Ahmadiyah Leader Tries To Clear the Air About Persecuted Sect's Beliefs

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Ahmadiyah Leader Tries To Clear the Air About Persecuted Sect’s Beliefs

Ulma Haryanto & Fitri | November 10, 2010

Jakarta. The beleaguered Ahmadiyah sect has tried to clarify its beliefs, with the national secretary of Ahmadiyah Indonesia, Zafrullah Pontoh, saying it had never claimed Mirza Ghulam Ahmad as their prophet.

Rather, he was the “Promised Messiah, a savior for Muslims, Christians and Jews.”

“We believe in the Holy Prophet Muhammad as the messenger of the last religion, which is Islam. We follow Islam as the final religion,” Zafrullah told the Jakarta Globe on Tuesday.

He denied they were too afraid to say they believed Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was the Prophet and were hiding their true beliefs to avoid further persecution.

Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali has repeatedly called for the sect to be banned, claiming members cannot consider themselves followers of Islam because they did not believe Muhammad was the final monotheist prophet. Nor did they consider the Koran as their holy book.

Anti-Ahmadiyah violence has increased since 2008, when Indonesia banned the sect from any public displays or teaching. Earlier that year the sect had to give the government a statement explaining the core contents of the religion. Zafrullah said this was to “avoid unrest and disruption to peace and order.”

“This limits us from explaining our beliefs to the public,” he said. “As a result, people receive second-hand information and stick with it.”

Mirza Ghulam Ahmad established the Ahmadiyah movement in Qadian in India in 1889.

Zafrullah said the 12-point statement submitted to the government had explained that they believed Muhammad was the final messenger, and that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was “a teacher and a messiah who will strengthen the understanding of Islam, as taught by Prophet Muhammad.”

“They often claim that we consider Tazkirah as the holy book, which is not true,” he said. “Tazkirah is a compilation of Mirza’s writings and notes on his behavior, just like the Hadith [the words and deeds of Prophet Muhammad].” God was Allah to them, just like any other Muslim.

According to Jauzi, who chairs the Ahmadiyah regional leadership council in West Nusa Tenggara, the main difference between the two was that Ahmadiyah believed Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was the Promised Messiah.

“In other religions, the Messiah has not arrived yet. For us he did. It was Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. That is the core difference,” Jauzi told the Globe.

Zafrullah said there were two Ahmadiyah groups in Indonesia – the Jemaah Ahmadiyah Indonesia, or JAI, and the Gerakan Ahmadiyah Indonesia, or GAI.

“Both are Ahmadiyah, [JAI] is Ahmadiyah from Qadian, a small town in India, while [GAI] derives its teachings from Lahore [Pakistan],” he said.

“Although both follow Islam according to the teachings of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, Lahore Ahmadis place Mirza Ghulam Ahmad merely as a “reformer”, and not the messiah, as opposed to the main belief of Ahmadiyah.

“JAI has more members than GAI. But the leaders of the two organizations know each other, and we acknowledged each other without getting too deep into each other’s business.”

Zafrullah said the split came after a feud among pupils of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad after his death. Those who did not see him as a messiah moved to Lahore.

Ulil Abshar Abdalla, a Democratic Party chairman and founder of the Liberal Islam Network, has been critical of Suryadharma for his failure to stand up to those who preach hatred and instigate violence against the sect.

On Tuesday he said the minister had adopted an approach that fostered radicalism.

“It’s like putting oil on a flame,” Ulil said.

Copyright 2010 The Jakarta Globe

URL: www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/ahmadiyah-lead...cts-beliefs/405899

Ahmadi massacre silence is dispiriting

Ahmadi massacre silence is dispiriting

The virtual conspiracy of silence after the murder of 94 Ahmadis in Pakistan exposes the oppression suffered by the sect

Declan Walsh
guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 June 2010 14.59 BST

The virtual conspiracy of silence after the murder of 94 Ahmadis in Pakistan exposes the oppression suffered by the sec

I often find myself defending Pakistan against the unbidden prejudices of the outside world. No, Islam is not the cause of terrorism. Yes, the Taliban is a complex phenomenon. No, Imran Khan is not a major political figure.

This past week, though, I am silent. The massacre of 94 members of the minority Ahmadi community on May 28 has exposed something ugly at the heart of Pakistan – its laws, its rulers, its society.

It’s not the violence that disturbs most, gut-churning as it was. During Friday prayers two teams of attackers stormed Ahmadi mosques in the eastern city of Lahore. They fired Kalashnikovs from minarets, chucked grenades into the crowds, exploded their suicide vests.

As the massacre unfolded, a friend called – his father-in-law, a devout Ahmadi, was inside one of the besieged mosques. The family, glued to live television coverage, were sick with worry.

Two hours later, my friend’s relative emerged alive. But many of his friends – old men, including a retired general and former judge – were dead.

The killers were quickly identified as “Punjabi Taliban” – a loose collective of local extremists with ties to the tribal belt. This was unsurprising. More dispiriting, however, was the wider reaction.

Human rights groups reacted with pre-programmed outrage; otherwise there was a virtual conspiracy of silence. A dribble of protestors attended street protests against the attack in Lahore and Karachi; eleven people showed up in Islamabad.

The normally vociferous media were unusually reticent. Commentators expressed dismay at the violence, but few dared voice support for the Ahmadi community itself. Politicians turned yellow.

Few visited the bereaved; still today, the chief minister of Punjab, Shahbaz Sharif, has not visited the bullet-pocked mosques or offered compensation to the injured.

In the national parliament, three brave female MPs crossed party lines to propose a resolution condemning the attacks, in the face of massive indifference. The motion passed, just.

