[Reader-list] In the Name of Faith-Irfan Hussain (in Dawn)

[Pawan Durani]

Talking about Ahmediyas , the following are the the points which makes them
different from larger musilm population. Last week two Ahmediyas were killed
in Sindh, Pakistan. One of them being a doctor

he following are some of the difference between Islam and Qadianism
(Ahmadiyyat ):

   1.

   Qadianism (Ahmadiyyat) is based on the belief that Mirza was an improved
   second reincarnation of hazrat Muhammad(SAW).
   2.

   Qadianism (Ahmadiyyat) rejects the concept of absolute Finality of
   Prophethood in hazrat Muhammad(SAW<http://www.irshad.org/glossary.php#SAW>
   ), as confirmed in Quran, *Hadith*,
*Sunnah<http://www.irshad.org/glossary.php#Sunnah>
    *of the Holy Prophet(SAW), Tradition of Companions, the writings of
   Muslim Scholars and personalities, and concensus of the entire
*Ummah*<http://www.irshad.org/glossary.php#Ummah> for
   almost 1500 years.
   3.

   Qadianism (Ahmadiyyat) maintains that Mirza Ghulam Qadiani was a Prophet
   (*nabi* and *rasul*) of God.
   4.

   Qadianism (Ahmadiyyat) rejects the concept of completion of the
   revelations of Allah(SWT) in the Holy Quran.
   5.

   Qadianism (Ahmadiyyat) holds that Mirza Ghulam Qadiani's revelations
   (Books) were on the same level as all prior revelations (Quran, Bible,
   Torah). In their view, simply following Quran and Sunnah, as Muslims have
   done since the beginning of Islam, is not a basis for living a righteous
   life and gaining the pleasure of the Creator. Interestingly, the Qadiani
   leadership has refused to allow a translation of these books, so that
   everyone may become familiar with the irrational teachings and contradictory
   claims of the founder of their organization.
   6.

   Qadianism (Ahmadiyyat) rejects authentic *Hadith *based on Mirza's
   alleged revelations and teaches his personal interpretation of the Holy
   Quran <http://www.irshad.org/glossary.php#Quran>. Qadiani (Ahmadiyya)
   leadership has forged several unauthentic translations of the Holy Quran to
   try to confuse and mislead uninformed individuals.
   7.

   Qadianism (Ahmadiyyat) teaches that
Jesus(pbuh<http://www.irshad.org/glossary.php#pbuh>
   ) had been crucified, but did not die from his injuries. Instead, it
   advocates the view that Jesus(pbuh<http://www.irshad.org/glossary.php#pbuh>
   ) recovered from his injuries, escaped to Kashmir (India), where he lived
   for another 86 years, and is buried there.
   8.

   Whereas Jesus(pbuh <http://www.irshad.org/glossary.php#pbuh>) is
   acknowledged as a great prophet of Allah in Islam, Mirza Ghulam took the
   liberty of making demeaning and vulgar remarks against him and his honored
   mother, rejected his miracles, belittled his mission and denied his return
   before the Day of Judgment. It is such unbecoming teachings that have
   resulted in hateful retributions by extremist Christians evangelical groups
   against Muslims, Prophet Muhammad(SAW), and Islam.
   9.

   Qadianism (Ahmadiyyat) maintains that Mirza Ghulam Qadiani was "the
   promised Messiah". The Qadianis (Ahmadis) reject the advent of Jesus Christ
   (pbuh), son of Mary, as the Messiah, just before the Day of Judgment.
   10.

   Qadianism (Ahmadiyyat) teaches that Mirza Ghulam Qadiani was also the
   promised Mahdi (guided one).
   11.

   Qadianism (Ahmadiyyat) teaches that Mirza Ghulam Qadiani was also the
   expected Hindu lord, Krishna.
   12.

   Qadianism (Ahmadiyyat) intollerantly declares the entire manking, except
   for those who naively accept the irrational notions and contradictory claims
   of Mirza Ghulam Qadiani, to be *unbelievers and bound for hell*. Qadiani
   leadership has announced all Muslims to be unbelievers and has forbidden its
   followers from wedding their daughters to Muslims, praying behind Muslims,
   and offering prayer on their deceased - be it a child or an adult.
   13.

   Qadianism (Ahmadiyyat) teaches that struggle for freedom, independence
   and self-determination against the tyranny, extremism and oppression (*
   Jihad <http://www.irshad.org/glossary.php#Jihad>*) of those military
   powers that support Qadianism has been
made*Haraam<http://www.irshad.org/glossary.php#Haraam>
   *.
   14.

