“Although the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is a small community, it is a standard-bearer and the representative of the true teachings of Islam,” said the Ahmadi “caliph,” Mirza Masroor Ahmad, on October 22, 2008, to the British parliament. This grandiose statement belies the Ahmadis’ cult-like status among the global Muslim community, an ill repute that calls into question the prominence non-Muslims continually bestow upon Ahmadis, which we previously examined here.
Muslim authorities worldwide have consistently condemned the Ahmadis as egregious heretics. The Ahmadis claim that their namesake founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, appeared as a prophet in Qadian, India, in 1889 in order to reform Islam. This assertion violates Islam’s core doctrine proclaimed in Quran 33:40, that Islam’s prophet, Muhammad, is the “seal of the prophets,” after whom no further divine revelation will come.
Ahmadi propaganda cannot conceal that Ahmadis are a minuscule minority among an estimated 1.7 billion Muslims worldwide. An Ahmadi website claims that Ahmadi membership is “exceeding tens of millions.” An Ahmadi booklet publication similarly announces that the Ahmadi “is the most dynamic denomination of Islam in modern history, with an estimated membership of one hundred and sixty million worldwide.”
In reality, Ahmadis represent a Muslim fringe group of about 10-20 million followers worldwide. “While Ahmadis say they have 200 million followers, mainstream Islamic scholars say this is a massive exaggeration,” the BBC reported in 2010, and “claim there are at best 10 million Ahmadis.” Thus Ahmadis appear for many as an Islamic version of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, whose Mormon followers number about 15 million worldwide amidst a global Christian population of about 2.2 billion that likewise rejects Mormon doctrines.
Sabatina James, a Pakistani-Austrian convert from Islam to Catholicism, has accordingly denounced the Ahmadis in a 2015 German-language interview, saying that the
“System Ahmadiyya” rests upon deception. The Ahmadiyyas are excluded from the Islamic world community. Nonetheless, they pretend to speak for Islam. Naïve politicians believe them, because the Ahmadis outwardly present a moderate Islam.
James has told Ahmadi leaders that “you are not representative for Islam” and has rejected their typical status in Western countries as “gladly seen conversation partners.” Ahmadis should receive “no important position as dialogue partners,” in light of the fact that in Germany, for example, they constitute only one percent of all Muslims. This would be a “queer logic” involving a “heretical splinter group” analogous to treating Jehovah’s Witnesses, who number eight million worldwide, as Christianity’s representatives.
Anti-sharia activist Pamela Geller similarly expressed bafflement in 2014 at the formation of a congressional Ahmadiyya Muslim Caucus. News reports noted that the caucus “will represent the estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Ahmadis living in America, a small percentage of the nearly 3 million Muslims living in the United States.” Congressional focus upon such a tiny group is wildly disproportional.
Ahmadi ideology actually accounts for Ahmadis’ outcast position, as the Ahmadi Caliph Ahmad explained in a May 11, 2013, address in Beverly Hills, California. Muhammad had predicted “that as had happened with all previous religions, a time would come when the state of Muslims would become ruined and corrupted.” Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s prophetic role was to appear in a time when “false commentaries and interpretations would be made which would lead Muslims away from its true teachings.”
Caliph Ahmad elaborated:
According to the prophecy, when such a desperate state of affairs came to pass, God Almighty would send a person as the Promised Messiah and Imam Mahdi to rejuvenate Islam. He would clarify the correct meanings of the Quran and would inform the world of the true Islam practiced by the Holy Prophet.
Ahmadi representatives at the February 26, 2016, inauguration in Washington, DC’s Rayburn House Building of the Ahmadi True Islam website made similar comments to this author. Amjad Chaudhry described predictions that Ahmadis will undergo persecution, just as Christians endured Roman oppression for three centuries after Christ’s life. He discussed how some Muslims “have a business going on” for dominant influence among Muslims that the Ahmadi “true Islam” endangers.
Bashir Shams likewise discussed a “twisted teaching that the majority of the Muslims right now believe.” In this understanding of jihad, “ultimately it comes out that whoever is not Muslim, they can be killed.” His comments apparently contradicted published statements of another Ahmadi representative, Kashif Chaudhry, who maintained that violent jihadists represent merely a “minority of Muslims that fall prey to the propaganda.”
Addressing the Rayburn audience, University of California-Los Angeles law professor Amjad Mahmood Khan’s own comments cast doubt on the Ahmadis’ claimed authority to interpret Islam. Referring to the December 2, 2015, San Bernardino, California, jihadist attack, he invoked a “special responsibility to use the attacks of San Bernardino as an opportunity to offer a precise counter-narrative to groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda.” They “have stolen and dehumanized our beautiful faith,” but the True Islam campaign will “precisely, loudly, and unambiguously define the core principles of Islam that stand in perfect harmony with American values.”
Yet Khan cited a 2015 survey that spelled trouble for the Ahmadis’ claimed interpretation of Islam. As a True Islam press release elaborated,
while true Islam backs free speech, 52% of Muslim Americans believe the state or someone from society should punish those who blaspheme against or insult Prophet Muhammad. Likewise, while Prophet Muhammad taught that loyalty to one’s nation of residence is part of a Muslim’s faith, only 52% of Muslim Americans believe Islam always requires loyalty to your country of residence. Moreover, while true Islam teaches separation of mosque and state, only about one in three Muslim Americans or 32% believe Islam supports separation of mosque and state. In contrast, 40% said it does not while 28% were unsure. Perhaps most concerning, 18% of Muslim Americans did not agree or declined to answer when asked whether true Islam condemns every form of terrorism. (7% and 12%, respectively).
