Suspense over who would succeed General Raheel Sharif and lead the country’s most powerful institution – Army, ended on Saturday. But the inquisitiveness about newly-appointed General’s faith persists.
To substantiate its vilification campaign, the propaganda wants people to believe that the father of General Javed Qamar Bajwa is buried in Rabwa’s Chenab Nagar, a graveyard that Ahmadis deem as a sacred and holy site.
An article published in the Medium states that “In 1966 his [Qamar Bajwa’s] father converted to the Qadiani faith after a visit to the Ahmadiyya Headquarters of Rabwah with Iftikhar Janjua,” adding, “after his death in 1967, his dead body was brought back to the Qadiani Headquarters of Rabwah (ChenabNagar) and buried in the graveyard also known as ‘Bahishti Maqbara’.”
The author further states that the general makes a regular trip to Rabwah to pray at his father’s grave.
However, contrary to this hoax, Dawn’s story published on 27th of November 2016, reports a first-hand interview of the natives of Gakhar Mandi.
According to the natives of Bajwa’s hometown, General Bajwa’s father Col Muhammad Iqbal Bajwa was buried in Cheemianwala graveyard in Gakhar city and that Gen Bajwa had visited his father’s grave two years ago.
The story published in the Medium also ostensibly shows photos of Qamar Bajwa paying homage to his father’s grave, captioning it as “COAS Qamar Bajwa visiting his father’s grave in Rabwah,” the story doesn’t provide any concrete evidence of the general’s presence in the said place.
Despite the authentic clarifications of the General’s faith and rebuttals of the lies, the Medium’s story bases its argument on the shallow grounds.
Apart from general and irrelevant pictures that it provides and professes it to be an authentic one, the author or the site itself has to answer specifically as to who was being reported in such a confident but yet highly unprofessional manner.
The curiosity that was first stirred by the propagandist conspiracy theory disseminated by the so-called political pundits even before the general was appointment as army chief, should not linger on as the Government of Islamic Republic of Pakistan has itself chosen its new army chief.
