From The Columbus Dispatch 
by Earl Rinehart
What is a son to feel when his father is slain for the offense of providing free medical care to the poor in his native land?
Abdullah Ali considered the question. “I am disappointed,” the 16-year-old calmly said.
Not anger or vengeance. Disappointment in the sectarian-fueled hatred that led gunmen to kill his father, Pickerington cardiologist Mehdi Ali Qamar, 50, in front of his wife and child yesterday morning in Rabwah, a city in Pakistan’s Punjab region.
Qamar, a follower of the Ahmadi sect of Islam, had stopped at a cemetery to pay his respects at the graves of relatives. He was returning to his car when two motorcycles pulled up and gunmen opened fire. Qamar was hit at least 10 times and died immediately. His wife, Wajiha, and 2-year-old son sitting on her lap were not hurt.
The physician had arrived a couple of days earlier to volunteer at the Tahir Heart Institute in Rabwah, which provides free medical care to the area’s poor. He had taken a three-week sabbatical from Fairfield Medical Center in Lancaster to make the mission trip, one he had made several times.
The institute was started and funded by members of the Ahmadi sect in Rabwah, where most of the 100,000 population is Ahmadi, said Dr. Abdus Malik, a nephrologist and colleague of Qamar’s at Fairfield Medical. Members do not condone jihad and condemn terrorism, they do promote love and tolerance among the religions, and they do not have a political agenda.
Malik was with Abdullah last night along with other colleagues, friends and relatives at the Pickerington home of Dr. Ahsan Syed, an anesthesiologist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
Mrs. Qamar had called the Ahmadi community in Columbus asking members to care for her oldest son until she arrives home later this week. The couple has a third child, a 6-year-old son who was in Pakistan but not with his parents at the time of the shooting.
