Certain terms mean a lot more than what they actually imply. In Nazi Germany, for example, a Jew meant a Jew — a person who professed Judaism, or was born into a Jewish family. It wasn’t important whether that person was a practising Jew, or not. Jews were all to be demonised, degraded and, often, killed.

This was because, supposedly, Jews were at the centre of every big or small conspiracy against the Germanic people. Jews were the scapegoats that Germany’s far-right created to explain the country’s defeat in the First World War and its consequent economic collapse.

But during the height of racial tensions in the UK (between the 1970s and early 1980s), a ‘Paki’ didn’t always mean a Pakistani. It meant anyone who was not white — even though black migrants from the Caribbean islands or Africa were not called this. The latter were mostly referred to as ‘darkies.’

So, a ‘Paki’ can be a Pakistani, an Indian, or a Bangladeshi — basically a ‘brown’ person from South Asia, residing in the UK. It’s a slur. Just like the slur ‘nigger’ was used in the US for black slaves and then for African-Americans.

Slurs typically target small groups and communities, and are shorthand for discrimination, hate and persecution

‘Paki’ was first used in 1964, when hostility in Britain to immigration from its former colonies in Asia and Africa began to grow. Even though, today, Paki is not used as often as it was till the 1980s, it still crops up. In fact, it has now become an even more all-encompassing term used by far-right groups to describe any unwanted non-white migrants in Britain — South Asian or not.

Slurs that have wider connotations are quite common in South Asia as well. For example, the word ‘Musla’ in India means a Muslim. It is often used as a slur by Hindu nationalists for Indian Muslims. Yet, a ‘Musla’ can also be a Hindu who has migrated from Pakistan. Over the last decade, thousands of Hindus living in Pakistan have moved to India after facing discrimination and attacks. But they weren’t readily welcomed in Hindu-majority India, despite India being under the sway of populist Hindu nationalist sentiment for years now.

According to a November 8, 2012 report in Dawn, Indian Hindu nationalists and their supporters often mock Hindus arriving from Pakistan as ‘Muslas’. On most occasions, they are not treated as fellow Hindus, but as another variant of the detested Indian ‘Muslas’.

In Pakistan, one of the most persecuted people are the Ahmadiyya. They are a tiny community that were constitutionally ousted from the fold of Islam in 1974. Despite their status being degraded and their decreasing numbers, they continue to be harassed, physically attacked and their places of worship demolished.

The slur used against them is ‘Qadiani.’ The word is derived from the Indian town Qadian, where the Ahmadiyya founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was born in 1835. In the late 19th century, he formed a Muslim sect. Religious leaders from other Muslim sects in India, such as Sunni and Shia, and Sunni sub-sects such as the Deobandi, Barelvi and Ahl-i Hadith, denounced Mirza as a heretic.

But the slur ‘Qadiani’ has come to mean anyone who disagrees with certain interpretations of Islam. For example, non-Ahmadiyya Muslim liberals and ‘modernist’ Muslims are often also dubbed ‘Qadiani’. The term therefore, doesn’t only mean an actual Ahmadiyya, but a Muslim who is critical of the manner in which state institutions or individuals ‘misuse’ Islam for cynical political and even economic purposes.

The practice of calling moderate/liberal Muslims, ‘Qadiani’, most likely emerged in the early 20th century. It certainly peaked from the 1970s onwards, and especially during the Gen Zia dictatorship in the 1980s. For example, the progressive lawyer and activist late Asma Jahangir was often referred to as a ‘Qadiani’ by the pro-Zia Islamists.

There are just a few million Ahmadiyya left in Pakistan. Just as there were only a handful of ‘Wahabi’ in India in the 19th century. Yet, clerics and ulema from different Muslim sects and sub-sects ‘warned’ then that the ‘Wahabi’ were on a mission to disfigure Islam among India’s Muslim community.

In his book Making a Muslim, S. Akbar Zaidi demonstrates that, during the 1871 and 1881 census conducted by the British in India, only a handful of Muslims declared themselves as ‘Wahabi’. Yet, it became a slur word, first used by the British and then by the Islamists.

Wahhabism is often associated with a rigid and ‘puritanical’ strand of Islam that emerged in Arabia in the 18th century. It was spearheaded by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. According to Talal al-Torifi, in the July 23, 2020 issue of Arab News, the term ‘Wahabi’ was first used by the Ottomans who were ruling most parts of Arabia and were being challenged by men such as al-Wahab. Wahab himself never used the term, and nor did his followers.

Until the recent ‘liberal’ reforms in Saudi Arabia initiated by the country’s crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman, Saudi Arabia was considered to be a ‘Wahabi’ kingdom, despite the fact that the kingdom never called itself ‘Wahabi’. According to Zaidi, the term was treated as a sect in India by the British, even though only a few Indian Muslims actually referred to themselves as ‘Wahabi’. Zaidi adds that, to the British, any Muslim that they believed was ‘fanatical’ or radical, was a ‘Wahabi’.

Soon, 19th century Islamists began to call modernist Muslim reformers such as Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, ‘Wahabi’ as well. Zaidi then adds that Barelvi, Deobandi and Ahl-i-Hadith ulema started to use ‘Wahabi’ as a slur against each other. This practice began to recede from the mid-20th century, especially after a large number of South Asian Islamists were co-opted by Saudi Arabia through funds and political patronage.

Recently, those who are not so well-informed about Sunni sub-sectarian divisions in Pakistan, were heard calling the radical Barelvi outfit Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) ‘Wahabi’. The fact is, the Barelvi have always posed themselves as anti-‘Wahabi’. Someone on Twitter started to use the term “the Barelvi Wahabi” for TLP. This again shows ‘Wahabi’ is not an actual sect, but a mindset. And a slur.

Slurs in this context are a shorthand way to mock, ridicule or degrade a religious, sectarian or political opponent. In the US, liberals were often accused of being ‘commies’, a slur word for communists. Anyone raising their voice for civil/racial rights or more economic welfare policies, were often denounced as being ‘commies’. Heck, even decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, some far-right Americans were calling former US President Barack Obama (2008-2017) a ‘commie.’

Published in Dawn, EOS, July 17th, 2022