The shahadah – the testimony of faith in Islam – states that Allah is (the only) God and that Muhammad is His Messenger. This is one of the five foundational pillars of Islam, along with fasting the month of Ramadan, undertaking the holy pilgrimage (hajj), giving Zakat (obligatory charity) and offering salat (daily prayers).

By declaring this and accepting the Qur’an as the message of God given through Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), we acknowledge the six articles of faith. We declare that:

• Allah as the One and Only God
• The angels
• Allah’s books (e.g. Qur’an)
• Allah’s prophets (e.g. Muhammad (pbuh))
• The Day of Judgement
• The unknown and pre-destiny

If you believe in these articles then you are Muslim. But there is a large group of Muslims -around 25,000 here in the UK – that are predominantly shunned, ignored, discriminated against and denied the right to be recognised as Muslims. Who? The Ahmadiyya Muslim community.

There is no God but Allah (the One God) and Muhammad (pbuh) is His Messenger

Love for all, acceptance by none

Ahmadi Muslims are known for their motto: Love for all, hatred for none and are an incredibly peaceful group dedicated to interfaith and charity work. However, they are shunned by the mainstream Muslim community as many scholars have declared them to be “non-Muslim”.

Now I’m no scholar but I know the fundamentals of Islam and I keep an open mind. The myth that declares Ahmadi Muslims as non-Muslim is based on the wrongful assumption that they believe that their caliph is a prophet, when Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is declared as the Seal of the Prophets in the Holy Qur’an.

Well I have spoken to Ahmadi Muslims and would like to clarify:

• They do believe that Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is the Final Messenger/Prophet
• They do not believe that their caliph is a Prophet but instead the Mahdi/Messiah (redeemer) who has come to reform Islam

In any case, they believe in the shahadah and the six pillars of faith and regardless of the above: they do not deserve to be shunned and excluded.

From isolation to persecution

I’ve spent time in many interfaith circles and often witnessed great diversity within Christian and Jewish circles. Whilst there is great diversity in Islam, such diversity is not often recognised or “tolerated”.

The dangers of excluding an entire group of Muslims are far-reaching. Firstly, this give a negative perception to outsiders and whilst we’re not here to simply please others, there is a gross contradiction between propagating interfaith relations when there is a lack of intrafaith unity within the Muslim community itself.

The more worrying issues however are two-fold. Firstly, they highlight a tendency to propagate a discourse around a singular “true Islam” without recognition or room for diversity of belief. This in itself is dangerous and can and does lead to extremism. It mirrors those who monopolise a faith according to one’s own beliefs despite evidence or beliefs stating otherwise.

Secondly, this actively promotes the exclusion and “othering” of Ahmadi Muslims. “Othering” leads to violence and the tragic murder of Asad Shah in Glasgow in 2016 exemplifies this. This was an explicitly religiously motivated attack towards an Ahmadi Muslim by a Sunni Muslim. For this to happen here in the UK is quite frankly terrifying. Please let us not slide into the murky reality of normalised religiously aggravated discrimination and the violation of human rights in countries such as Pakistan – a nation with the worst example government sanctioned persecution of the Ahmadiyya community.

In Pakistan, Ahmadi Muslims are expressly and legally forbidden from calling themselves Muslims. If an Ahmadi Muslim makes the azan (gives the call to prayer), recites from the Qur’an in public or greets people with Assalam aleykum and is found guilty, then could not only face three years in prison but more shockingly also the death penalty according to current blasphemy laws. Thankfully no such executions have yet taken place.

Here in the UK, I have spoken to Ahmadi Muslims who have recounted the abuse that their fellow brothers face in Pakistan and it is here in the UK and USA that many are taking refuge and bringing up new generations in peace and safety. For such intolerance and quite frankly bigotry to spill over onto British soil is heartbreaking. Only recently a historic Ahmadi mosque was desecrated by a mob in Pakistan, not that long after an Ahmadi billboard here in the UK was removed after a backlash from non-Ahmadi Muslims. Yet the lack of mainstream coverage of the “controversy” in the media was shocking. No one wanted to talk about the double standards at play here. Freedom of belief and speech is for all, yet the reactions received seem to show a different concept of freedom – a selective right for only “approved minorities”.

Here we can see that “othering” and discrimination leads to the abuse of human rights including the right to free speech, freedom of religious practice and even the right to life. Whilst no doubt, 99% of British Muslims from outside of the Ahmadiyya community wish no harm and simply disagree with Ahmadi teachings, the community as a whole still refuses to acknowledge that they are Muslim. No one can force belief or a certain teaching on another person but what harm is there in “agreeing to disagree”? Ahmadi Muslims pray daily to Allah and follow the Qur’an. They are Muslims, whether quite frankly everyone else likes it or not.

