The MSM are ignorant about Islam

 

 I have now several times seen well dressed, lucid, patriotic American Muslims who identify themselves as officials of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community in California interviewed on 24/7 news as representatives of Muslim leadership.

The reporters obviously do not understand that the Ahmadiyya movement is considered by all other Muslims as heretical and non-Islamic.

These Ahmadi gentlemen are quite rational, quite modern, quite American.  Their sect was founded in British India specifically as a reform movement reaching out to all people of all faiths and proselytizing on the basis of teaching and community building.  They make a specialty of translating the Qur'an into many languages to make it accessible to people world-wide.  If you own a Qur'an in an English translation it most likely was published by the Ahmadis.  For this translational effort the Ahmadis are roundly condemned by every other Sunni Muslim group that I know of. There have been translations of the Qur'an but they have always been thought to be a bad idea.  In the view of all Muslims (except the Ibadhis) the Qur'an is the word of God as God thought it.  For them the Qur'an is not a created document.  It descended to Muhammad in God's words.  In other words it is an aspect of the mind of God and God thinks in classical Arabic.  It is for them liisan al-mala'ika (the tongue of the angels).  Therefore, it can never be translated.  I am told that the 12er Shia allow translation.  That is a new datum for me.

Even more problematic for Muslims concerning the Ahmadis is the claim of their founder to have been the true messiah.

In fact the Ahmadis are persecuted everywhere in the Islamic World and are thought to be murtadd (apostates) and subject to death sentences in places like Saudi Arabia.

The West and its values have natural allies in the Islamic culture continent and I would number the Ahmadis and a lot of Sufi groups as being among them.

Nevertheless, it should be noted that the MSM is so ignorant of the internal structure of Islamdom that it does not register mentally with them that these Ahmadis are outliers in the broad panoply of Islamic groups.  pl 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmadiyya#Persecution

Comments

[Babak Makkinejad]

There are many many translations of the Quran in Persian; there is even one that is versified but two decades ago or so.

I think the opposition to Ahmadis stems from the claims of its founder:

".. to be He claimed that he was the Mujaddid (divine reformer) of the 14th Islamic century, the promised Messiah and Mahdi awaited by Muslims.." (from the Wiki).

Analogous religious movements in Iran - Babai and Baha'ai - were also condemned on similar grounds.

Like Ahmadis, they failed to "reform" Islam and became another offshoot thereof - like Buddhism.

[Degringolade]

Agreed...The Sufi's are the same way. Fine folks in my opinion, but the ones that I know left the ME and don't look back. Damn tough being a kafir.

[LG]

Ahmadias are not persecuted because of translation of the quran. Where did you get that info from? The quran has been translated for many centuries now.

They do not regard the prophet as the final (seal) of the prophets and are believed to regard the founder of their faith as a prophet too. This is the commonly held view of most Muslims about them. How far this is true though, I don't claim to know..

[William R. Cumming]

IMO this comment is a must read for ALL and hopefully understood for its full import!

[turcopolier]

LG

Yes, that too. Where did I get my information about hostility to translating the Qur'an? I got it in 40 years of studying Islam and living among Muslims, but then, I am but an ignorant kaffir. pl

[turcopolier]

Babak

Ah, but you Persian Shia are superior in your tolerance and acceptance of heterodoxy. pl

[LG]

Sorry sir, didn't mean to be disrespectful- it was a genuine question, not an insult. Apologies for causing upset in my first post on your fine site.

[turcopolier]

LG

I will include the Ahmadi claim that their founder was a messiah in post as a reason for their supposed irtiddad. pl

[LG]

Actually among the shia there is even more disapproval of translation although some Iranians might have done it. Ali is the Qur'an e Natiq along with the other imams. A mere human mind cannot Comprehend it-only guidance from the imams can instruct one on the Qur'an..

[cynic]

Buddhism is an offshoot of Islam? Please explain.

[A Pols]

I did not know this, that maybe these folks are regarded the way Unitarians are by Evangelicals. Too bad this information isn't more widely known in this country. So, they are sane, rational, and secular, but not viewed as Muslims by that lot in the MENA?
Puts a lot of things in perspective...

