By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent
Janis Siegel
JTNews Correspondent
As a young man chanted soulfully from the Holy Scriptures and the women of the congregation sat in another room separated from the men, the audience settled in their seats.
Inside a one-story, white, house-like building on Highway 99 in Lynnwood, the spiritual home to the 250 members of the Ahmaddiya Muslim community, the women and young girls gathered together, the food was being prepared, and the children played.
The center buzzed with excitement on a cloudy and spring-like Sunday afternoon in March while six religious scholars readied themselves to extol the virtues of great figures in their respective faiths — Moses, Krishna, Buddha, Christ, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mirza Ghulam Ahmad from India, the Ahmaddiya’s founder and their promised Messiah.
It’s not every day a rabbi is invited to speak about Moses at an Islamic interfaith conference. But it happened for Rabbi James Mirel, who spoke at the community’s second interfaith conference of 2009, called “Reformers of the World.”
“They are very welcoming,” said Mirel, as guests randomly approached him with questions about Judaism.
Other conference speakers included local religious leaders Pundit Mahesh Shastri Ji, Chuck Pettis, Pastor Barry Keating, and Larry Gossett. Ahmadiyya community member Imran Ghumman was the final speaker.
The Ahmadiyya came to the United States in 1973 and have been established in Lynnwood since 2005.
The Ahmaddiya’s credo is “Love for all and hatred for none.” However, they are shunned by most mainstream Muslims around the world. The Ahmaddiya believe Ahmad, who founded the sect in 1889 in the village of Qadian in Punjab, India, was and is the fulfillment of the coming of the Messiah. Most Muslims are still waiting for their Messiah, called the Mahdi.
“They don’t like us,” Ghumman said. “We are being persecuted and have been expelled from our homelands in Pakistan. Seventy-three [Muslim] sects have actually declared us non-Muslims.”
According to Ghumman, a 14-year-old Ahmaddiya boy is currently being held in a Pakistani prison on charges of blasphemy. If he is found guilty, the punishment is death.
“They’re a little better here,” he said.
The group’s worldwide community numbers in the tens of millions, according to their figures, with branches in more than 193 countries in six of the seven continents. In the United States, they have centers in California, Portland, Washington and Idaho.
Their current leader, Mirza Masroor Ahmed, who was elected in 2003, and is coincidentally a descendant of the founder, now lives in London. But Ghumman said he is persecuted there, as well.
“Jews are closer to Muslims than any other community in the world,” said Ghumman, who has previously spoken at Temple Beth Am, where he explained the ritual of the call to prayer in the Islamic tradition to the congregation. “It’s time to come together. We try to reach out to the Jewish community and find out what they are up to. Our community is established in Haifa, and we live peacefully there under the Israeli government. We live peacefully under every government.”
According to the group’s Web site, “Ahmadi Muslims have earned the distinction of being a law-abiding, peaceful, persevering and benevolent community.”
“People are free to believe whatever they want,” Ghumman added. “People have their disagreements but we try to find the similarities. We reach out to Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity and open it up to anyone who wants to come. We believe that if the religious leaders come together and talk about their faith, it will enlighten everyone.”
A rapt audience of 75 attendees, ranging from Americans to Canadians, and Bengalis to African-Americans and Pakistanis, eagerly awaited the speakers.
“We read of Moses and his life in the Jewish scripture, the Torah,” said Mirel in his opening remarks to the crowd. “He is also mentioned in the Christian scripture and quite prominently, in what Muslims refer to as the Holy Qu’ran, he is mentioned over 20 times. But he was a man. He was mortal, like you and me.”
After recalling Moses’ life story from the Torah, Mirel recited the Sh’ma in Hebrew, telling the group that “There is only one God: Allah, Elohim, One. That’s the main teaching.”
The Torah says, Mirel added, that there would never again be a prophet like Moses, who knew God so intimately.
“Moses was an Eish, a man of God,” said Mirel. “There can only be a few of us who are great, but in his way, in his humble way, he was an Av Ne-eman. He was a servant of God. Shalom. Salaam. Peace be with you.”
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Center holds three interfaith conferences a year, to bring all the religions together. As their founder, Ahmad, said, “I will unite all religions and all mankind…. We cannot help but believe that the Lord of Nations proposes to turn all of them into one harmonious whole.”
Ghumman said this type of program is unique for his sect.
“No one around the world is doing this,” he said. “This is one of the rare platforms so people can develop a true understanding of how it should be done. Anyone in the community is welcome.”