   At its birth, being a protoge of the oppressive British Empire of the
   time, Qadianism (Ahmadiyyat) required complete devotion and obedience to the
   British Government, as an article of faith. While freedom loving people
   around the globe were rising up against the British subjugation, Qadianis
   were being required to be willing to sacrifice their wealth, talent, and
   soul in the cause of the Crown. Britain is presently the headquarter of the
   Qadiani Movement.
   15.

   Qadianism (Ahmadiyyat) holds two cities in India (Qadian) and Pakistan
   (Rabwah) as holy as *Mekkah <http://www.irshad.org/glossary.php#Mekkah>*
    and*Madinah <http://www.irshad.org/glossary.php#Madianh>*. Qadianis
   (Ahmadiyya) are supposed to perform
*Hajj<http://www.irshad.org/glossary.php#Hajj>
   * by attending their annual congregation, instead of visiting Mekkah.
   16.

   Qadianism (Ahmadiyyat) maintains that Mirza Ghulam Qadiani was superior
   to all the Prophets(pbut) of Allah(SWT).
   17.

   Qadianism (Ahmadiyyat) refers to the companions of Mirza Ghulam Qadiani
   as *Sahaba* and his wives as Mother of the Believers (*Ummahatul Muminin*
   ).
   18.

   Qadianism (Ahmadiyyat) advances the notion that many verses of the Holy
   Quran were revealed to Mirza Ghulam Qadiani and that many of the praises of
   Prophet Muhammad(SAW), mentioned in Quran, were really intended for Mirza
   Ghulam Qadiani.
   19.

   Qadianism (Ahmadiyyat) claims Mirza's
Mosque<http://www.irshad.org/glossary.php#Mosque> at
   Qadian (India) to be *Masjid-ul-Aqsa*.


On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 3:48 PM, Shuddhabrata Sengupta <shuddha at sarai.net>wrote:

