By LACHLAN MOORHEAD
WAHEED Ahmad Chatha remembers growing up with his older cousin Mehdi Ali Qamar when the two Ahmadiyya Muslims lived in Pakistan together, but that was a different time.
Doctor Mehdi Ali Qamar, 51, was shot dead on Monday last week in front of his wife and three-year-old son while volunteering at a hospital in eastern Pakistan, the latest attack in the country on a follower of the minority Ahmadi faith.
Waheed, who lives in Berwick with his own family, was devastated to learn of the tragedy that had befallen his cousin.
“He meant a lot to all of our family and our community.
“He was a great person, a great human being and a great doctor and, apart from that, he was like a big brother to me. We were very close in our family,” Waheed, 35, said.
“It is tragic for us, and a great shock to me, but the way we (Ahmadiyya Muslims) respond to these sorts of incidences is to pray in love, we don’t do rallies, we just talk and do things over the table, leave it all to God, to give us patience.
“The way we are trained is that we don’t get violent, violence is not the way to respond to this.
“The peaceful response is to pray to God, to pray that the authorities change the way they do things.”
Waheed is a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association of Victoria which released a statement last week condemning the slaying of Dr Qamar.
Waheed relocated to Australia in 1998 after his cousin moved to Canada some years earlier.
Dr Qamar had recently returned to Pakistan to volunteer at the Tahir Heart Institute before he was killed last week, his death making headlines all over the globe.
Both cousins had originally left Pakistan in an attempt to escape the violence that continues to engulf the country, where the Ahmadiyya community is targeted and the faith outlawed.
Ahmadis in Pakistan are not allowed to call themselves Muslims, are not eligible to vote and regularly face arrest under the country’s strict blasphemy laws.
“We used to do swimming together when I was back in Pakistan, I used to visit his home, when I came to Australia and he moved to Canada we were talking over the phone and through emails and he used to guide me,” Waheed said of his cousin.
“Every time I emailed him he sent me some good advice, or a famous quote – be the change you want to be, always say good things to people.
“One of the hardest things, emotionally, is the relationship I had with him, in the way that my family felt about it and in the way we lost a good human being.”