Furthermore, whether they are “Muslim” or not is no one’s business but Allah’s. So I ask the non-Ahmadi Muslim community (to which I belong): when will this “bogeyman” be called out for what it is? When will “the Ummah” – billions of Muslims across the world in fact – open their eyes and acknowledge that this bogeyman is in fact an invented “otherised” demon reflective of our own community and the intolerance, simmering hatred and indifference within?

So, let’s put this bogeyman to bed and instead welcome our brothers and sisters, showing love for all hatred for none – without exception.

– Written by Elizabeth Fear, Founder of Voice of Salam

Mahershala Ali has won the Oscar for best-supporting actor – an accolade many had expected – for his performance in Moonlight, the critically acclaimed story of a black gay man’s coming of age.

Ali had already picked up awards from the Screen Actors Guild, Critics Choice, and the NAACP Image award. During his acceptance speech at the Screen Actors Guild, reflecting on his own experiences, he said: “I think what I have learned from working on Moonlight, you see what happens when you persecute people, and they fold into themselves.”

Muslims have won Oscars in various categories over the years but none in acting roles. Previous winners include Pakistani documentary filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and director Asghar Farhadi – whose earlier film A Separation won the foreign film Oscar in 2012. His latest film, The Salesman, was screened in London’s Trafalgar Square hours before the ceremony. Farhadi did not attend the ceremony in protest at Donald Trump’s efforts to bar people entering the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries. His latest film would go on to win Best Foreign Language Film.

In Moonlight, Ali plays Juan, a drug dealer whose tender moments with the young protagonist Chiron provides him with a surrogate father figure who imparts life lessons bundled in moments of deep affection and unwavering acceptance.

Juan lives with his partner Teresa. It is within this orderly household that the problems of the external world – be it in school – or at home are forgotten. External contradictions fall by the wayside.

Within the swollen silences of dinner, the narrative is punctuated in the language of close affection. No judgements are made of Chiron. When it seems like the world has turned against him, Chiron is taught a powerful lesson about acceptance and to reject the hateful labels others apply.

Perhaps the most iconic and beautiful example of this loving bond between Juan and Chiron concerns the former teaching the latter to swim.

As Hilton Als writes, Moonlight “undoes our expectations as viewers, and as human beings, too”. For Ira Hilton III, the surrogate relationship between Juan and Chiron “speaks volumes for how Jenkins wants us to view relationships between black men.” Shane Thomas praises the universality of Moonlight, and for its assiduous and precise direction.

Stories concerning the religious identity of Mahershala Ali, however, have created their own momentum.

Born Mahershalalhashbaz (the longest prophetic name in the Bible) Gilmore in 1974 to a mother who was an ordained Christian minister, he converted to Islam in 1999, joining the Ahmadiyya sect in 2001.

His spiritual interest also included attending a Baha’i meeting and flirting with Buddhism. Yet, his defining moment of religious and spiritual clarity came from the act of prayer inside a mosque. Ali described this moment as: “I could not understand a word of the prayer, but ironically, they were tears of understanding. For the first time in my life, I knew where I was, spiritually speaking.”

Ali’s embrace of the Ahmadiyya sect should not be erased. It’s too important given the persecution Ahmadis face in Pakistan and countries like Indonesia.

A Faith Matters report titled, ‘Sectarianism, Extremism and Hate Crime, the Impacts on the Ahmadiyya Community,’ explored the complexities and root causes of this form violence and prejudice.

It’s a product of a wider extremist narrative which exploits the sensitivities around the blasphemy debate in Islam. It seeks to define Islam through its own narrow interpretations. This interpretative lens allows fundamentalists to dictate the narrative and define others as ‘outside’ of Islam, which helps normalise banal, everyday forms of prejudice, including the decision to boycott Ahmadi-run businesses. The murder of Glasgow shopkeeper Asad Shah made this sectarian issue headline news.

Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, deleted her congratulatory tweet after users pointed out that Ali’s Ahmadi beliefs. This deletion generated its own controversy.

Pakistan's Ambassador to UN, Maleeha Lodhi first tweets then deletes the tweet just bcoz #MahershalaAli is an Ahmadi. pic.twitter.com/EwpxrQGiJN

— Ayesha Khan (@KhanAyesha23) February 27, 2017

Nor should we erase the historic role of Ahmadi missionaries in black communities in early twentieth America. An important figure in Mahershala Ali’s religious journey was the Chicago native Abdul Karim. The Ahmadiyya movement has maintained a missionary presence among black communities in Chicago since 1935. Within the city limits of Chicago stands the Al-Sadiq Mosque, which remains one of the oldest mosques in the United States.

Some of the earliest independent black mosques took inspiration from Ahmadi teachings. The first mosque in Cleveland was later established by the former Ahmadi Wali Akram. Some black converts established their own mosques to accommodate the growing black consciousness and scholarship around Islam. Before the rise of the Nation of Islam (NOI), Ahmadi missionaries offered “the first multi-racial model for American Islam”. This influence, according to the academic Edward C. Curtis, reached Elijah Muhammad, a religious leader in the NOI, who had “regularly quoted, verbatim, from Ahmadi literature, including Ahmadi translations of the Qur’an”. Ahmadi missionaries had converted around 10,000 people by the 1940s.

