Muslim Heretics Conference

Imagine a controversy that could be bigger than the Rev. Jeremiah Wright flare-up or bigger than the debate over Father Michael Pfleger. It’s an issue that could be bigger than Willie Horton in 1988, Gennifer Flowers in 1992, or the “swift boat” in 2004. It’s the word that Barack Obama’s campaign doesn’t want voters to associate with their candidate. It’s the M word.

Muslim.

That’s the issue that is resonating again on the campaign trail after the Obama campaign reportedly banned two Muslim women in headscarves from sitting in camera view behind the candidate’s podium at a rally in Detroit on Monday.

Officials in the Obama campaign later called the women to apologize and a spokesperson for the campaign said the incident “doesn’t reflect the orientation of the campaign.” Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to Senator Obama, said, “I do not believe that mistake will be made again.”

But by that point, the damage had already been done. “I was coming to support him, and I felt like I was discriminated against by the very person who was supposed to be bringing this change, who I could really relate to,” Hebba Aref, a 25-year-old lawyer in the Detroit area told Politico.com. “The message that I thought was delivered to us was that they do not want him associated with Muslims or Muslim supporters,” Aref said.

That’s the problem for the Obama campaign. On the one hand, his campaign doesn’t want voters to mistakenly think he’s a Muslim. On the other hand, the campaign doesn’t want Muslim Americans to think he’s ashamed of Islam or afraid to be associated with those who are Muslim.

It’s a delicate issue, made more complicated by recent American attitudes toward Islam. For some Americans, Islam represents two concerns for political candidates: religion and patriotism.

When Keith Ellison was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2006, he became the nation’s first Muslim member of Congress. But some conservatives and right-wing Christian leaders raised concerns that Ellison would take his oath of office on the Koran instead of the Bible. Despite our constitution which separates church from state, for many Americans, the U.S. is still seen as a Christian country.

The issue of Islam has become a greater concern for Americans during the Bush Administration. After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the word Muslim conjured up fears of religion, violence and anti-American sentiments among many U.S. residents.

A 2006 poll found the majority of Americans believed that Muslims are disproportionately prone to violence, according to the Washington Post. In addition, 46 percent of Americans had a negative view of Islam, according to the poll. That was 7 percentage points higher than in the months after the 9/11 attacks.

The feeling may be mutual. A recent poll found the image of the U.S. remains overwhelmingly negative in most of the Muslim world. Even the people in countries that are considered U.S. allies held a negative view of America. In Jordan, for example, 79 percent of respondents had a negative view of the U.S. and only 19 percent held positive views.

The survey, by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, was conducted among more than 24,000 people in 24 countries, but in countries like Egypt, a popular tourist destination for Westerners, only 22 percent of respondents held a favorable view of America, while 39 percent saw the United States as an “enemy.”  

Given that toxic environment on both sides, perhaps it’s no surprise that the nomination of an African American candidate named Barack Hussein Obama would stir up issues with some Americans. And it causes concern for those who hope to elect Obama as president.

A poll conducted in March found 14 percent of Republicans, 10 percent of Democrats and 8 percent of independents mistakenly think Obama is Muslim. The survey, taken after the controversy over Rev. Jeremiah Wright had erupted, found just over half of each group correctly identified Obama as a Christian, while about a third said they didn’t know his religion.

With rumors and viral campaigns spreading daily about the previously unknown presumptive Democratic nominee, we might see many more controversies about Islam and politics in the five months until the November elections.

The Great Obama Muslim controversy - The Daily Voice - Black America’s Daily News Source

Foreign Minister Ali Babacan triggered another debate concerning the involvement of the European Union in the promotion of individual freedoms in Turkey by touching a very sensitive nerve.

Babacan came under fire for at least two interrelated reasons. He angered Turkey’s secularists for overstepping his boundaries and claiming that not only religious minorities recognized by international conventions but also the religious majority face restrictions on their enjoyment of religious freedoms in Turkey. Moreover, he did so by criticizing his country in Europe. “How dare Turkey’s foreign minister and chief EU negotiator grumble about his country in this manner” was the common theme of numerous commentaries seeking almost to lynch Babacan.

