama’at Ahmadiyya Pakistan, the official body for Ahmadis in Pakistan, the organization offers their relief efforts to anyone who needs it, as well as their own community. “[Outside Rabwah] there are [Ahmadis] who are alone, and we don’t want to be a burden on the government in those places.” His sentiment reflects how the Ahmadi community has long lost faith in expecting the federal government to help it.

Jamia Ahmadiyya, Rabwah

But this doesn’t stop the Ahmadiyya community from participating in helping the government — it has a long history of volunteerism, both in Pakistan and in the diaspora. The Jama’at has donated Rs. 3 million (almost $18,000) to the prime minister’s relief fund and many young Ahmadis have signed up for the government’s relief force. The Ahmadiyya are known to help other minority groups, distributing soap in the southern Tharparkar region, which has a significant Hindu population, and helping clean Christian churches and neighborhoods in Rabwah.

As Ahmadis help out around the country, they fear that many won’t accept their aid. Recently, a journalist posted a video of a charitable organization distributing free food being forced out of a low-income neighborhood in Karachi, after a group attacked their workers for reportedly being Ahmadi, even though the charity was not affiliated with the sect. Activists pointed out that only a small group was responsible for the attack, and the majority of the residents in need of assistance had been cooperative.

“The people [they suspected of being Ahmadi] actually were not,” Din told me. “The threat that someone could be Ahmadi…we wonder and worry about what could happen.”

This extends to Ahmadis in need. “When the 2010 floods happened in South Punjab and Sindh…Ahmadi families were turned away from makeshift camps and shelters, just because of their identity,” Ahmad said. “It is completely possible that this could happen in hospitals today.” When seeking help during the floods, Ahmadis were identified and targeted by local clerics who told the administration not to help them.

The religious right continues to fan the flames of hatred to this day. In mid-March, a leader of a banned Islamist group portrayed the spread of the virus as a sectarian Shia issue — Shia is a sect of Islam and Pakistan is majority Sunni. In a series of tweets, extremist cleric Ahmad Ludhyanvi declared that Pakistani Shia pilgrims returning from Iran were “terrorists” and blamed two Shia ministers for helping pilgrims bring the virus into the country. Pilgrims were indeed traveling from Iran to Pakistan, but many were quarantined in cramped and dirty camps, with reports of “animal-like treatment.” As the virus spread in the camps, the pilgrims rioted and many escaped.

During this time, members of the welfare wing of the right-wing Islamist political party, Jamaat-e-Islami, received praise for their efforts supporting religious minorities, including cleaning in churches, temples, and gurdwaras, and distributing rations and cooked food in Hindu, Christian, and Sikh communities. But alongside their charity work, groups like Jamaat-e-Islami have also been vociferous supporters of Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy law , which many argue has been used unfairly to target religious minorities. The group’s leadership is also closely tied to a long history of discrimination against the Ahmadiyya community.

“These moulvis [the right-wing clerics] are a clever virus that knows how to mutate really well,” Ahmad told me. “Their refusal to accept the seriousness of the situation really exposed their reality to the public...Will people learn from this?” As coronavirus has spread, mosques remained open in many parts of the country, pan-Islamic conferences still gathered, and influential clerics refused to help support the government in controlling the spread of the virus.

Despite right-wing efforts to divide the country, the pandemic has also reinforced community solidarity. In Tharparkar, a desert region in Sindh that has faced extreme water shortage and poverty, 1.6 million Hindus and Muslims have peacefully resided together for generations — in the town of Mithi, Hindus even comprise the majority 85 percent of the population. When the provincial government instituted a lockdown, Hindus and Muslims mobilized to help each other. In Mithi and Islamkot, traders, shopkeepers, and businessmen gathered funds and distributed rations to the poor. “Everyone with some wealth, is playing their part,” said Karni Singh, the vice chairman of the District Council of Tharparkar, adding that local tailors are helping alleviate mask shortages.

Kapil Dev, a Hindu human rights activist in Pakistan, has a hopeful outlook. “There is often [religious] discrimination in big cities, especially among communities that are already separated and marginalized, who live in slums or ghettos…[But] this challenge goes beyond religion, and will help bring us together,” he said.

Gender minorities are also facing challenges amid the growing pandemic. “We have been living in isolation from the start,” said Julie Khan, a transgender rights activist, in a video that went viral. “Now the world knows how we feel.”

Khursand Bayar Ali, a transgender activist and project manager at the Sathi Foundation, coordinates programs on gender-based violence for the transgender community and sex workers. Before the pandemic, Ali used to educate groups in Lahore and in smaller cities in Punjab about their rights under the 2018 Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act and how to report gender-based violence.

Along with other activists, as coronavirus spreads, Ali is fundraising for food, protective equipment, and immunity-boosting supplies, like calcium tablets and oranges, for the transgender community in Lahore. She has continued her usual in-person work by connecting with people on the phone or online, though the community’s access to the internet is limited.

The pandemic has also left sex workers reeling. A high percentage of the transgender community still engages in sex work or begging, according to Ali. “A smaller number have their own businesses, freelance as beauticians, or work in homes as domestic staff.”

“There are those already isolated sex workers who are not public about their profession,” Ali told me, and are losing their meager earnings. “Sex workers only earn Rs. 400 to 500 ($2-3) per day. Half of this is spent on food…and now because of coronavirus, their work is affected badly.”

Zuneera Shah has been independently fundraising to support several communities, including the transgender community, and also works with Ali. “Sex workers are not considered among daily wage workers,” Shah added. “People from all backgrounds are being blocked from meeting their daily needs…but, at the same time, we are seeing a scale of deservability being attached to giving.”

Ali is particularly worried about the immunocompromised, including those who are HIV-positive. Pakistan is one of the countries in the WHO ’s Eastern Mediterranean Region where new HIV infections have been increasing at an alarming level since 1987. HIV/AIDS cases — many of whom are men — in the country rose to 160,000 in 2018 . Transgender people have a 7.1 percent HIV prevalence rate in Pakistan, and the figure increases to 56 percent for transgender sex workers according to 2018 data from UNAIDS .

“Community members who are financially stable can afford to stock up on their HIV drugs. But many cannot,” she shared.

For those who cannot, they go to 45 Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) Centers around the country for free treatment, counseling, and testing. The government, in coordination with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), run these centers. According to conversations with various NGO workers, the centers have been functioning amid the pandemic since many are located in hospitals, but not everyone has access to them.

The centers also don’t solve the needs of people who are at risk of contracting HIV — many of whom live in small villages or towns — and need at-home testing or access to safe sex supplies. Many NGOs deliver their services — such as providing condoms and counseling — in person, at people’s homes. These efforts have ground to a halt due to the pandemic.

Muhammad Usman, a program manager with Dareecha Male Health Society in Rawalpindi, an organization tests for HIV and STDs, shared, “[We could] go back to the community after a pause,” but “the epidemic will obviously come back and chances of [HIV] will grow.”

In her conversations with sex workers, Ali sensed hopelessness. “What on earth can corona do to us?” one person told her. “If I don’t die of that, I will die of starvation.”

Nur Nasreen Ibrahim is a journalist and writer from Lahore, Pakistan currently based in New York City. Her writing has appeared in collections from Platypus Press, Catapult, Hachette India, The Aleph Review, Salmagundi Magazine, Barrelhouse, and more.