Muhammad Zafrullah Khan

Chaudhry Sir Muhammad Zafrullah Khan (6 February 1893 – 1 September 1985) was a Pakistani jurist and diplomat, the first foreign minister of Pakistan (1947–1954), and the only Pakistani to have presided over both the United Nations General Assembly (1962–1963) and the International Court of Justice (1970–1973).¹ He was a leading member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, whose Lahore chapter he presided over, and the author of many books on Islam and Ahmadiyyat.¹

He was born on 6 February 1893 at Sialkot in the Punjab, into a Sahi Jat landowning family based around Daska; his father, Chaudhry Nasrullah Khan, was among the most prominent lawyers of Sialkot district.¹ Both his parents were deeply religious members of the Ahmadiyya movement, and he called his mother, Hussain Bibi, the most powerful influence in his life.¹ He studied at Government College, Lahore, took his LL.B from King's College London in 1914, and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn.¹

He practised law in Sialkot and Lahore and entered the Punjab Legislative Council in 1926; in 1931 he presided over the Delhi meeting of the All-India Muslim League.¹ He took part in the Round Table Conferences of 1930–1932, became minister of railways in 1935, sat on the Viceroy's Executive Council from 1935 to 1941, and in 1940 prepared the dominion-status note whose two-state analysis the Muslim League adopted before its Lahore session.¹ From 1941 to 1947 he was a judge of the Federal Court of India, and in July 1947, at Jinnah's request, he presented the Muslim League's case before the Radcliffe Boundary Commission.¹

In October 1947 he led Pakistan's delegation at the United Nations and argued the Muslim world's position on Palestine; on 27 December 1947 he became Pakistan's first foreign minister, succeeding Liaquat Ali Khan, who had held the portfolio in his own cabinet, and he served until 1954.¹ At the Security Council he advocated the liberation of Kashmir, Libya, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco and Indonesia, work that won him the lasting admiration of the Arab states.¹

He became a judge of the International Court of Justice in 1954, its vice-president from 1958 to 1961, then Pakistan's permanent representative to the United Nations (1961–1964) and president of the General Assembly for its seventeenth session.¹ He returned to the Court in 1964 and served as its president from 1970 to 1973, the first and only Pakistani to hold that office.¹

The sources attest his own affiliation directly. The English article's Religion section states that, as an Ahmadi Muslim, he held the office of Ameer (president) of the Lahore chapter of the Ahmadiyya Community from 1919 to 1935, served as secretary to the community's second caliph at its Majlis-e-Shura, and represented the community at the All Parties Conference of 1924; its Legacy section adds that he openly acknowledged that he belonged to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.¹ The Urdu article's religion section states independently that he belonged to the Ahmadiyya community, himself took bay'ah at the hand of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, and was a confidant of the Ahmadi caliphs.² During his foreign ministership, the anti-Ahmadiyya riots of 1953 in Lahore demanded his resignation on the ground that he was an Ahmadi, and Pakistan's first martial law was imposed in that city.² He performed Umrah in 1958 as a royal guest of Saudi Arabia and Hajj in 1967.¹ The museum records the context without taking a position: in 1974 Pakistan's National Assembly amended the constitution to declare Ahmadis non-Muslims for the purposes of law, while Zafrullah Khan and his community continued to profess Islam.¹

His many books include The Excellent Exemplar Muhammad (1962), Islam — Its Meaning for Modern Man (1962), Islam and Human Rights (1967), Muhammad: Seal of the Prophets (1980) and his memoir of his mother, My Mother.¹ He retired to Lahore and died there on 1 September 1985, aged 92; the Urdu article records his burial at the Bahishti Maqbara in Rabwah, the Ahmadiyya community's centre.²

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