[LG]

Not just in the Mena but in south Asia the birthplace of their sect. I had a pakistani colleague who would say this was a project of the British against sunnis as the bahais were a project of czarist Russia against the Shia.

[bell]

seems easy to qualify for a death sentence in saudi arabia.. what's not to like about that place!

[annamaria]

Actually, is had become much more profitable to be a presstitute for MSM than to be an honest journalist. It is very sad that NPR and PBS have become a green pasture for the various and eager presstitutes.
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/12/05/pbs-joins-the-msms-syria-russia-bias/
A comment on the above article: Tom Welsh, “The U.S. has been invading or surreptitiously overthrowing governments around the globe for the past 65 years. This U.S. aggression has usually ended badly, especially for the target country but also for the U.S. economy and population. Why do these wars keep happening?
Because this U.S. aggression has usually ended very well for the small groups of rich, powerful people who launched them and profited from them. If only there was some way for the American people to exert influence on the U.S. government… like some kind of election, or democratic institutions. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any such thing."

[The Beaver]

@ Babak

Babai?

Is it a typo to mean: Babis (aka Azalis)

[Babak Makkinejad]

Buddhism started as an attempt to reform Hinduism.

[Babak Makkinejad]

The Shia position, as far as I understand it, posits that there are multiple layers of meaning in the Quran, the most exoteric of which are those comprehended by common folks.

To uncover the hidden meanings, one needs training in the Religious Sciences etc.

Even then, there remain meanings that are only accessible to the Imams, those that are accessible to the Mystics of Islam, those that are reserved only for Prophet and lastly a meaning known only to God.

[DC]

Any time you've got a prophet who demonstrated that making war is a manifestation of God's will, then you've got a real problem. In my opinion. The Sufis, Baha'ais, and Ahmadis seem to have had some success working around this problem; but if in order to do this you need to replace the first prophet with a new prophet (whether through re-interpretation or actual replacement), then all you've done, when viewing it logically, is highlight the difficulty of the original problem. Modernization/reformation is an extremely difficult task and I pray it has continued successes, for the sake of mankind.

[Babak Makkinejad]

It is very highly ironic that the Islamic Republic of Iran - with its enforced religiosity - finds herself on the same side of political struggle in the Middle East as the syncretic sects of Islam in Syria and with non-Shia such as Houthis.

One may infer that God has a sense of humor, making naught of all human pretensions.

[turcopolier]

Babak

you may have missed the fact that the Houthis are altogether Zeidi Shia. Perhaps you are referring to some recent doctrinal developments among them? pl

[Babak Makkinejad]

Yes, Babis and not Babais.

A typo.

[Babak Makkinejad]

I heard that some ayatollahs had very negative views of them as a form of Shia - worse than Ismailia.

[Babak Makkinejad]

I think Professor Abdus Salam, Nobel Laureate in Physics 1979 was an Ahmadhi.

His maltreatment by Pakistani government and bureaucracy caused him to leave Pakistan permanently.

Later he was instrumental in establishing the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in lovely Trieste for Third World scientists - establishing empirically once again that outside of the Western Diocletian States there is not Life of the Mind.

I also heard that he had two wives - one Paksitani and one English and he took them both with him to the Nobel ceremonies. If true, I wish I could have been there and observe the Westerners squirm with discomfort and envy.

[turcopolier]

Babak

What a surprise! This, of course, makes a mockery of the claims of Iranians support for the Houthis. pl

[Ammar]

The end of Prophecy with Muhammad is a central tenet of Islam, no one is more attached to this spiritual significance of the Seal of Prophethood than the Sufis are. Believing that Muhammad is not the Seal is not a "reform belief" per se.
Ahmadiya are much closer to the Sunnis in their belief and practice than to the Shia.

Sunnis have supported widespread translations of the Qur'an in every language. In English, there are numerous translations by Muslims and non-Muslims.

This is one example of a site that includes the majority of English translations side by side in addition to the Arabic:
http://www.islamawakened.com/quran/2/2/default.htm