‘Rights of the religious majority’: a welcome contribution

I believe Babacan’s frank remarks are welcome, since they could help break several taboos on the subject. For one, to the extent that European institutions are responsive to and accommodative of the thrust of Babacan’s argument in their assessment of Turkey’s progress in the membership process, it could represent a significant leap forward. EU insensitivity to the concerns of the conservative segments of Turkish society has been one of its shortcomings in the accession process. Lately, EU reports have begun to take up this issue, and the EU’s re-evaluation of its position on religious freedoms in Turkey may contribute to its establishment of bridges with wider sectors of Turkey. These remarks also are important to the extent that they signify a change in the Turkish state’s attitude toward religiosity. Compared to then-Prime Minister Tansu Çiller’s arguments in the mid-1990s that the West — including the EU and the United States — had to choose between herself and Islamic fundamentalism, Babacan’s remarks are a courageous acknowledgement of his country’s reality: that the scope of religious freedoms is not permissive for certain segments of the country and that there is nothing to be ashamed of raising this as an issue of concern.

Responses to Babacan range from accusations that he betrayed his country to claims that he misrepresented the problem by giving false information about the conditions of average Turkish Muslims. I do not want to go into detail about responses to Babacan, but it suffices to underline that despite critics’ demagogical statements that “all mosques are open in Turkey,” “no one is prevented from fasting at Ramadan or performing their daily prayers,” “the AK Party cannot teach Turkey what Islam is,” the fact of the matter remains: Turkey’s track record in individual rights in general and religious freedoms in particular is far from promising. Those clichés do not negate the fact that significant barriers exist before at least some people, which deny them equal access to public life. Not only the EU, but also other human rights watchdogs took notice of the problems encountered in this regard. For instance, Freedom House and the US Department of State’s International Religious Freedom reports recorded on many occasions how women wearing headscarves were not allowed in public universities and government offices, and men known to be observant Muslims were dismissed from the military on the grounds that they were involved in fundamentalist activities. So Babacan is not claiming to reinvent the wheel.

Intolerance to multiplicity in religious experience

I would rather like to emphasize a fundamental fallacy that underpins most of these responses to Babacan, which I believe is reflective of Turkey’s secular neighborhood’s intolerance of diversity. It is interesting to observe this paradoxical situation, because the very same circles have been behind the intellectual crusade against those conservative people, which was waged around ?erif Mardin’s concept of “neighborhood pressure” that questions Turkey’s conservative neighborhood’s commitment to toleration of different lifestyles. What is often ignored, however, is whether Turkey’s secularists tolerate diversity. Reading through responses to Babacan’s remarks, both by Turkey’s leading columnists and reader comments left on Web sites, one is shocked by the resistance to acknowledgement of the multiplicity of religious experience and appreciation of the demands of conservative people, veiled women in particular.

What is more worrisome is that those critics deny even the very possibility that a Muslim could be subjected to certain denial of rights in the first place. Critics do so through their notion of Turkish Islam. According to their own definition of Islam, “true Muslims” are doing just fine — remember the clichés abovementioned. What about those who claim to face limitations on religious freedoms, then? Critics’ definition of Turkish Islam is so tautological that those dissenters are left outside the definition, because they are either insincere or enemies of the state, anyway.

Secularist church of ‘Turkish Islam’

I believe, therefore, that the real issue at stake is not mere recognition of the right to religious practice. The problem that this mindset suffers from is its denial of the right to define one’s religious beliefs. One may trace this back to the very foundation of the republican ethos: the conception of a homogenous nation composed of secular(ized) Turks. However just as Turkey’s official nationalism reveres a harmonious and homogenous nation that hardly exists, advocates of Turkey’s secularist ideology also claim to respect a monolithic and utopian conception of religion — Islam — which, however, has little connection to the actual religious practice(s) of Turkey’s ordinary citizens.

