The 4 January 2016 marked five years since the Punjab governor Salman Taseer was killed by a member of his own security detail in a popular market in Pakistan’s capital city. His self-confessed assassin, 26-year-old Mumtaz Qadri, told interrogators he had killed the governor for his calls to reform Pakistan’s blasphemy law and for his support of the Christian woman, Asia Bibi, who was accused of — and ultimately sentenced to death for — blaspheming the Prophet Muhammed. Mr Qadri …
Four years ago, Asif Khan took his wife and two children and fled Pakistan, where as an Ahmadiyya Muslim he was part of a heavily persecuted minority group. Yesterday, Mr Khan said he thanked Allah for bringing him to the other side of the world as he celebrated Australia Day among a peaceful sea of red, white and blue at the Masjid Baitul Huda Mosque in Marsden Park in Sydney’s northwest.
Muslims for loyalty are handing out half a million leaflets across the country in early Australia Day celebrations to end extremism and prejudice. ‘Love for all, hatred for none’ is the motto the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association are hoping to share with fellow Aussies this year, through leaflets adorned with the national flag.
Two Pakistani clerics have come to blows at a meeting of the religious establishment over the fraught issue of the status of Ahmadis, a Muslim sect that hardliners want declared apostates. A scuffle broke out on Tuesday between the two at a gathering of Pakistan’s Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) when the chairman, Mohammad Khan Sherani, called on the group to consider whether Ahmadis, who are declared non-Muslims by the constitution, should be considered murtads that have rejected Islam.
Time is running out for the beleaguered Ahmadiyya Muslim Community on Bangka Island. Bangka Island’s top elected official, Tarmizi Saat, told a crowd on January 24 that he would ensure the expulsion of all members of the religious minority by February 6. He warnedthat expulsion enforcement measures from Bangka Island, located off the east coast of Sumatra, could begin as early as January 27. Adding to the fear factor for Bangka’s Ahmadiyya is an open letter circulated on January 22 by …
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at Canada condemned the terrorist attack at a university in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. According to reports, four gunmen wearing suicide vests attacked Bacha Khan University in Charsadda today killing at least 19 people including students, teachers and staff members. They also used hand grenades.
“It’s one of the biggest disasters in my lifetime,” said Nudrat Mansoor with the Ahmadiyya Muslim Women’s Association. “I was not here to see World War II, but it’s the biggest displacement after that– we want to help as many human beings as possible.” Mansoor is part of a local group of Muslim women who organized a sold out fundraiser Saturday night at the Baitul Hadi Mosque. The money raised will go toward Humanity First, an organization that privately sponsors …
A tiny Indonesian province has banned a minority Islamic sect from conducting religious activities, a move activists say raises concerns over intolerance in the Muslim-majority nation. The move by Bangka-Belitung, made up of two main islands off South Sumatra, is the latest in a series in which religious minorities including Christians and Shi’ite Muslims have faced harassment and complained of a lack of protection.
The Indonesian bishops are stressing the need for a dialogue in ending a pattern of harassment and intimidation faced by the Ahmadiyya Muslim minority sect in Bangka district, Bangka-Belitung Islands province. In early January the local government ordered the Ahmadis living in Srimenanti village to either convert to Sunni Islam or face expulsion from the district.
An Australian man will turn to the Australian Government for help after his 81-year-old Ahmadi Muslim father was imprisoned in Pakistan last month. Khalid Ahmad’s father, Abdul Shakoor, who owns a bookshop in Pakistan where the Ahmadi faith is outlawed, made international headlines when he was jailed for eight years in December for selling books deemed hurtful or hateful to another religious group’s beliefs.
An Ahmadi man was killed in Chenab Nagar (Rabwa), the headquarters of Jamaat-e-Ahmadiyya, late on Monday. Bilal Ahmed, 26, was an active member and paid worker of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. His brother, Ghulam Tahir, is president of the Ahmadiyya community in his neighborhood of Darul Yaman, Rabwah.
A suicide bomber detonated an explosives belt during the Friday Prayer at a mosque in Bagmara, some 250 kilometers (150 miles) from the capital, Dhaka.Around 15 members of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community were injured in the blast. About 70 people were praying in the mosque at the time, said one worshiper, Mohammad Shaheb Ali Talukder, who was one of the wounded. When the bomber entered the mosque, “he first stood along with the people in the back and performed prayers on …