Extremism in Pakistan: A direct threat to American safety - II

[In response to Qasim Rashid’s Richmond Time-Dispatch Op-Ed piece June 5th]: What will be impossible for most Pakistanis and other Muslims around the world to accept is that the cure for their religious-political ailments is available (and freely offered) only by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community -- the very same Muslims they so ruthlessly and ignorantly persecute and allow to be massacred.   

Ahmadiyya Times | News Staff | Opinion
Source Ahmadiyya Times | Richmond Time-Dispatch
By Jonathan M.A. Ghaffar | Chino, CA | June 5, 2010

Mr. Rashid objectively and correctly delineates the core issues of Pakistan's multi-faceted problem of home-grown terrorism, while offering reality-based solutions that can and will work, if implemented whole-heartedly and with due diligence. 

The saddest irony is that Pakistan's series of corrupt, military regimes dating back to the early 1950s all the way to the present illustrate in the glaring light of history the ease with which these regimes and their dictators get into bed with terrorist groups and thereby legitimize and facilitate these extremists' violence and ideologies. 

The victims of these failed laws and spineless politicians are all the various religious communities throughout Pakistan -- be they the mainstream Sunnis or the "minority" communities of Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Shias, Bahais or Ahmadis. 


The obviousness of the human rights abuses against the "minority" religious groups can blind us to the fact that a mainstream religion that tolerates and even encourages the wholesale slaughter of its citizens who may hold different beliefs only serves to promote the cancer of spiritual and moral decay that, like the fall of Rome, becomes irreversible after a certain point. 

This cancer of religious intolerance and fanaticism that is now deeply entrenched in the cultural and religious fabric of Pakistan (and many other Muslim nations) can only be excised by the spiritual reformation of its people. 

This is not impossible.  What will be impossible for most Pakistanis and other Muslims around the world to accept is that the cure for their religious-political ailments is available (and freely offered) only by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community -- the very same Muslims they so ruthlessly and ignorantly persecute and allow to be massacred. 

The salvation of the Muslim world and its truly peaceful and beautiful Faith will only see fruition within the sphere and protection of Ahmadiyyat Islam, whose motto is: "Love for All - Hatred for None." 

This is not just a prophecy.  It is an objective assessment of the survivability of a religion given two fundamental paths it can now take given the cancer of evil-mindedness that has been slowly poisoning it for centuries. 

One the one hand, you have the path of the terrorist's Islam -- a religion of hatred, oppression, ignorance and ultimate self-destruction.

And on the other hand, you have the enlightened, peaceful, educated, non-politicized, rational, moral and spiritually-rejuvenating Islam of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community as brought into the world by the Imam Mahdi & Promised Messiah of Muhammad (saw), Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian. 

Between these two choices you have the 1.2-billion Muslims who are aligned with neither group -- the middle-of-the-road average Muslims who make up the silent majority of Islam.  It is these who must now decide which path they wish to tread. 

By doing nothing, they will empower the terrorist's version of Islam simply because of the 1% rule that was so frighteningly demonstrated by the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany.  It doesn't take that many people to turn a peaceful, cultured and educated society into a totalitarian regime that rules by force, dogma and terror and which can so quickly consign millions to their deaths.

Unless the silent Muslim majority wakes up to address and defeat the evil that is extremist Islam, that Islam will eat them alive like the cancer that it is. 

But if Muslims open their minds and their hearts to the truth and peace embodied in the words "Love for All - Hatred for None" which are exemplified by the Ahmadi Muslims currently numbering 160-million in 195 countries (see www.alislam.org), then within a generation, the Taliban / Al Qaida / Wahhabi Islam will be dead. 

Right now, the extremist Muslims may kill Ahmadis by the tens or even hundreds, but they will never be able to extinguish the Light of Allah by the breath of their mouths or by the violence from their hands. 

Ahmadis started with 40 people in 1889.  Time, history, reason, truth and love demonstrate that some Higher Power is on their side.

Which side will you be on?

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Jonathan M.A. Ghaffar serves as the local Interfaith Outreach Secretary for the Los Angeles East Chapter of the worldwide Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. He is a professional essay editor, proofreader, and graphics artist; and he writes on many subjects including comparative religions and Historical Jesus.