The members of the Ahmadiyya community meeting, now as part of their annual meeting. The community has long been present in Germany. It presented itself as a liberal Association. But there is also criticism.
About 40,000 worshippers are expected for the year 2019 of the Ahmadiyya community in Karlsruhe. You make to be Asked, but also to talk about current points, for example, the Integration. The international head of the Ahmadiyya communities, Caliph, Mirza Masroor Ahmad, takes care of himself on this topic, says a press spokesman.
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat, as it is officially called, was founded in 1889 in India. With up to twelve million members in 204 countries and is the world’s largest community-organized Muslims. However, in no Islamic state in the majority. On the contrary, everywhere they find themselves as members of a minority group.
In Germany, the Ahmadiyya has community according to some 40,000 members. She also claims to be the fastest-growing Islamic reform movement of the present. Its headquarters is located in London, United Kingdom.
Founder, Mirza Ghulam: “secondary prophet” and the Messiah
The community goes back to the reform theologians, Mirza Ghulam (1835-1908). The Punjab-born preacher saw himself as a “Secondary messenger” (Zilli Nabi) and the Messiah (Mahdi). As such, he had received divine revelations. The other Islamic communities rejected this claim. On the part going back up today, continuing the contrasts of the Ahmadiyya community to other Islamic organizations.
Hadrath Mirza Masroor Ahmad, the fifth Caliph of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jammat, 2013
Gradually, a group that rejected the self-understanding of its founder was formed, however, within the Ahmadiyya community. After the death of the founder, the municipality of split. One part found its center in Lahore, the other in Qadiyan. To be the first on the Lahore-Ahmadiyya, denied Ghulams claim to be a Prophet. The other group, the Qadiyan-Ahmadiyya, a founded after Ghulams death – spiritual Caliphate. Its current successor, the fifth Caliph, Mirza Masroor Ahmad, has its headquarters in London.
The Ahmadiyya in Germany
In Germany, the first Ahmadiyya were members already in the early 20th century. Century low. Thus, the community in this country, the oldest organization at all. Since the 1920s, the group also maintains mosques in Germany. As the Ahmaddiya was excluded at the beginning of the 1970s, in Pakistan, from Islam, were more of its members to Germany.
In Germany, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat was founded as a legal Association in 1988, in Frankfurt am Main. Its members continue to lead predominantly to the tendency of Qadiyan-Ahmadiyya, profess, therefore, to the claim of its founder to be a Prophet.
The Ahmadiyya Jamaat is explained on their Homepage as the only Islamic movement that will run for more than 100 years, from a purely spiritual “Caliphate”. “The Caliph of AMJ, His Holiness Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, is home to the world’s most important Muslim top”, so the Church in its self-representation.
Criticism: literal interpretation of the Koran
The community, it says on their German website, a kick “for the original values of Islam”. To do this, is one: “mercy to all people, absolute justice, equality of woman and man, separation of Religion and state, the termination of violent actions in the name of Religion and human rights, as laid down in the Koran.”
Year of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community meeting in Karlsruhe, 2018
At the same time, the Ahmadiyya community has consistently upward integration, and also in (Association)sets the legal terms. This has led to the fact that it is, since 2013, in Hesse, Germany, since 2014 also in Hamburg, a public-Law Corporation. In Hesse, it is also a cooperation partner in the Organisation of the Islamic religion teaching.
The religion sociologist Necla Kelek, the community and its liberal character speaks the same. Outwardly, the group was liberal. In fact, however, the members were to take the Qur’an and the Sunnah as the law of Allah literally. “This also meant that the world is divided into believers and non-believers, exactly as we see it in these ultra-conservative movements.” Men and women were further separated strictly from each other.
In the Internet, the Ahmadiyya community is presenting on the other hand, as a tolerant community, also relying on a quote from the second Sura of the Koran: “There is no compulsion in Faith.”