A key figure in the early days of the Ahmadi missionary work in the United States was Muhammad Sadiq, who arrived in Philadelphia on February 15, 1920. A year later, with the help of other Muslims, Sadiq had launched the monthly periodical The Muslim Sunrise to challenge negative stereotypes about Islam in the press.

Sadiq used the periodical to argue that Islam could resolve the racism Christianity had failed to answer. He contended that Islam and the Arabic language would unite all people of African descent. This post-colonial message came at a time of great social discontent and racist violence.

In a post-9/11 context, Ali himself has spoken openly about the prejudice he’s faced. This included having his bank accounts frozen and learning that he was on an FBI watch list. His wife stopped wearing the hijab following acts of hatred and prejudice. Ali told the Radio Times: “But I will say if you convert to Islam after a couple of decades of being a black man in the US, the discrimination you receive as a Muslim doesn’t feel like a shock.”

Ali’s big cinematic break was in David Fincher’s 2008 fantasy drama ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’.

A video from an influential Pakistani hate preacher glorifying the actions of Tanveer Ahmed will likely be subject to police investigation.

In a five-minute video uploaded to YouTube, Khadim Hussain Rizvi, a Barelvi cleric, Pakistan’s largest grouping of Sunni Muslims, recounted Ahmed’s twisted account of the night he murdered Asad Shah. He confirmed that he had spoken with Ahmed from his prison cell in Glasgow’s Barlinnie Prison.

Tanveer Ahmed had tod Rizvi that: “We are not terrorists. We are the protectors of the Prophet’s honour. A terrorist kills the innocent people but a lover picks up the person who insults the prophet from the crowd and kills only him.”

His phraseology is a cause of concern. Not just for its threatening overtures. But in his unwavering belief that his actions were not in isolation. For Ahmed, he has continued the work of others who had murdered in ‘defence’ of, or out of ‘love’ for, the Prophet Muhammad. In Urdu, this terminology is known as Aashiq e Rasool.

According to Rizvi, Ahmed had told him: “I took a knife and went to his shop leaving the knife outside. Just the way Ghazi Ilm-ud-din had done. Ghazi Ilm-ud-din had kept his knife outside.” This statement had sent Rizvi’s audience into rapturous chants of “Glory to Allah”.

This statement invokes a folk hero who was hung in colonial India. Ilm-ud-din (d. 1929) was an illiterate young man who murdered Mahashay Rajpal, the Lahore-based publisher of Rangeela Rasool, a book many Muslims considered disrespectful towards the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who later founded the state of Pakistan, defended him. Yet he could not prevent the colonial court from passing the death sentence.

At 20-years-old, Ilm-ud-din’s actions became that of legend. Thousands attended his funeral – including Muhammad Iqbal, Pakistan’s leading poet. His eulogy to Ilm-ud-din proclaimed: “Asi wekhde reh gaye, aye Tarkhaana da munda baazi le gaya” (We kept sitting idle while this carpenter’s son took the lead). Popular culture has helped entrench his folk hero status. Even today, 87 years after his hanging, many still make the journey to his shrine. They attach the title of Ghazi to his name – a Muslim warrior who was victorious against the enemies of Islam.

The Facebook page Ghazi Ilam Din Shaheed, which has over 2,500 ‘likes’, shares videos of individuals visiting his shrine. Propaganda encourages individuals to share a picture of the ‘lover of the prophet’. It ends with the ominous threat that ‘disrespectful people will be punished’.

The murder of reformist politician Salman Taseer, by his bodyguard Mumtaz Qadri in 2011, invoked similar passions.

Khadim Hussain Rizvi had used the term ‘lover of the prophet’ when discussing Mumtaz Qadri’s conviction in 2015. He told the Guardian: “In 1929 we could not stop the execution of the lover of the prophet because the British were in power and Muslims were a minority“.

Many saw Qadri as a hero. Qadri claimed it was his religious duty to murder Taseer. Lawyers soon rushed to his defence. When asked why, one lawyer told the newspaper Dawn: “Ghazi Ilam Din, who killed a ‘blasphemer’, was represented by Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah.”

Mumtaz Qadri was hung for his crimes in February 2016. Qadri remains a folk hero to some. After the murder of Asad Shah, the BBC uncovered Tanveer Ahmed’s adoration for Qadri. Murdering Asad Shah had allowed him to mimic his idol. Propaganda from the religious right invokes the idea that Qadri and Ahmed are kindred spirits in their ‘defence’ of the prophet. Nor should it surprise anyone to learn that the Ghazi Ilam Din Shaheed Facebook page has shared images that venerate Tanveer Ahmed.

This toxic narrative predates the founding of Pakistan. It frames the despicable as something noble, granting individuals false authority over religious matters. A failure to challenge this narrative may inspire others to carry out similar crimes in the future.