In this context, Brian Bachman, a State Department international religious freedom expert, indirectly indicated in his address the problems non-Muslims confront in trying to direct Islamic faith in benign directions. “It is not for the U.S. government to say what is true Islam and what is not, what makes a good Muslim and what is not,” he accurately noted, as American officials “don’t have the credibility to state that.” Yet they “definitely want that debate to happen within the community.” With unfounded optimism, he therefore predicted that American authorities could “rely upon you to make that case for why you can be a Muslim and be for peace, why you can be a Muslim and be for justice, why you can be a Muslim and be American.”
James in Europe has previously rejected Bachman’s advocacy for the Ahmadis, who for Muslims are an “enormous distortion of Islam.” With Ahmadis, a “dangerous game is played at the cost of the ignorance of society.” The Ahmadis’ proclaimed “lite version of Islam” lulls society into the complacent conclusion that “Islam is not the problem.” Yet as the next article in this series will examine, James and others have discovered that Ahmadi Islam itself contains deeply disturbing aspects.
Eur says
Same fascist crap. Many say that the Sufis are the mystical, spiritual and peaceful branch of Islam, myself have spoken with Sufis and their ideology is the same as the rest of Muslims.The Sufis advocate theocratic political systems, justify the jihad of past eras ( in my conversation they justified the jihad of North Africa on the dogons).
Muslims are all fascist scum,even ahmadis.Fuck islam.
mortimer says
To be fair, Ahmadis have never been seen to run a majority government in any country, so, reasonably we don’t know if they would act ‘fascist’ or not once in power. Their religious leaders may actually advocate pluralism, but we will likely never see an Ahmadi government anywhere or any time.
RonaldB says
An identity group can have an effect on the polity, even without being in power. For example, the core principle of the US Constitution is, there is no religious test for public office, and the federal government will make no law respecting the promotion of any religion. Therefore, to be consistent with the Constitution, the Ahmaddis would specifically renounce the concept of Ahmaddis as a group being in power.
By the way, this principle quite correctly applies to other religions as well. It is a contradiction in terms to refer to the US government as “Christian” because the bedrock US legal principle is that government is not affiliated with religion. And also by the way, this does not imply that gov’t has to act like Dracula with a cross when hosting a religious event on public space. In other words, you do not have to move all crosses from public spaces including parks.
Anyway, where I’m going is, do the Ahmaddis act as a political identity group, even apart from the question of “coming to power”? Do they support the practice of allowing a forum for anti-Islamic ideas? I’m not simply talking about anti-Islamist, but about anti-Islamic. Can we see some examples of concrete Ahmaddi support for critics of Islam? Did they express support for Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller when they were banned from entering England?
gravenimage says
True, Mortimer–but Ahmadis have openly said that they would impose brutal Shari’ah law if they could, which is not a good sign.
Angemon says
“Their religious leaders may actually advocate pluralism”
Given their stance on sharia, one can reasonably infer that the only “pluralism” they care about is having many different kuffar groups from which to collect jizya from…
Warren Raymond says
Mortimer & gravenimage:
“Ahmadi Islam itself contains deeply disturbing aspects.”
It certainly does. The cult was founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmed solely for one purpose: to destroy Christianity.
Their jihad is misrepresenting Islam & prosleytising.
gravenimage says
I am no fan of the Ahmadis for the reasons I have noted, but I have never heard that Ahmed’s aim was to destroy Christianity. Citations?
mortimer says
Even though the leaders of Ahmaddiya make sweeping claims, in fact, Ahmaddiya does not represent Shi’ite or Sunnite Islam any more than Moronism (or Jehovah’s Witnesses) represent the RCC or the Orthodox Church community (the biggest parts of Christianity). Ahmaddiya is a ‘son-of-Islam’ kind of religion, just as Jehovah’s Witness Watchtower Organization is a ‘son-of-Christianity’ kind of religion.
The JW’s and the Ahmadis both refer to an additional, auxiliary ‘prophecy’ brought by a leader over a hundred years ago, both have living ‘prophets’ who alter and adjust the doctrine periodically and both are denounced by the ‘matrix’ religions from which they spring as heretical.
The approach used by the Ahmadis in proselytism is systemically deceptive and misleading. While individual Ahmadis have splendid, personal qualities, their system leaders often give a false impression to uninformed kafirs about Islam. The Ahmadi leaders should fix that or guess what? No one respects intentional deceivers. Sorry, guys. Clean up your act.
gravenimage says
They are hoping to deceive hopeful Infidels–and all too often succeed.
RonaldB says
There’s something else to consider.
Sharia, as practiced by mainstream Islam, is a painstaking, literal, and inclusive set of rules based entirely, mindlessly, and literally, from all the base sources of Islam: Koran, Hadith, and Sunnah.
Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad
So, now you have a sect called Ahmaddiya, which calls itself the true Islam, and which gives its own interpretation of Islam based on a more recent “prophet” claiming divine powers of interpretation. I presume the Ahmaddiya ignore sharia, as expostulated, say, in the “Reliance of the Traveler”. If they don’t simply ignore sharia, how do they explain it, as sharia gives much less wriggle room than the often murky and self-contradictory Koran and Hadith?
I don’t care at all if Ahmaddiya accurately portrays Muhammad or “true” Islam. I do care how the Ahmaddiya affect the US as a coherent culture and society. I don’t want any more Ahmaddiya in the US, just as I don’t want more Moonies in the US. Having a small group of almost anyone here is not necessarily harmful and can well be stimulating. Once you get enough of them to influence policy and affect political considerations, you start having to wonder about their real positions and attitudes. I prefer not to have to worry.
terry sullivan says
there is an amhady peer–appointed by camoron–he is such a fool is boydave