A succession of five caliphs has led to the present one, Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, the fifth since the founder, who is at the head of a movement with an estimated 10 million to 20 million followers, with about 30,000 in Canada.
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| Photo: Brantford Expositor / Michael-Allan Marion |
Source/Credit: Brantford Expositor
By Michael-Allan Marion | January 15, 2017
Zaki-Ud-Din wasted no time as he stepped forward to shake hands with visitors to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community open house in an upstairs room in the Brantford Public Library.
“We are here to give a message of peace and how we can create it forever for our beautiful county of Canada,” he said on Saturday afternoon, as he and about a half-dozen members of the faith stood around a collection of colourful poster boards or showed a video explaining the Islamic group’s message and international organization.
The group wanted to hold an open house in Brantford – one of several in cities across Canada – as part of a nationwide Islam Understood campaign to correct misperceptions of the faith and terrorist atrocities attributed to it.
A succession of terrorist attacks during the past year – including in Canada – are creating ill feelings toward Muslims generally, and the Ahmadiyya community is feeling the same effects.
‘The situation is growing worse day by day,” said Zaki-Ud-Din, “and we want people to see us for what we really are. We are in 209 countries and we want to live in peace and harmony with our fellow humanity.”
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community – or the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at – is an Islamic religious movement founded in 1889 in the village of Qadian in Punjab, India. It originated in the life and teachings of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, whom followers consider their Messiah.
His followers believe his claims that he was divinely appointed as the Mujaddid (renewer) of Islam, the promised Messiah and Mahdi awaited by Muslims. He was the faith’s first Caliph.
A succession of five caliphs has led to the present one, Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, the fifth since the founder, who is at the head of a movement with an estimated 10 million to 20 million followers, with about 30,000 in Canada.
Ahmad gave an address to the Canadian parliament in October 2016 in which expressed the movement’s peaceful intent. The open houses are a continuation of that message, said Zaki-Ud-Din.
Ahmadiyya has a missionary dimension built on the belief by followers that they are leading the revival and peaceful spread of Islam. They also are proud that they have remained a single, highly organized and united movement.
“We are under one leadership,” said Zaki-Ud-Din.
He said the Ahmadiyya belief in the Messiah is in line with concept held by Judaism, Christianity and Hinduism.
“It is the need of the time,” he said.
“All religions are waiting for a reformer to reorganize and collect all of us in one hand. That is the only way we can guarantee the peace, working together for humanity as one nation, and in this one, proud to be Canadian.”
MMarion@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/EXPMarion
Photo: Muhammad Sultan (left), Waheed Rana, Zaki-Ud-Din and Munas Ahmed speak to visitors about the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community's message of peace in an open house Saturday in the Brantford Public Library.
Read original post here: Ahmadi Muslims offer peace message in open house
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