Source/Credit: Tulsa World |
By Bill Sherman | November 05, 2011
A small community of Ahmadiyya Muslims, who believe their messiah came to Earth in the 19th century, will celebrate Eid-al-Adha on Sunday in Bixby.
"We are Muslims who believe in the messiah," said Hameed Naseem, leader of the community and an electrical engineering professor at the University of Arkansas.
They join Muslims around the world in the annual Festival of Sacrifice, which marks the end of the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca required of all healthy, financially able Muslims.
The Eid celebration commemorates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son in submission to the will of God. According to the Quran, God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael, forefather of the Arabs, and at the last minute stayed his hand. According to the Jewish and Christian Bibles, it was Ishmael's half brother Isaac, forefather of the Jewish people, who was nearly sacrificed by Abraham.
On Sunday, members of the Bixby chapter of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community will meet at 10:30 a.m. at the Bixby Community Center for the Eid celebration, a time of prayer and teaching, followed by an Indian meal.
Worldwide, Muslims sacrifice animals on Eid and share the meat with family and friends and with the poor. The Bixby Ahmadiyya community will not offer a sacrifice.
"I call up my brothers in India, and they do a sacrifice on behalf of us," Naseem said.
Naseem said the Bixby community has been meeting quietly since 1985, one of 65 Ahmadiyya chapters in the United States.
The small group draws people from Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kansas, most of them of Indian or Pakistani descent.
He said close to 100 million Muslims worldwide are followers of their messiah, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who was born in 1835 in Punjab, India.
Ahmad began to receive revelations from God, Naseem said, and in 1889 he established a community of followers, called the Ahmadiyya.
In 1890, he received a revelation that he was the awaited Muslim mahdi, or messiah.
A year later, according to Naseem, Ahmad received a revelation that Jesus of Nazareth had died in heaven, and that God had placed the mantle of Jesus on him.
Ahmad claimed to be the metaphorical second coming of Jesus foretold by Muhammad, the Ahmadiyya website said.
Ahmad died in 1908.
"If you read his teachings, they read like pure gospels," Naseem said. "We've been persecuted for 100 years, and we take it, and our leader tells us to persevere and to pray to God. This is the same kind of teaching that you see Jesus Christ taught his followers."
Naseem said all Muslims hold some belief in the coming of a messiah figure, but those beliefs vary between different Muslim traditions, and between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims.
"Most Muslims today are waiting for their savior, a violent messiah, who will kill people right and left. ... But we believe the Quran never says that.
"I think that the Muslims' thought about a bloody mahdi is not the result of Islamic teaching but because they have swayed from the true teachings of Islam."
He said the form of Islam being practiced in Saudi Arabia and some other areas is not true Islam because it is forced on people.
"Religion can never be spread by force, because it is a matter of heart," he said.
-- Bill Sherman 918-581-8398 - bill.sherman@tulsaworld.com
Read original post here: Local Ahmadiyya Muslims to celebrate Eid
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