What is troubling, therefore, is the daring attitude of Turkey’s secularists: They reserve to themselves the right to define the “true Islam,” provided that there is any. This is ironic because on the one hand, they are wary of any religious authority issuing statements concerning the practice of Islam in social life. It suffices to remember the reaction to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an’s remarks that, as a matter pertaining to religious affairs, the headscarf issue better be consulted to ulema — religious scholars. On the other hand, they act like the self-declared clerics of an interpretation of Islam that they idealize and expect the entirety of Turkish society to subscribe to.

What is the Turkish Islam Turkey’s secularist ulema preach, then? A Turk who may observe Islamic precepts but does not do so dogmatically — meaning that he or she may sometimes give up certain religious requirements and ignore religious prohibitions. This person is a Turk who, first and foremost, will never challenge the authority of the state based on religious references. For them, religion is an artifact of most Turks’ cultural and historical heritage, which is best reflected in the arguments concerning the headscarf. It is tolerated as part of traditional Anatolian women’s attire, but not as an attribute of a modern lifestyle. Those who insist on wearing religious dress in urban life, especially highly fashionable kinds, do not receive the same sympathy as rural women, because for the secular clerics of Turkish Islam, they do it because they are brainwashed, they are hypocrites, they want to get their husbands a better job or promotion, they are being paid to wear scarves, they are pressured by their families, etc. Everything but sincere religious observance; hence they are outcasts with no rights to be denied, anyway.

Let’s assume that Islam is indeed not just about wearing the headscarf or practicing a set of rituals, but about leading a virtuous and ethical life — as secularist argue. Let’s assume that headscarf is a product of an agrarian lifestyle and a part of Turkey’s rich historical and cultural heritage that has no place in modern day Turkey. So what? Let’s call those conservative Turks who insist on wearing headscarves and adapting it to the metropolitan lifestyle “modern-day heretics.” Don’t they have the right to heresy? Do they have to conform to the kind of “Turkish Islam” defined by Turkey’s secularists? What’s more important, do they deserve to be denied access to basic rights and services due to this heresy?

Individual autonomy in defining religious beliefs

For Turkey’s secularist clerics, Islam is an archaic folkloric religion at best; it is good if it is practiced by grandparents. They don’t see religion as a living reality or as a part of daily life that is practiced and redefined through the inter-subjective interaction of Muslim agent(s) with their social environments and with their secular and religious counterparts. For them, demands to enjoy religion in modern spheres of life are incomprehensible because they deny an individual’s autonomy to define one’s own religious beliefs in the first place. How could one expect them to take the next step and be tolerant of religious practices outside the official church of “Turkish Islam”?

At the heart of religious freedom lies the right to define one’s own religious beliefs. Whether ascribers to a religious belief are entitled to a right to practice their particular choices and beliefs is quite another issue. Obviously, no state and society will have a complete “hands off” approach to all religious interpretations. Nor will any society be entitled to impose the majority interpretation on the dissenting minority. Whether and under what conditions society can interfere with those choices and how the boundaries between the individual and society are to be drawn can be debated. This is where the debate on “neighborhood pressure” might be justified to question Turkey’s conservative neighborhood.

But Turkey’s secularist neighborhood also has to admit that it fails to grant many segments of the society the right to define how to understand religion — Islam. Unless Turkey’s secularist neighborhood grows tolerant of others with diverse life experiences and religious beliefs, it is difficult to be optimistic about the future of religious freedom.

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* ?aban Karda? is an instructor at the University of Utah, the chairman of the Middle East and Central Asia Conference Committee and a research assistant at Sakarya University.

[Religious freedoms of the ‘conservative majority’] Intolerance of Turkey’s ‘secularist neighborhood’ by ?ABAN KARDA?*

‘heresy’

MURAD SEZER/AP

The two sides of Islam’s religious-secular divide are captured in this image of a woman passing artist Burak Delier’s work Untitled in Turkey, a country that remains nominally secular. Oct. 4, 2005

Lynda Hurst
Feature writer

It was billed as the first-ever “Muslim Heretics Conference.”

