Israel's Muslim minorities: Ahmadiyya on reconciliation course

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"We behave well and the mayor loves us, he cares about us In return, we help to make the city better, Haifa is a good example of successful co-existence. "

Mahmood Mosque, Haifa, Israel

Times of Ahmad | News Watch | Int'l Desk
Source/Credit: Deutschlandradio
By Lissy Kaufmann | November 16, 2017

Love for all, hatred for none - that is the motto of the Ahmadiyya Muslims. Therefore, they also meet with Israeli settlers and religious nationalists. Many Muslims do not like it. They consider the Ahmadis to be people who have turned their backs on true Islam.

Midday prayer in the Mahmud Mosque in Haifa. A dozen men have taken off their shoes at the entrance. On the soft carpet they bend their bodies forward, get on their knees, touch their heads to the ground. A normal Muslim prayer. But the people here call themselves Ahmadis and are not ordinary Muslims. Community leader Sheikh Mohammed Odeh - light shirt, dark trousers, white beard - explains their interpretation of the Koran:

"We must all love because we are all creatures of God, love each one and hate no one, that is our motto, each of us is a painting of God, if I am the painter and you come and say, that is an ugly picture, then are you meeting the painter with it? "

Betrayal or a matter of honor? 

The Ahmadiyya community is a kind of liberal reform movement: founded in India at the end of the 19th century, the Ahmadiyya community today is estimated to have more than 10 million followers worldwide. The Ahmadis insist on the separation of state and religion and strictly reject violence. Also in Israel, where violence and terror attacks are recurrent, and hardly any contacts between Jews and Muslims, Palestinians and Israelis.

The Ahmadis, as they are called in Israel, want to change that. And: They also meet with right-wing Jewish politicians and settlers in the West Bank. They exchange ideas, visit conferences arranged by each other. What sounds like treason to many Palestinians is a matter of the heart for Mohammed Odeh: "If I want to change a person, it's not enough to sit and grumble far away in my living room. Come over and we'll talk."

One of the people Mohammed Odeh would like to change is Orthodox MP Yehuda Glick. The politician lives in a settlement in the West Bank and advocates that Jews may pray on the Temple Mount. A minority position in Israel. And yet Muslims are annoyed by that because that's where their Al Aqsa mosque stands today. They fear that the Jewish Israelis wanted to dispute the mountain for them. Again and again there are bloody conflicts.

Yehuda Glick has already been attacked and he barely survived attempted assassination. For Mohammed Odeh, the matter is clear: "I said to Yehuda, "Come into my mosque and pray here." If you go to the Temple Mount and people die for that, it's stupid to go there, God is not just found there."

"I am here to make peace"

Of course, he has not convinced him yet. Yehuda Glick comes to the interview in Jerusalem with bodyguards a few hundred yards from the controversial Temple Mount. Especially on the Muslim side, he has many enemies. He sees himself as a peacemaker:

"The fact that I have bodyguards shows that I'm being threatened, and I keep getting news on Facebook that threatens me, but you can not let the violent people have the chance to dominate the world. I am here to make peace, to work with all those who believe that God wants us to be who we are - with all the differences, who understand that people respect other people even if they have different attitudes, different political views, different religions, there is one God - and he wants us all so different, and most importantly, we learn to respect ourselves. "

Going to the enemy, sitting down at the table, talking. Did the Ahmadis find the long-awaited path to peace? Many Arab Israelis criticize the Ahmadis for betraying the Palestinian national goals. Especially in the West Bank, where a member of the Ahmadiyya community sat in solitary confinement for 37 days in a Palestinian jail for meeting with Yehuda Glick and sharing a photo on Facebook, Ahmadiyya community leader Mohammed Odeh said.

"They said to him, 'You hurt national feelings.' That's a joke, I told them, 'Listen, you shot and kicked rocks for 70 years, try my way for seven years - and see how it changes!' "

Stamped as apostates

The problem: The Ahmadis are a minority in Israel. In the West Bank, they have few adherents - and they do not publicly profess their religion. Out of fear. They do not want to name the exact number of their members. And they are not recognized as such by other Muslims. Because they ... see in their founder a kind of shadow prophet, something like a promised Messiah. For other Muslims, that's pure blasphemy, says Mustafa Abu Sway, an Islamic scholar at Al-Kuds University in Jerusalem:

"The relationship with Ahmadiyya is not normal, Sunni Muslims see them as people who have turned their backs on true Islam, and there was a conference in Amman, the capital of Jordan, whose goal was to bring together all the Islamic groups Ahmadiyya were not invited, it was a very open, including conference, but they were not one of them. "

The Ahmadis are challenged not only theologically, but also politically: Critics such as Mustafa Abu Sway refer to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, which could not be tolerated.

You can not have a normal, healthy, neighborly relationship with someone who takes the land away from you, an Israeli-Arabic love story - that does not work - like in a fairytale: 'Here I am, I love you.'"

Haifa as a positive example

For the Palestinian Islamic scholar, the boundless love of the Ahmadis may sound naïve. But precisely because they are not recognized as a Muslim minority by Palestinian Muslims, they have no choice but to seek out other allies so as not to perish. The Ahmadis succeeded in Haifa in the north of Israel, explains Mohammed Odeh:

"I live in Haifa, and I am Arab and Palestinian.We live here in Haifa something that I would call 'opposite of discrimination.' Why? Because we behave well and the mayor loves us, he cares about us In return, we help to make the city better, Haifa is a good example of successful co-existence. "

[Translated from Deutsch using Google translate]

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