The reticence is rooted in law and history. Ahmadis believe that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, a 19th century Punjabi cleric, was the messiah sent by God – a notion that deeply offends orthodox Muslims for whom Muhammad, who lived in 7th-century Arabia, is the final prophet.

The problem is that the state has taken sides in this religious argument. Since the 1970s, civilian and military governments have passed laws enshrining the discrimination against Ahmadis, today thought to number about 4 million in Pakistan.

And so they live in the shadows of society. Under the law, Ahmadis may not call themselves Muslims and may not refer to their places of worship as “mosques”. Orthodox Muslims applying for a passport must sign a statement deriding Ahmad as an “imposter”.

Any Ahmadi who defies these edicts can be sentenced to death; in 2009, 37 were charged under the blasphemy laws and 57 under Ahmadi-specific laws.

This state-directed discrimination has caused prejudice to soak into the bones of even well-educated Pakistanis. It is acceptable to denigrate Ahmadis as “agents of foreign powers” such as the CIA and Raw, India’s intelligence service.

In 2008 a prominent preacher on Geo, the country’s largest channel, suggested that right-minded Muslims should kill Ahmadis. Within 48 hours two Ahmadis had been lynched. The television presenter has prospered.

Last year a banner appeared outside the high court in Lahore, declaring “Jews, Christians and Ahmadis are enemies of Islam”. Few complained.

The silence that followed the Ahmadi killings was broken last week by a tsunami of outrage at the Israeli commando raids on boats headed for Gaza. Commentators and politicians fulminated at the treatment of the Palestinians – a minority that suffers state-sanctioned, religiously driven discrimination. Nobody got the irony.

It makes one realise how small the constituency of true liberals is in Pakistan – not Pervez Musharraf-style liberals, who drink whisky and attend fashion shows, but people who believe the state should cherish all citizens equally. That, after all, was the publicly expressed desire of Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, 63 years ago. Today it lies in tatters.

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

URL: www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/jun...cre-silence-pakistan

Rights group demands release of Ahmadiyya detainees

---Daily News, Egypt

Rights group demands release of Ahmadiyya detainees

By WillIiam F. Zeman/Daily News Egypt
   
May 16, 2010, 5:05 pm

CAIRO: The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) demanded nine Egyptians detained under the emergency law for holding unorthodox religious views be released Sunday, in a message to Minister of the Interior Habib El-Adly.

The nine detainees are being held due to their adherence to the Ahmadiyya branch of Islam, according to the EIPR.

Adherents to the Ahmadiyya community follow the teachings of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, a 19th Century religious figure in India who claimed to be Islam’s Messiah in 1891.

Article 98 of the Egyptian penal code makes “contempt for the Islamic religion” a punishable crime. As Ahmadis are perceived to revere the teachings of a prophet coming after the Prophet Mohamed, the Egyptian government believes them to be punishable under Article 98.

The nine detainees have been held for the last two months. They were arrested on March 15, 2010, and held by the State Security Investigation in Cairo, Qalyoubiya, Minya, and Sohag governorates.

Four others were also arrested, but later released. In addition, the State Security Investigators confiscated books and computers belonging to the accused.

The detainees are being held in Tora Prison, according to the EIPR.

“We were only made aware of the case recently,” Soha Abdelaty told Daily News Egypt Sunday. “Once we found out, we began taking [these actions.]”

The EIPR’s message to El-Adly called for the interior minister to “order an end to the Supreme State Security Prosecutor’s investigation of all detainees on charges of ‘contempt of religions’ and hold to account those officials responsible for the arrest and interrogation of citizens solely for exercising their constitutional right to freedom of belief and expression,” according to a press release.

Abdelaty told Daily News that the EIPR had not received a response from the minister.

In addition to petitioning the minister, the EIPR has begun attending interrogations of the accused, according to Abdelaty.

“They [the accused] are still being interrogated,” she said. “They haven’t been brought to court yet or indicted.”

On May 12, State Security officers arrested the wife of one of the nine detainees. An EIPR lawyer observed her interrogation the following day.

“The sort of questions the accused are being asked are specifics about their religious beliefs,” Abdelaty said. “The people acknowledge they belong to this faith [Ahmadiyya beliefs.]”

The EIPR lawyer present at the May 13 interrogation said questioning the suspect about her religious beliefs “violated constitutional protections for freedom of belief and personal freedom, upheld by Articles 41 and 46 of the Constitution,” according to the EIPR.

Prosecutors then released the suspect, but scheduled another interrogation for May 16. EIPR lawyers again were present with the suspect.

“The use of the emergency law to detain citizens because of their religious affiliation blatantly contradicts government claims that the infamous law is used solely in crimes involving terrorism or drug trafficking,” said the EIPR’s legal officer, Adel Ramadan, in a prepared statement.

“The government must immediately stop punishing people because they hold certain religious beliefs.”

“The Public Prosecutor should issue clear directives to all prosecutors banning the use of the notorious charge of ‘contempt of religions’ to interrogate individuals about their religious beliefs,” Ramadan added. “This is a flagrant violation of their right to freedom of religion and belief … this runs counter to the constitution and Egypt’s international obligations.”

Article 46 of the Egyptian constitution guarantees “the freedom of belief and the freedom of practice of religious rites” while Article 41 states “individual freedom is a natural right and safeguarded and inviolable.

Save for the case of being caught red-handed, no person may be arrested, inspected, detained or his freedom restricted or prevented from free movement except under an order necessitated by investigations and preservation of the security of the society.”

However, Article 2 does declare Islam to be Egypt’s principal source of legislation.

URL: www.thedailynewsegypt.com/index.php?option=c...catid=1&Itemid=183