Provocative? To be sure.

But when Sudanese-American scholar Abdullahi An-Naim organized it in Atlanta this April, what he really wanted to do was ignite some innovative thinking – brainstorm the predicament of traditional Islam in the modern world.

“I deliberately wanted to shock people into seeing `heresy’ as a creative force,” he laughs.

Naim may describe himself as a Muslim heretic (his conservative critics certainly do), but his peers in academia prefer the rather more admiring designation of public intellectual. Either way, the Emory University law professor has become famous throughout the Muslim world for championing the concept of secular Islam. The case he makes for it is simple but, given the political tenor of the times, paradigm-changing. To wit: Human rights are universal and trump religious dictates. The state must be secular because neutrality protects all religions. Faith belongs in the private, not the public, domain.

Perhaps even more contentiously, Naim calls for sharia, the Islamic code of laws for living, to be “renegotiated” and brought into the present: Regarding sharia as “an immutable body of principles universally binding on all Muslims would have been inconceivable,” he says, “to those who created it in the 8th and 9th centuries.”

Even as a boy in Sudan, Naim says he contested sharia because its rules, particularly relating to women, seemed manifestly unconnected to the true nature of Islam.

The son of an illiterate mother and self-educated father, he was a law student at the University of Khartoum in 1968 when he joined a reform movement called the Republican Brothers. It was led by Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, a Sufi reformer, regarded by many as a mystic, but by Naim as a mentor.

He was profoundly affected by Taha’s belief that a balance must be struck between the individual’s need for absolute freedom and the state’s need for total social justice.

Taha recognized the state of Israel, says Naim, and inveighed against all violence, warning years before 9/11 that it had to be checked in certain Muslim societies. He argued that sharia rules were archaic and that the Qur’an must always be understood in its historical context.

Those views guaranteed trouble when a sharia-enforcing Islamist dictatorship took control in Sudan. In 1985, Taha was hanged, his books burned. Naim fled the country.

“But you can’t kill an idea by killing the author,” he says.

In 1989, he became head of the Africa bureau of Human Rights Watch and made his first foray into shark-infested waters with his book, Towards an Islamic Reformation. Since 1995, he’s taught law at Emory in Atlanta ( a school he praises for having gone to court in the early `60s to end racial segregation).

As director of its Religion and Human Rights Program, he has overseen a global study on how sharia family law is applied in the non-monolithic, hugely diverse Islamic world – and was heartened by some of the results. In several states where sharia law is the public law, changes and adaptations are happening, he says: A man wishing to take a second wife, for example, now requires judicial approval.

That may not seem much to the Western eye, but to him, it’s a critical start. He’s convinced that modern communications will accelerate progress. Reform will come.

Naim’s latest book, Islam and the Secular State (Harvard University Press) is the culmination of his life’s work, he says. At 61, he’s spent 40 years working through the seeds planted by Taha and reaching his own considered conclusions.

“Taha’s great lesson was to be yourself, not a carbon copy of him. He would approve of the book because I am standing my own ground.”

What criticisms Naim makes of religious tradition are made as a devout, observant Muslim, he stresses: “When I protest the inequality of women, I do it as a Muslim, as the fulfilment of Islam.”

The book argues that sharia can become a relevant code for living if it is reworked to include modern democratic principles as well as Islamic values. And secularism, despite its bad press among Muslims, should be welcomed by them. It is not a refutation of true Islam, as many assume, but the reverse: a protection.

Easier said than understood, much less implemented. A recent Gallup global poll found that 80 to 90 per cent of Muslims want democracy, but similar majorities also want sharia to be a source, or the only source, of law in their countries.

Naim knows some Muslims who immigrate to the West cling to sharia because it is “the boundary of self-identity, the gatekeeper of communal autonomy and cultural self-determination.” He also knows that Ontario, in 2004, almost stumbled into allowing sharia to be used to settle Muslim family disputes, sparking a furious debate on the role of religion within multiculturalism. Premier Dalton McGuinty’s ultimate decision to ban religious law courts – saying all Canadians, regardless of origin, must be bound by the same laws – was abolutely the right call, Naim says.

