Ahmadis from all over Germany have come, in addition to around 500 guests. Next door in the mosque the Muezzin has called to prayer, with the quartertone singing echoing through the white, rather inconspicuous room.
Source/Credit: The Giessener Allgemeine
By The Giessener Allgemeine | June 10, 2014
Translated by Maleeha Zafar, UK.
Friedberg - During Pentecost the coming of the Holy Spirit as announced by Jesus is celebrated. But what if Jesus did not even die on the cross, but instead fled to Srinagar in Kashmir and acted as a preacher until his death at the age of 120? The Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat (AMJ) believes this.
On Saturday the successor of the Messiah was in Friedberg.
“You can look at it that way”, smiles Tobias Utter, CDU [Christian Democratic Union of Germany] parliament representative and president of the evangelic deanery Wetterau, about the story of the escape of the Son of God to Srinagar. “The Ahmadiyya see Jesus as a prophet, that is a start.” Such jokes can also be made with the young Ahmadis from Friedberg.
The atmosphere during the inauguration of the Darul-Aman mosque is very relaxed. This cannot be changed regardless of the security gates, through which all guests have to pass, or the broad-shouldered security guards with Kashmir-hats and Armani suits, with dark sunglasses and black-red-gold ID’s on their lapels. They are there because the worldwide leader of the Ahmadiyya has announced his visit, His Holiness Caliph Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, fifth successor of the Messiah. “We are all very excited”, says Azmat Ahmad, press officer of the Ahmadiyya community in Friedberg. “It is a big day.”
Ahmadis from all over Germany have come, in addition to around 500 guests. Next door in the mosque the Muezzin has called to prayer, with the quartertone singing echoing through the white, rather inconspicuous room.
An older man sweeps the last crumbs with a broom from the rolling carpet underneath the triumphal arch and then comes the Caliph. A black Mercedes limousine with an English number plate drives up, an older gentleman with a grey beard, white turban and mild smile alights, shakes hands and unveils a tablet on the minaret, which refers to the memorable day. The minaret is nine meters high, but hardly noticeable from the outside due its location behind a company hall. It is a decorative minaret; no Muezzin will call from it.
After prayer the Caliph plants two walnut trees together with district administrator Joachim Arnold and first city councillor Peter Ziebarth, and then continue to walk through an ocean of Germany and half moon flags into a tent where the ventilators are buzzing and the politicians have their say.
The district administrator talks about tolerance, praises the Ahmadiyya community for their open character and social engagement. Integration minister Jörg-Uwe Hahn reminds about Karben, where the foundation stone for another mosque was laid on the same day. There, neighbours were worried about parking spaces. “If these are the problems, integration has succeeded.”
Then the Caliph speaks and also speaks about integration, peace and protection, which gave the Darul-Aman mosque its name. He emphasizes that the believers have to serve the country in which they are living, that they have to participate in progress and should not hide behind the walls of their mosque and that peace can only be established through love.
The Ahmadis were excluded from the Islamic community in Pakistan 1974 and are persecuted ever since. 35,000 live in Germany, most of them in Hesse. Many members are academics. The evangelic news service reported on the weekend that according to expert views the Ahmadiyya community was not a reform movement, but a taut hierarchically organized conservative religious community. They are regarded as peaceful, were not Islamists and had a different concept about the equality of women.
During the inauguration of the mosque this plays no role. Wherever you look: happy faces of happy men. The women with their own prayer room, which has its entrance at the backside, are surely happy too.
In the end the guests are gifted a plastic box with Pakistani sweets: Halva, Barfi and Laddu, the Pakistani almond cake. It tastes very special, perhaps a little too sweet, too sticky, too filling.
Read original post here: Germany: Peace, Happiness and Almond cake - Khalifa of Islam in Friedberg
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