Setting records straight: When the 'big boys' make mistakes

The following letter by Sardar Anees Ahmad was written to The Washington Post. The letter corrects an error about the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat in an article The Washington  Post had ran a few weeks prior. Currently, The Washington Post is ranked 5th in terms of circulation, with ~580,000 daily readers.

File photo - Mob attacking Ahmadiyyas

Ahmadiyya Times | News Staff | US Desk
Source & Credit: The Washington Post | Letters to the Editor
By Sardar Anees Ahmad | Waterloo, NY | February 27, 2010

A leader but also a follower

I am grateful for your [The Washington Post's] informative and timely Feb. 11 news story "A reemergence in the heart of Pakistan." The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community has experienced intense persecution since Pakistan's founding. Both my grandfather and my uncle were murdered simply because they were Ahmedi Muslims.

I disagree, however, with the characterization of the Ahmadiyyat's founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, as a "rival prophet." Ahmad claimed to be the promised messiah who the Islamic prophet Muhammad prophesied would arrive in the Latter Days. As such, Ahmad claimed to be a subordinate and submissive follower of Muhammad.

So, while some of the orthodoxy who persecute the Ahmadiyyat consider Ahmad to be a "rival prophet," the Ahmadiyyat does not.

Sardar Anees Ahmad, Waterloo, N.Y.