“People immigrate for economic reasons but once in a place like Canada, they think they’re getting the best of two worlds. Some conservatives exploit the liberal space of the society.”

He sees the furor as just a pothole in Canada’s multicultural path. “Regression is part of progression. Societies learn from experience just like people do. Setbacks are necessary so that everyone can get onto the same page.” He pauses, then adds: “Cultural sensitivity is a challenge for Muslims.”

Naim is aware that Canada is not officially secular. Most nations aren’t, though he rattles off a few that have declared secularism: France, Germany, Senegal. He wishes it otherwise, but “tactically, it’s not always possible for governments to do that.”

Then, too, the nature of politics means that gains made can become gains lost: “Algeria had a progressive family court in 1985, then there was civil war, and it receded. Look at Iran. That selfish egotist (President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad, playing his game.”

Dispiriting? “No. I’m a pragmatic optimist. My eyes are open, I’m wise to human power and greed. If I’m not optimistic, I’m giving in to the lowest part of human nature.”

Naim’s book is subtitled Negotiating the Future of Sharia. But should it have a future?

Not according to Tarek Fatah, author of Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State. He disagrees with Naim’s evocation of true Islam in place of out-of-date sharia: “He’s not looking in the right place for political answers. People don’t want to hear about secularism.” But Fatah describes Naim as that rare thing, “a scholar with a sense of humour. If he wasn’t constrained by being in academia, he could be another Gandhi.”

Lynda Hurst is a feature writer for the Toronto Star. She can be reached at lhurst@thestar.ca

TheStar.com | Ideas | A champion of secular Islam looks to harness ‘heresy’

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Hardline Muslim group demands leader’s release

By Indonesia correspondent Geoff Thompson (analysis)

Posted 6 hours 56 minutes ago
Updated 6 hours 39 minutes ago

The chief of Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), Rizieq Shihab, speaks to journalists after being detained by police in Jakarta on June 5, 2008. Indonesian police have detained seven of at least 20 Muslim extremists wanted for a violent weekend attack on a rally for religious tolerance, a police spokesman said. (AFP: Adek Berry)

A full-face balaclava with only a mouth and eyes poking through is a confounding enough sight in Jakarta’s midday heat, but when its wearer appeared among the many scarf-covered faces turning up to a hardline Muslim protest outside Indonesia’s Presidential palace, it got me thinking about the faces Indonesia wants the world to see.

By covering their faces, the members of the Islamic Defenders Front, or FPI, couldn’t have given a clearer indication that they must be guilty of something or at least have something to hide, as they made their case right in front of this vast archipelago’s centre of power.

It was here just a week earlier that grand, grinning placards of Kevin Rudd and his wife, Therese Rein, loomed alongside the distinguished but po-faced coupling of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Indonesia’s first lady - the sort of faces Indonesia likes the world to see.

Protests like this are a bit of an Islamic fashion show, where thousands of men in matching white outfits work themselves into a lather while keeping up with a chorus of Allah Akbar’s blaring from a megaphone.

The iced tea and cigarette sellers do a roaring trade because there is always something of a day-at-the-races atmosphere about these events, except when they turn nasty. That happens sometimes too.

Take June 1 for example. Men, women and children from The National Alliance for Cultural and Religious Diversity (AKKBB) were holding a rally in support of religious tolerance in the same area, when, without a hint of irony, thugs from the FPI hoed into them with bamboo canes. It was a bit like watching an animal rights rally being attacked by a mob swinging live cats.

The police watched and did nothing for days until a national outcry forced them to arrest a bunch of FPI members, including chairman Habib Rizieq Shihab.

Apart from his firebrand running of FPI, Rizieq’s greatest talent is appearing on TV in a highly agitated state while declaring his willingness to fight just about anything “to the last drop of blood”.

So that’s what brought his supporters back to the palace. The freeing of Rizieq was one among many demands in their multi-pronged whinge.

