“The teachings of Islam are so beautiful that any unbiased person could not fail to be influenced by their beauty,” declared Hadrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, the currently reigning Ahmadi “caliph,” in a March 10, 2006, London sermon. Ahmad, leader of a small, yet disproportionately influential, Muslim sect with cosmic ambitions and traditional Muslim mores, demonstrated that supposedly “reformed” Ahmadis can whitewash Islam just like other Muslims.
A halcyon view of Islam underlies the Ahmadi boast that they practice a benign “True Islam,” the title of online American Ahmadi public relations initiative. Ahmadis correspondingly can supposedly correct an Islamic doctrinal corruption that is the source of the violent, regressive behaviors plaguing the global Muslim community. Hence the Ahmadis appeal to incessant non-Muslim hopes for Islamic reform.
Yet rather than critical self-reflection, the Ahmadis typically offer standard Islamic boilerplate that glorifies the faith’s canons and history. So spoke Ahmad of Islam’s prophet Muhammad in a September 21, 2012, sermon at an Ahmadi mosque in Surrey, United Kingdom. “Take any aspect of his life and in every respect you will find the highest moral example established by the Holy Prophet,” he stated in accord with basic Islamic doctrine in Quran 33:21. Thus Ahmad’s March 3 and March 10, 2006, London sermons described Muhammad as the “best of men” and an “embodiment of mercy,” an invocation of Quran 21:107. Additionally, the Quran “comprises true and perfect guidance and effectiveness,” as Quran 5:3 would indicate.
Ahmad has therefore consistently presented Islam in pacific terms while completely avoiding Islam’s long, bloody history of faith-based jihad aggression. He stated before the British House of Commons on October 22, 2008, that the Quran “has given some golden principles for establishing peace in the world.” In this context he described Muhammad’s 632 conquest and Islamification of the pagan Arabian Peninsula city of Mecca in hagiographic, deceptively tolerant terms. Muhammad “did not take any revenge from those who had tormented him but forgave them and allowed them to adhere to their respective faiths.”
Ahmad’s March 10, 2006, address contained the absurdity that “Islam did not spread through the force of the sword. Rather, it spread through good moral behavior.” Non-Muslims are correspondingly mistaken in ever thinking that Muhammad “brought a religion, which entails nothing but harshness, killing and destruction” with “no concept of religious tolerance, restraint or freedom.” Ahmad in his 2012 address to Hamburg, Germany’s Ahmadi Baitur-Rasheed Mosque cast Islamic warfare as defensive, for during “most of the early wars…the Muslims had no choice but to defend themselves and their religion.” In this account he did not explain how to justify the Ridda (Apostasy) Wars that broke out in the Arabian Peninsula immediately following Muhammad’s death as Arab tribes renounced their allegiance to his faith.
Ahmadi literature also propagates the myth that the Islamic jizya poll tax for subjugated non-Muslims was gratefully “paid by non-Muslims living in a Muslim State in lieu of military service.” Meanwhile Ahmad in a May 11, 2013, address in Beverly Hills, California, has promoted the canard that the “very meaning of ‘Islam’ is peace, security,” while Islam’s true translation of “submission” he dismisses as “Islamophobia.” He has also likewise denounced the supposedly “erroneous allegation regarding” the age of Aisha, one of Muhammad’s wives whom he married as a nine-year old child bride according to considerable Islamic sources.
The American Ahmadi spokesman, University of California-Los Angeles law professor Amjad Mahmood Khan, has similarly discussed Muhammad as person who “preached against cruelty,” despite an often brutal Islamic biography. Without evidence, he described in a December 2011 interview Muhammad, who oversaw the destruction of Arabia’s Jewish community and later proclaimed that Islam should be Arabia’s sole faith, as a protector of churches and synagogues. “Islam is consistent with the rights for all people, all persuasions, all religions. That is why there are churches in Islamic countries. That is why there are synagogues in Islamic countries,” Khan stated, notwithstanding global Islamic religious persecution.
Khan peddled again in a 2015 address shopworn Islamic apologetics including Quran 2:256’s supposed affirmation of “no compulsion in religion.” “Among all other revealed texts, only the Quran stresses religious freedom in such unambiguous terms,” he enthused. His praise overlooked several doctrinal reasons why this verse has never served as an Islamic First Amendment amidst the Quran’s numerous intolerant passages.
Like other Islam advocates, Khan’s rhetoric also praised the Charter of Medina, by which Muhammad ruled over a mixed Arab-Jewish population in the Arabian city of Medina after he emigrated there from Mecca in 622. “Many scholars refer to this document as the first ever written constitution of a nation state,” predating in a city of 10,000 the 1215 English Magna Charta by almost 600 years, Khan propagandized about a Muhammad-led tribal alliance. Muhammad’s “express goal was to govern a multi-religious, pluralistic society. This charter protects fundamental human rights for all citizens,” he said of a short-lived, largely forgotten regime that ultimately degenerated into conflict.
Other documentary falsehoods marked Khan’s statements, like his praise of Muhammad’s 628 Hudaybiya Treaty with his pagan tribal enemies in Mecca. This was an “unprecedented and comprehensive ten-year national peace accord,” Khan stated of a temporary truce that Muhammad expediently broke before conquering Mecca. Hudaybiya in turn has served as a canonical precedent for Muslims like Yasser Arafat during a time of Muslim weakness to justify momentary peace with foes like Israel before resuming pursuit of final victory.
No historical accuracy concerned Khan when he additionally cited as an example of Islamic tolerance a 628 letter that Muhammad supposedly sent to monks at the Sinai Peninsula’s St. Catherine monastery. Most historical analysts reject this Achtiname as rank forgery. Meanwhile Khan’s contention that Muhammad’s decree has allowed this monastery to continue to worship into the present day ignores contemporary dangers from Sinai jihadists.
Any reproach of Khan for historical accuracy would likely remain meaningless, for he plays the victim like so many of Islam’s defenders. “Islamophobia or a fear of Islam and Muslims is at an all-time high,” he claimed in his 2015 speech. He made the common, unfounded claim that in America white supremacists had claimed twice as many victims as jihadists post-September 11, 2001, a distortion that minimizes the global jihadist scourge in places such as Europe.
In the end, Ahmadis preach just another “fantasy Islam” that discredits Ahmadi claims of being an Islamic reform movement. Particularly for non-Muslims who are hungering for an ideological antidote to jihad and sharia threats, the Ahmadis merely offer dime-a-dozen myths about Islam that have become so prominent in contemporary times. Any attempt to counter dangers associated with Islam demands facts, but the Ahmadis simply tell fairy tales. This is unsurprising, given the extraordinary views of Ahmadi “caliphs,” as the next article in this series will examine.