> Dear Rashneek,
>
> Many thanks for the forwarded text that mentioned  the state of
> Ahmediyas in Pakistan. I found it interesting to read and think about.
>
> Ahmediyas have for a long time suffered constitutional and systemic
> disabilities in Pakistan of an exceptional nature, which in my view
> are deserving of condemnation by any sensible human being. Hindus,
> Christians and Parsis (legally and constitutionally) have actually
> had a better deal in Pakistan, at least since the time the 'Anti-
> Ahmediya' laws promulgated initially by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's
> government in 1974 (which were then ruthlessly implemented under the
> dictatorship of Zia ul Haq [the favourite Islamist, together with the
> Ibn Saud family, of the Western world] ) than have Ahmediyas.
>
> Given that Hindus, Sikhs, the Kalash and Christians, and even Shia
> Muslims, and Muslims unwilling to live by the dictates of zealots,
> have had a very rough time at the hands of Muslim Fundamentalists (in
> or out of power) in Pakistan, one can only imagine, how much worse it
> has been for Ahmediyas, who do not enjoy even the token
> constitutional protections that other 'minorities' in Pakistan have
> theoretical recourse to. Christians are attacked in Pakistan, their
> churches burnt, exactly as they are in India, and they are often made
> the special target of the repressive 'blasphemy' laws in Pakistan.
> The few Hindus, Sikhs and Kalash left in Pakistan are relatively
> unmolested, except for in stupid 'tit-for-tat' attacks that occur
> when Muslims are targeted in India. The Kalash, (inhabitants of the
> remote 'Northern Areas' of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir) who are
> probably one of the few communities with an extant, surviving and
> continuous links to the nature worshipping Rig Vedic and pre Rig
> Vedic Indo-European religious traditions in the South Asian
> subcontinent, are largely ignored, and have survived, because of
> their relative obscurity. (See Alice Albinia's excellent recent book
> 'Empires of the Indus' for a detailed chapter on the Kalash in Pakistan)
>
> Recently, only a few days ago, I personally witnessed the lament of a
> group of poor Pakistani Shia pilgrims in the Shrine to the
> decapitated head of Imam Hussain in an annex to the Umayyad mosque in
> Damascus. In their prayers, they spoke openly, tearfully (and
> movingly) of the violent campaigns against Shias and their places of
> worship in Pakistan, which brought home to me the vulnerable status
> of all 'minority' communities in South Asia. But the attacks on
> Ahmediyas enjoy a degree of unprecedented state sanction and
> protection, that makes them even more, particularly vulnerable in
> Pakistan. People can be prosecuted (in theory) for tearing down a
> Shia Mosque, or a Hindu Temple in Pakistan, but it is the state that
> of its own, tears down an Ahmediya place of worship (if it dares to
> call itself a mosque) or limits or proscribes the actual life of the
> Ahmediya community in Pakistan. The Sarai Reader 05: Bare Acts has a
> very good  essay on the legal limitations on Ahmediyas in Pakistan
> by  which I would heartily recommend to everyone on this list.
>
> Earlier, in the course of my research on the 'Danish' cartoon
> episode, I discovered that there was an earlier 'cartoon'
> controversy, which involved Sunni Muslim Fundamentalists reviling
> Ahmediyas with cartoons (in websites and publications)  that were
> just as obscene and pathetic as the ones now known popularly as the
> 'Danish' cartoons. The Ahmediya protests at the insults hurled
> against them in the form of a cartoon were of course at that time met
> with deafening  and derisive silence, especially in Pakistan. As a
> believer in the freedom of speech and expression, I have consistently
> opposed the demand to ban or censor material such as the 'Danish
> Cartoons' even though I would myself argue very strongly  against the
> content of the same cartoons.
>
> I was struck then by the hypocrisy inherent in the fact that many
> amongst those Muslim zealots in Pakistan and elsewhere who strongly
> called for a 'ban on the Danish cartoons' or even 'death to the
> Danish cartoonists' chose to see nothing wrong in similarly
> objectionable cartoons directed against their own adversaries (in
> this case the Ahmediyas). Its not as if they had anything against a
> bona fide and maliciously obscene image, its just that they were
> concerned about 'injury' only when it came to a matter of to their
> own sentiment. I see an exact mirror of this in the fact that Hindu
> fundamentalists who cry themselves hoarse over insults to their
> 'honour' in the form of images, often deploy the most virulent
> imagery in their own descriptions of the things that are sacred to
> their antagonists.
>
> Muslim fundamentalism, like all forms of religious bigotry (Hindu,
> Christian, Jewish, Sikh, Buddhist) , is fuelled by a dehumanization
> of the one that it designates as its principal other. Often, the most
> violent form of animosity is reserved, paradoxically, not for the
> categorical 'other', (with whom some accommodation is arrived at over
> a protracted historical process) but for the 'other' close enough to
> resemble oneself most of all. Freud used to call this 'the narcissism
> of minor difference' and saw in it a secret reservoir of neurotic
> self-hatred and insecurity projected on to those who are different
> from, but still closely resemble, the self.
>
> This explains why Jewish and Muslim fundamentalists (who have so much
> in common, doctrinally, and in terms of practice) hate each other so
> much today (even though ordinary non-fundamentalist but practising
> Jews and Muslims have co-habited, collaborated and shared cultures,
> spaces and ways of life peacefully, intimately and fruitfully for
> more than a thousand years in Spain, the Arab countries, Turkey, Iran
> and India) and this also explains the peculiarly lethal intensity to
> anti-Ahmediya sentiment in Pakistan, and more recently in Bangladesh,
> and the venality of anti-Bahai sentiment amongst the ruling Islamic
> fundamentalist clique in today's Iran.
>
> Thank you for this opportunity to reflect (albeit fragmentarily on my
> part) on the 'narcissism of minor difference'. Though I agree with
> most of what the author of the text forwarded by you says, I do not
> necessarily agree that to 'fight' the Taliban, one has to do it in
> connivance with the United States of America's foreign policy goals.
> The United States of America was once just as happy arming Islamists
> in Pakistan as it is mobilizing everyone to fight them today, and,
> lest we forget, it continues to sustain the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,
> which, in my opinion is the single most oppressive and repressive
> state in the world today, and that is a state run by the worst, and
> most regressive kind of Islamic fundamentalists ever known in human
> history.
>
> regards,
>
> Shuddha
>
> On 30-Sep-08, at 8:55 AM, rashneek kher wrote:
>
> > IN a moving article on this page ('Not in the name of faith', Sept
> > 21),
> > Kunwar Idris reminded us of the treatment being accorded to the
> > Ahmadis in
> > Pakistan.
> >
> > He mentioned the three murders that took place this month in the
> > aftermath
> > of a television talk-show in which one of the participants said
> > Ahmadis were
> > 'wajib-ul-qatal', or deserving of death.
> >
> >
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