Two other key ones were the disbanding of the minority Muslim sect, known as Ahmadiyya, and charging those tolerant people from the AKKBB for being the true masterminds of the June 1 incident.

To cut a long story short, Indonesia’s hardline Muslim right have it in for Ahmadiyya because its members tend to grant prophet status to Mirza Gulam Ahmad, the guy who founded his new and improved brand of Islam in 1889.

Many Sunnis and Shias across the world take offence because they say Ahmadiyya’s beliefs offend Islam’s core teaching that Mohammad was the final prophet. Countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have effectively banned Ahmadiyya, so Indonesia’s Islamic right believes it has global precedents for it case.

To get a sense of the fantastic world occupied by the FPI, here’s what a flyer said at their latest rally. Signed off by the “False Prophet Hunters Team”, it shows a picture from the June 1 attack featuring a man brandishing a revolver. It is clear to anyone knowing anything about Indonesia that the man in the photo is a plain-clothed policeman or a “police intel” as they are known here. But on the flyer he has a voice bubble above him which says: “Who would dare to face me? I’m the crony of the Jew and America. A big fan of Ahmadiyah!!”. Underneath it reads: “Here’s the provocateur from AKKBB. Catch this AKKBB cowboy!! Free Habib Rizieq!!”

The Indonesian Government recently caved in to pressure from the FPI and its fellow travellers, like Abu Bakar Bashir, by passing a decree which essentially banned Ahmadiyya from proselytising. The sect is not banned but its members are not allowed to spread their beliefs beyond their own circle.

But this has been misinterpreted by much of the local and international media. Even the New York Times wrongly reported that Ahmadiyya’s “activities” were forbidden.

The confusion is understandable given that ambiguity may indeed have been the Government’s intent. By trying to say nothing the Government has left its decree open to any interpretation.

And so from West Java The Jakarta Post reports this week that 150 militant motorcycle-riding Muslims have “swept through housing complexes where members of the Ahmadiyya sect live, sealing off and vandalising four mosques belonging to the sect”.

They sprayed paint across the walls of mosques. Again the police did nothing and in Sukabumi where an Ahmadiyya mosque was burnt to the ground before the government decree, non-Ahmadiyya members have taken to identifying themselves by putting stickers on their doors.

Since they were founded in 1998 Rizieq and his FPI have managed to mould themselves into Islam’s “guardians of morality”. Before now they were best known for their attacks on bars, shops and nightclubs which dare to open during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

But as Indonesia’s Tempo magazine and even Indonesia’s Defence Minister, Juwono Sudarsono, have recently reminded us, the FPI’s roots are deeply intertwined with connections to Indonesia’s military and police.

A shorthand way of understanding this is to think of 1999’s militias in East Timor. The FPI have been allowed to operate as a semi-official citizens’ militia. They are also rumoured to be involved in extortion rackets and that’s why the police have traditionally turned a blind eye to their activities.

It’s not the capacity of the Indonesian police which is in question here. With the support of the Australian Federal Police, their successes hunting down and imprisoning terrorists has been extraordinary.

For now at least Rizieq and another FPI leader, Munarman, remain in custody in connection with the June 1 attack. Rizieq has been charged.

But it could have been so much simpler, if all along, anyone who breached the peace or broke the law in modern, democratic, pluralistic Indonesia, was arrested and punished, regardless of their religious persuasion.

That would be an uncompromising, open face of justice which Indonesia could be proud to show the world.

Hardline Muslim group demands leader’s release - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

In America, Ahmadi Muslims worship freely, but in other parts of the world, they are often persecuted

By Deborah Horan | Tribune reporter

June 20, 2008

In the fiery days of the civil rights movement, Hasan Hakeem met a Muslim preacher on a street corner who would change his life.
Ali Razaa was a charismatic man with a graying beard and a gift of gab who made Hakeem, then an unsteady 19-year-old who was raised a Baptist and had a different name, yearn to learn more about the Islamic faith.
Muhammad Ali had recently shed his given name to join the Nation of Islam. Hakeem soon followed suit, renaming himself after the grandson of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad—but didn’t join the Nation. Razaa preached about a sect called Ahmadiyya, a faith born in India, under assault in Pakistan and popular among many African-Americans newly embracing Islam.
“I was never attracted to the Black Muslims,” Hakeem said, referring to the Nation of Islam. Instead, he and other new Ahmadi converts converged regularly on the Kenosha home of Razaa, eventually creating a fledgling community based in far-north suburban Zion that numbers roughly 250 today. “It was sort of like a small Mecca for people interested in Islam,” he said.

