Rejected Muslim Sect Keeps Faith
Ahmadis Thriving in Silver Spring Despite Disdain, Fear

By Jacqueline L. Salmon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 30, 2008

When Walkersville blocked a Muslim sect's plans to build a worship center in town, the rejection only added insult to injury for a community that has faced hostility and violence throughout the world.

The messianic faith is a pariah among mainstream Muslims. Some members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community who now live in the Washington area had been threatened, jailed and forced to flee their home countries. Even here in the United States, they say, other Muslims can be antagonistic.

That made the pain of the rejection by Walkersville, a small town in Frederick County, only keener.

"We did not expect that," said Ahsanullah Zafar, the ameer -- or president -- of the Ahmadiyya movement in the United States, which is based in Silver Spring.

But it is a faith that has survived for more than 100 years despite its controversial beliefs and the persecution it has endured. It claims 70 million members worldwide. In the United States, it has about 40 mosques. Its Silver Spring mosque has about 3,000 members.

The faith has drawn the enmity of mainstream Islam by calling itself the "true Islam," founded in India 119 years ago by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiani, who declared himself the messiah of all faiths and a prophet of God.

"The mainstream community went after them and basically said, 'Look, as long as you don't think that Muhammad is the last prophet, you have violated the creed of Islam . . . and you are not Muslim," said Muqtedar Khan, director of Islamic studies at the University of Delaware, who has studied the sect.

Ahmadis are concentrated in Pakistan, India and parts of Africa. In Pakistan, they are forbidden from calling themselves Muslim, and Indonesia has tried to ban them. They have been massacred and their mosques destroyed.

But Ahmadis insist they are Muslim. They believe that their founder did not bring any new law but preached only that followers should obey the law of Islam.

"People continue to have the [belief] that he has broken the seal" of the prophet Muhammad, said Zafar. "But that is not the case."

Qadiani's beliefs touched on other faiths as well. He preached, for example, that he was the messiah of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and other religions. Jesus, he believed, did not die on the cross, but survived and escaped to India, where he died at the age of 120.

While leaders of other faiths have largely shrugged off the sect, not so for Muslims. Some Ahmadis were granted political asylum in the United States in the 1990s because of religious persecution.

In the United States, Ahmadis do not face the murderous hostility they encounter in other countries. Nonetheless, there are strains.

Mortgage banker Luqman Ahmad Jehlumi, 37, of Boyds, said his cousin started a grocery store in Laurel but soon went out of business, as imams warned their followers not to buy the store's meat because the cousin was "kafir" -- a non-believer. Other shopkeepers have experienced similar problems, Jehlumi said.

"You do see some hatred, but they definitely would not come out and do anything criminal against us," he said. Despite the problems, Jehlumi does not hide his faith. He wears a ring with a quote from the Koran: "Is not Allah sufficient for His servant?"

Such rings are frequently worn by Ahmadis to remind them to be steadfast in their faith.

The U.S. division of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community operates out of a large, white mosque on 14 acres on the northern edge of Silver Spring. The facility has two huge satellite dishes that beam Ahmadi programming from world headquarters in London to North America. The programming includes religious education, travel, language lessons, cooking classes and talks from the sect's world leader, the Khalipha Mirza Masroor Ahmad.

On a recent Friday, Rizwan Hemeed, an imam in training, led prayers and sermonized on the value of suffering, quoting from the Koran, Muhammad and sect founder Qadiani.

"There is more suffering in us watching someone else suffer than to suffer ourselves," Hemeed said. "And there is more pleasure and comfort in giving somebody comfort at the expense of our own comfort. . . . We gain from sacrificing for other people."

The Ahmadis are active proselytizers among all faiths, and the Silver Spring mosque employs three missionaries who operate on the East Coast. The work is credited in fast growth at the mosque, which is building an addition that will double the size of the facility. For now, followers meet in community centers, libraries and other facilities in Potomac and Laurel.

For years, Ahmadis from around the country gathered in Silver Spring for their annual conference. But the conference outgrew the space about five years ago.

That's when they began searching for a larger site and, last year, settled on Walkersville, signing a contract to purchase a 224-acre farm in the quiet Frederick County town. Their plans included a worship center for prayer services for about 200 people and two high-school-size gyms. The site also provided space to host as many as 10,000 people for the annual three-day national convention, in tents erected for the occasion.

Public outcry against the proposal was intense. Town officials maneuvered to adopt zoning changes that would block the project.

The Ahmadi community tried to sell itself to Walkersville -- taking out newspaper ads, knocking on doors, attending meetings and answering questions at a public forum. It offered to let residents use the gyms.

Some Walkersville residents said they would welcome the Ahmadi community, but others were not so sure.

In blogs and letters and e-mails to town officials, they expressed their disdain and fear of the sect and Muslims in general.

"I would think by now some smart local would start a potbellied pig business and you could all guess where I would think he or she would dump the waste," wrote one blogger.

"Does anyone realize that Islam is taking over the US?" wrote another to the town. "Does anyone realize that our children will be indoctrinated into a hostile religion that is using our freedoms against us?"

It was a painful process for the Ahmadis.

"I didn't feel insulted so much as sad that people didn't know what we believe," said Uzma Ahmad, a Potomac homemaker who attended some of the meetings.

When Walkersville's Board of Zoning Appeals rejected the proposal, saying the facility would create too much traffic and threaten the town's water supply, the Ahmadis chose not to fight the decision, even after the landowner filed a religious-discrimination lawsuit against the town last month.

"We made a very good effort over there," said Zafar. "We did everything we could humanly do to get permission in Walkersville. When the result turned out to be against our request, then we realized that we have reached a limit of what we can humanly do, and this is a matter which is in God's hands."