OpinionJournal - Taste: "It is by now a truism, although a tragic one, that Christian minorities often suffer persecution in some Muslim countries. (Think only of the recent anti-Christian violence in Indonesia.) What is less well-known is the plight of non-Christian minorities.
Here, too, the story is often tragic. An especially telling example concerns members of the Ahmadiyya Community, a world-wide religious group whose suffering illustrates all too well the increasing political power of a militant perversion of Islam.
>>>That is not how Ahmadis see themselves. Members of the Ahmadiyya Community profess to be Muslims. They believe that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908)--a reformer who lived in a remote village in Punjab, India, and taught his followers to wage "jihad" against Islam's opponents with the pen and not the sword--was the messiah foretold by the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century.
Ahmad's followers, it should be said, do not constitute some fringe cult. They are numerous throughout Asia, Europe and North America and can be found in high positions. Sir Muhammad Zafrulla Khan, the former president of the United Nations General Assembly, was an Ahmadi. So was the physicist Abdus Salam, the first Pakistani Nobel laureate. Alas, many orthodox Muslims place the community outside the pale of Islam, asserting that its members reject the finality of Muhammad's prophethood."
Here, too, the story is often tragic. An especially telling example concerns members of the Ahmadiyya Community, a world-wide religious group whose suffering illustrates all too well the increasing political power of a militant perversion of Islam.
>>>That is not how Ahmadis see themselves. Members of the Ahmadiyya Community profess to be Muslims. They believe that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908)--a reformer who lived in a remote village in Punjab, India, and taught his followers to wage "jihad" against Islam's opponents with the pen and not the sword--was the messiah foretold by the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century.
Ahmad's followers, it should be said, do not constitute some fringe cult. They are numerous throughout Asia, Europe and North America and can be found in high positions. Sir Muhammad Zafrulla Khan, the former president of the United Nations General Assembly, was an Ahmadi. So was the physicist Abdus Salam, the first Pakistani Nobel laureate. Alas, many orthodox Muslims place the community outside the pale of Islam, asserting that its members reject the finality of Muhammad's prophethood."
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