This weekend, Hakeem and thousands of other Ahmadi Muslims will gather in Harrisburg, Pa., to celebrate a century of spiritual successors, or Khalifat, with the turbaned Indian Muslim they consider a prophet and the Messiah. The fifth Khalifa, who lives in exile in London, is in Pennsylvania for the three-day fest, which begins Friday.
Named for their 19th Century founder—Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who preached that he was a prophet of God—the Ahmadis believe the Quran is the revealed word of God and celebrate major Muslim holidays.
But their belief that Ahmad was the second Messiah—they believe Jesus Christ was the first—sets them apart from other Muslim sects. Other Muslims see their beliefs as heretical, and the Ahmadis have been frequently persecuted by mainstream Muslims, particularly in Pakistan.
Following anti-Ahmadi riots, the Pakistan general assembly in 1974 voted to excommunicate the sect and bar adherents from listing “Muslim” as their religion on government documents.
That same year, the fourth Khalifa escaped to London. Thousands of Ahmadis also fled, leaving a remnant in Pakistan that today might number 1 million. In exile, the religion continued to attract converts, particularly in Ghana and other West African nations.
Today the movement claims as many as 15 million Ahmadis worldwide and as many as 15,000 in America, including more than 1,000 in the Chicago area. About one-third of them are African-American and other converts; the rest are immigrants and descendants of immigrants, according to estimates by members.
In America, the group worships freely but is shunned by most Muslim organizations. Saudi Arabian authorities bar Ahmadis from the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca that Muslims are required to make once in their life if they are able, but many American Ahmadis make the sacred trek by keeping their beliefs to themselves.
More recently, Ahmadis have come under persecution in Indonesia, members said.”We’ve always made for good punching bags,” said Naser Shams, an Ahmadi born in Pakistan who now lives in north suburban Lake Forest and is an editor at The Muslim Sunrise, an Ahmadi magazine.
Adherents consider Ahmad human, not divine. But they believe that, like Jesus, he came to reform religious teachings, returning them to their true essence. Ahmad also appeared at a time when the faithful were fragmented and under foreign domination. And like Jesus, he was persecuted.
“It’s a drastic change, our interpretation,” said Abu Bakr, a program manager with YouthBuild Lake County who converted more than 30 years ago. “We believe he was the Messiah, just like Jesus Christ.”
And while most Muslims believe Jesus will return at the end of days and many believe a hidden Mahdi, or guided one, will also appear, Ahmadis believe Ahmad’s appearance embodied Jesus’ return—similar to the Christian belief that Elijah returned in the person of John the Baptist. Thus, they believe Ahmad fulfilled the promised return of both the Messiah and the Mahdi.
Ahmadis consider proselytizing a basic tenet of the faith, members said, a belief that drove Razaa to the street corner all those years ago and that inspires many of his proteges to prison ministry today. Hakeem and Bakr are chaplains in jail ministries in Lake County and Kenosha.
Their community in Zion is called a mission house, not a mosque, though members hope to build a mosque soon. There is no minaret, no dome, no giant prayer rug covering the floor of a large prayer hall.
Instead, they gather in a small, nondescript home in a suburban neighborhood, where they worship and raise money for a $5,000 annual college scholarship. They are big on community activism, a holdover from the civil rights days.
“We’re a missionary group,” said Hakeem, the community’s president. “Our mission is to provide a moral foundation and to build a sense of community.”
dhoran@tribune.com

Holding firm to their faith — chicagotribune.com