This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
From February to May 1953, rioting, arson and killing swept Lahore and other cities across Punjab, Pakistan, driven by an agitation demanding that Ahmadis be declared non-Muslim by law, that Foreign Minister Sir Zafarullah Khan, an Ahmadi, be removed from office, and that Ahmadis be dismissed from senior government posts. The demand was organized by a coalition of religious parties, chiefly the Majlis-e-Ahrar-e-Islam and Jamaat-e-Islami under Abul Ala Maududi, meeting as the Majlis-i-Amal after an All-Pakistan Muslim Parties Convention in January 1953.
When the Punjab government failed to contain the violence, martial law was declared in Lahore on 6 March 1953 under Major General Azam Khan and lifted on 14 May; Prime Minister Khawaja Nazimuddin was dismissed the following month, and Maududi was tried by military court and sentenced to death for his role in the agitation, later commuted to life imprisonment. The Court of Inquiry under Justice Muhammad Munir reported in April 1954, finding no coherent theological consensus among the ulema testifying on what makes someone a Muslim. The underlying demand was not met in 1953, though Pakistan's National Assembly did constitutionally declare Ahmadis non-Muslim two decades later, in 1974.