UK: Birmingham interfaith council 'endorsed Muslim sectarianism' against persecuted Ahmadi sect

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Education committee demanded Ahmadi renounce claims to be Muslims following sectarian pressure.

Times of Ahmad | News Watch | NZ Desk
Source/Credit: International Business Times
By Tom Porter | August 26, 2016

[Excerpts]

Birmingham education authorities buckled to pressure from sectarian hardliners and blocked a Muslim sect from being represented on an interfaith council, it is claimed.

Members of Birmingham's Ahmadiyya Muslim Community were told that in order to be represented on the city's Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education (SACRE) they would have to agree not to identify themselves as Muslims, after a threatened walkout from other Muslim members of the committee.
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Fareed Ahmad, a member of the Ahmadiyya National Executive Committee, said the Labour-led council had failed to defend religious tolerance.

"SACRE is there to promote inclusion and respect of different faiths and to give in to such pressure undermines what SACRE stands for," he told IBTimes UK.

Emails obtained by IBTimes UK reveal that Muslim members of the city's SACRE committee threatened to walk out if the Ahmadi were admitted as followers of Islam. In one message, Councillor Barry Henley, Chairman of SACRE in Birmingham, said that the body would welcome an Ahmadi representative provided they describe themselves as "Ahmadiyya Community of similar wording and not Ahmadiyya Muslim Community."
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Barrister Neil Addison, who specialises in British law and religion, said the committee had broken the law in excluding the Ahmadi: "It is endorsing sectarianism, we wouldn't allow it with anyone else in the UK, and it is not lawful.

"The Ahmadiyya are becoming subject in Britain to the same kind of discrimination they suffered in Pakistan.

"We are lacking the moral courage to stand for our own principles. The Ahmadiyya are permitted in this country to call themselves what they like and live in peace, which they do," he said.

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