USA: Shunned by mainstream Muslims, Portland's Ahmadi community treasures freedom to worship openly

Americans who learned of the May 28 terrorist attacks on two mosques in Lahore may remember that 94 Muslims died and more than 100 were wounded, without understanding that they were Ahmadi Muslims, not Sunnis or Shiites.

Ahmadi Muslims gather to pray at Portland mosque

Ahmadiyya Times | News Staff |
Source & Credit: The Oregonian | Portland
By: Nancy Haught | July 10, 2010

Like many teenagers, Saira Ahmad questioned her religious faith -- once she found out what it was. The Portland resident was born and grew up in Saudi Arabia, believing that she was Muslim. Her family attended mosques and celebrated the holy days of Islam like most of their neighbors.

But after a visit to relatives in Pakistan, Ahmad discovered that her family was Ahmadi, members of a movement in Islam that is ignored or scorned by mainstream Muslims. Her parents, fearing reprisals, had kept the details of their faith a secret.

"Why does everyone hate us?" she remembers asking her mother. "We follow Islam. We follow the Five Pillars. We accept a messiah that the rest of the world is waiting for. I was 16, and I just didn't understand."


Ahmadi Muslims were founded in 1889 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, a native of India who said he was the messiah foretold by the Prophet Muhammad. Ahmadi headquarters in London claim more than 10 million followers who live, work and pray in 190 countries. Ahmadis are a minority of the estimated 1.57 billion Muslims in the world. About 87 percent of Muslims are Sunnis, and 10 percent are Shiites, according to a 2009 study released by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Ahmadis differ from mainstream Muslims on the issue of prophethood. Most Muslims believe Muhammad was the Last Prophet. Ahmadis believe their founder was also a prophet. Otherwise, Ahmadis observe almost all Muslim practices, including reciting the Quran, praying five times a day and fasting during the month of Ramadan.

The Ahmadiyya movement has been present in the United States since the 1920s. The group's 65 American chapters include a small, close-knit community of 80 people who worship in Portland's Rizwan Mosque. Built of brick, trimmed in marble and boasting a minaret, the mosque has stood along Southwest 35th Drive for 23 years. It is the spiritual home of Saira Ahmad, 35 now and committed to the faith she questioned years ago. With her husband and 7-year-old daughter, she's part of a small but vibrant Ahmadi community grieving over recent events in Pakistan.

Americans who learned of the May 28 terrorist attacks on two mosques in Lahore may remember that 94 Muslims died and more than 100 were wounded, without understanding that they were Ahmadi Muslims, not Sunnis or Shiites. But Portland Ahmadis, painfully aware of more than 40 years of persecution in Pakistan, have taken the deaths personally.

In 1974, Pakistan amended its constitution to declare that Ahmadis are not Muslims; Ahmadis are not allowed to greet each other as Muslims or refer to their houses of worship as mosques. Extremist Muslims, who see Ahmadis as heretics, have carried out a campaign against them in Pakistan ever since. The United Nations, the U.S. State Department and Human Rights Watch have been concerned about the situation long before seven gunmen opened fire on the two Ahmadi mosques.

Harris Zafar heard about the attacks in an early morning phone call. Zafar, 31 and a married father of two, was born into an Ahmadi family in Chicago and moved to Portland 23 years ago.

"Mom called at 3:45 a.m.," he remembers. A cousin he met on a previous trip to Pakistan had died in the gunfire. "I felt a mixture of feelings -- devastation, sadness. The loss of a life is tragic. And, in a minor way, there was anger as well, that these were not random attacks, that people are teaching such hatred and misleading others in the faith."

The Ahmadi motto is "Love for all. Hatred for none." It was a central teaching of their founder, who saw himself as a reformer, intent on uniting all faiths under one banner of peace, Zafar says.

"Ours is a moderate faith. We believe in separation between the mosque and the state. Jihad by the sword is dead. We are to defend our faith with our own rational discourse, the jihad of the pen," he says. To that end, the Ahmadis' founder wrote 80 books and thousands of letters in an effort to rid Islam of what he considered fanatical beliefs.

"The ink of a scholar is holier than the blood of a martyr," Zafar says, repeating a quotation that Ahmadis attribute to Muhammad but one that other Muslims say is fabricated.

Portland's Ahmadiyya community is diverse, with members of Indian, Pakistani, Vietnamese, Chinese and Cambodian descent. Some are lifelong Ahmadis. Others, like Richard Reno, 35, of Beaverton, are converts.

Born to a Baptist mother and an "anti-religious" father, Reno considered himself an atheist until he encountered Islam as a teenager. At 17, he visited the Ahmadi mosque. He says he found, in their teachings, a belief that seemed "inclusive, rational and made sense of Jesus." Ahmadis believe that Jesus was a prophet, not divine but sent by God, who didn't die on the cross but continued his ministry in India and died there, Reno says.

Reno studied Arabic for a year before he could recite the Quran. Over time, Reno read books and articles by the Ahmadis' founder, marveling at his ability to explain the teachings of Islam and put them in a modern context. Trained and working as an information-technology engineer, he has been president of the mosque for six years. He leads Friday prayers and often bases his sermons on those of Hadhrat Masroor Ahmad, the current leader of the Ahmadi movement.

In Portland, Ahmadis say they have little interaction with mainstream Muslims. "We are not invited to their Eid celebrations," Reno says, "so we have our own at the mosque."

As an American accustomed to freedom of worship, Reno says the latest violence in Pakistan shocked him. "If there was a simple explanation, then there'd be a simple solution," he says. "Some of it is ignorance. ... An extreme mullah can guide people into things that are not really part of Islam."

Shortly after Saira Ahmad learned her family secret, she left Saudi Arabia for boarding school in England. She remembers her first visit to an Ahmadi mosque in London and sitting with her uncle, who patiently answered her religious questions. She read the book, "Invitation to Ahmadiyyat," and prayed. Today she says she does not waver in her faith.

Ahmad earned a university degree in economics in Toronto, another city with a large Ahmadi mosque. She married an Ahmadi and they moved to Arizona and California before they settled in Portland five years ago. She is grateful every day for the freedom to worship openly.

"I grew up not being able to go to a mosque of my own," she says.

Now she has a place to worship, a place to ask others to pray for her, a place to try out her ideas and get some feedback.

"For my daughter," she says, "it's a place where she can know what -- and who -- she is."

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