"The holy Quran says if you kill a person, it is as if you have killed all human beings. Mohammed never said if you are insulted you kill someone."
Source/Credit: Sentinel & Enterprise
By Michael Hartwell | January 10, 2015
FITCHBURG -- The response to cartoons that degrade and insult Islam needs to come from the pen, not the sword, according to local Muslim leader Bashir Mehmud.
Mehmud, 72, is president of the Fitchburg Chapter of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. Like most Americans, he was appalled over the murders in France this week by Muslim terrorists enraged by critical and obscene cartoons in the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
"Our heart goes to them," Mehmud said of the 12 victims. "Islam does not allow this."
Locally, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community has held blood drives as a response to terrorist attacks like 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing and speaks out against terrorist groups. Mehmud said violent Islamic groups twist the words of Mohammed.
"They are degrading him. They are degrading Islam," he said.
Mehmud said all of the major religions condemn violence and said violent extremist groups like the Taliban and ISIS are fringe cults. He compared them to David Koresh, the Christian cult leader who was killed in an FBI raid in 1993 following an armed conflict and a siege.
"The holy Quran says if you kill a person, it is as if you have killed all human beings," said Mehmud. "Mohammed never said if you are insulted you kill someone." He said the prophet never instructed people to kill.
Some other Muslim factions have interpreted the Quran to say that it is wrong to kill other Muslims, but not necessarily all people, but Ahmadiyya Muslims see it as a universal rule for all human beings.
In Mehmud's birth country of Pakistan, Ahmadiyya Muslims are not considered Muslims. The sect was founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in India in 1889 in an attempt to revive Islam, but orthodox Muslims consider him to be a false prophet.
As a result, Ahmadiyya Muslims has been targeted by terrorist groups, many of them affiliated with the Taliban.
Mehmud said Muslims are often the victims of terrorist attacks, including all 132 children killed in the school attack in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Dec. 16. One of the victims in France was a Muslim police officer.
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is not a progressive sect of Islam, as it has many socially conservative practices. This summer during Mehmud's son's wedding reception in Fitchburg, a divider separated the male and female wedding guests to keep men from seeing the women. Premarital sex and abortion are forbidden. Women wear burqas outside of the house. Men are seen as the guardians of their wives, Mehmud is quick to add that their wives are not slaves and must be treated with respect. A male Ahmadiyya Muslim can marry any religious woman, but an Ahmadiyya woman can only marry a Muslim.
Mehmud said there are no openly gay members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, which has more than 10 million members.
Earlier this week USA Today printed an editorial written by British Muslim cleric Anjem Choundary, which criticized the French government for not censoring blasphemous cartoons and said the killers were following the teachings of the Quran. Mehmud scoffed at Choundary's interpretation, saying that waging violence is not an option for a Muslim, but was not opposed to blasphemy laws.
Mehmud said he would not want to see a law that only bans blasphemous images of Mohammed, saying the United States has a secular government and any such law would have to also ban blasphemous images of Jesus and other religious figures.
He said he would neither support the creation or the repeal of an across-the-board blasphemy law. The Caliph of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community directs what political causes they can participate in. For example, Ahmadiyya Muslims oppose abortion but do not participate in anti-abortion protests
Mehmud said following the law is an important idea in the Ahmadiyya sect. When he preaches in the mosque he reminds followers to obey speed-limit signs, and they would not be the ones to determine if America has laws on blasphemy.
He said blasphemous images of all religious figures bother him, and the response he believes in is verbal or written, such as writing a newspaper guest editorial.
"That was his opinion, this is my opinion," he said.
After more than 30 years in this country, Mehmud said he's never been treated poorly for being a Muslim, even after the Sept. 11 attacks.
He maintains that Islamic terrorist violence comes from ignorance and misguided souls. Ultimately, he said, it will be God who judges the fate of the terrorists.
Follow Michael Hartwell at facebook.com/michaelhartwell or on Twitter or Tout @Sehartwell.
Read original post here: USA: Local Muslim leader says violence not the answer
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