She saw logic in Islam while studying philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She was raised Catholic, but began questioning her upbringing after high school.
Source/Credit: East Valley Tribune
By James Anderson | November 30, 2014
Ann Wilcox’s daily routine looks like any other American Muslim woman’s. She covers her head with a hijab, abstains from alcohol and pork, and rises before sunrise to perform the first of her five daily prayers.
But the Mesa resident, and many of her family members, belong to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community — an Islamic group severely persecuted by its parent religion outside of the Western world.
“We cannot claim to be Muslims,” said Latif Ahmed, Gilbert resident and Ahmadi. “We cannot, for example, even call our mosques ‘mosques,’ we cannot call our prayer by Islamic names, we cannot use the creed of Islam.”
Her Messiah
Wilcox’s denomination sprang from Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, a late 19th-century prophet known by his followers as the messiah who, according to tradition, reappears every century. He did not call himself a command-issuing or “law-bearing” prophet like Muhammad, Wilcox said, but rather, he was a reformer.
He wasn’t in competition with Muhammad, but some Muslim leaders saw Ahmad’s claims as a challenge to Muhammad’s primacy and consider him a blasphemer. Ahmadi Muslims endure mistreatment in the Islamic world. In countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan, for example, Ahmadis are forbidden to proselytize.
Wilcox recalls mentioning the name of Ahmaddiya’s messiah to another woman at a mosque.
“She said, ‘Oh, he’s a heretic,’” Wilcox said. “She just jumped on me right away, and I zipped it right then and there.”
Wilcox thought of herself as a normal Muslim at the time. She saw logic in Islam while studying philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She was raised Catholic, but began questioning her upbringing after high school.
“I had too many unanswered questions and too much contention with the doctrines,” she said.
She converted to Islam 25 years ago. She attended a Sunni mosque, but she said denominations aren’t as divisive to American Muslims.
“I was just a Muslim, and I was fine with that, but since I joined [the Ahmadiyya community], I’ve really loved it,” she said.
Her Family
Wilcox said she’s more involved in her religious community than ever. Her family, which includes eight children, chose its Mesa home for its proximity to the Ahmadi mosque on Dobson and Elliot roads. Wilcox stays at home caring for her son, Hassan, who has a brain injury. He nearly drowned when he was a year and a half old.
“He’s 20 now,” she said. “It’s been a long time, and he’s still waiting for his miracle.”
Her youngest daughter, Maia, attends Dobson High School and has played tennis and guitar. She doesn’t wear a hijab and she has a normal teenage social life, but she isn’t allowed to date.
“I’m definitely raising her more strictly than some parents, but we have a great relationship and an understanding,” Wilcox said.
The family owns two dogs: an aging lab mix named Ida and a jumpy, white “maltipoo” named Chip belonging to Laila Johnson, Wilcox’s daughter.
“Most Muslims think dogs are terrible in the house,” Wilcox said, citing an extra-Quranic hadith, a traditional collection of teachings and anecdotes of Muhammad, that says dogs repel angels.
Wilcox’s son, Jesse Baade, said it wouldn’t be too controversial to include Ida in a group picture, but he joked that he wasn’t quite ready to publicize the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community’s acceptance of “albino rats.” Johnson, who converted to Ahmadiyya in 2000, quickly defended her small canine.
Her World
Wilcox knew life was going to change after Sept. 11, 2001, and it came about when she walked in public wearing her hijab.
“I got a lot of dirty looks and snarls immediately right then. And I still get some now, and it just kind of depends,” she said.
Johnson said Muslims didn’t get as much press — positive or negative — before the Twin Towers fell.
“After 9/11, Muslims became terrorists and the worst people that lived in the world,” she said.
But Wilcox and Johnson say the media has focused singularly on negative stories involving Islam.
“There are bullies who use religion — whatever religion it is — to achieve their personal goals,” Ahmed said.
“Religion can be used so powerfully and it has throughout all of history,” Johnson said. “And that’s where you find a dictator that comes in: ‘Oh, this is powerful. People believe in something. I’m going to use it as a tool.’ ”
Wilcox called it “hijacking the religion.” She said Ahmadis are wary of forcing dogma on their children and nonbelievers. It constitutes hypocrisy, she said.
“And the Quran says hypocrites go to the deepest part of hell,” she said. “So we don’t use compulsion.”
Ahmed, who does media relations for the American branch of the Ahmadiyya community, said Ahmadis are receiving positive exposure. “Muslims for Life,” a blood-draw campaign honoring the victims of 9/11, ended two weeks ago.
Wilcox said despite the snarls she occasionally gets, her reception from the public isn't uniformly negative.
“A lot of people will look at you and smile, knowing all Muslims aren’t terrorists and it’s not an evil religion by itself,” she said.
Johnson said the thought of Ahmadis being persecuted worldwide made her want to wear her hijab. Moreover, she said wearing a full burqa doesn’t make her feel isolated from non-Muslims.
“I don’t feel weak in the practice or ostracized,” she said. “I don’t, because I also feel that people just don’t understand.”
Wilcox said Ahmadis seek peaceful interaction because “messiah” means “gatherer” in Islam, and violent coercion is a bad way to gather followers from across the world.
“You gather them with love and courtesy and respect and humility and kindness and charity,” she said. “This is what we’re taught.”
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James Anderson is a junior at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He is an intern with the Tribune this semester. Reach him at tribintern@evtrib.com.
Read original post here: USA: Ahmadi Muslims in East Valley seeking peaceful image
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