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Saturday, June 9, 2012

Who are the Ahmadi? Are they a persecuted lot? A new book on the Ahmadiyya Jama'at, The War within Islam, NewAgeIslam.com

The War within Islam
Who are the Ahmadi? Are they a persecuted lot? A new book on the Ahmadiyya Jama'at
November 23, 2008
The Ahmadiyya Jama´at, an Islamic reform movement founded in India in the 19th century, has at least 10 million followers in numerous countries around the world, and an estimated 150,000 members in Pakistan. To the annoyance of mainstream Muslims, the Ahmadi teach, in contrast to the traditional doctrine of Khataman Nabiyeen (the idea that Muhammad is the seal, the greatest and the last of the Prophets) that there can be prophets, albeit minor ones, after the prophet Muhammad. The Ahmadi believe that their founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908), was such a lesser prophet. Accused of being British agents, the Ahmadi, not only teach that true jihad is "to struggle" for righteousness, to fight with the pen in rational debate, rather than fight with the sword, but that it is wrong for Muslims to fight kuffar [non-Muslim] States [such as the British in India] if that State allows the practice of Islam. Equally controversial is the Ahmadi belief that Jesus, instead of dying on the cross as Christians believe, or being taken alive into heaven as mainstream Muslims teach, escaped from the Romans, travelled to the East, finally settling and dying in Kashmir. Despite Ali Jinnah´s dream in 1947 of establishing Pakistan as an enlightened Islamic state, pluralistic and tolerant, minority groups such as the Ahmadi, due mainly to such beliefs, particularly the claim of prophet-hood made by Ahmad himself, are severely persecuted in that country.

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