Area Ahmadi Muslims react to terror attacks

The ripple effects of attacks that left at least 90 dead at two Ahmadiyya Muslim mosques in Lahore, Pakistan, are being felt in the Chicago suburbs.

Imam Mubasher Ahmad of the Baet-Ul-Jaamay mosque in Glen Ellyn said this week that many families who worship here lost relatives in the attacks.

On Friday afternoon, a day of prayer in Islam, several members of Pakistani Taliban from the Punjab province entered the mosques with automatic weapons and hand grenades. Ahmad said the group follows a more violent interpretation of Islam than Ahmadiyya Muslims, who he said were targeted in the attacks.

Long a subject of threats by other Muslims in Pakistan, Ahmad said last Friday's operation was the worst actual violence against them.

He said Ahmadi Muslims preach nonviolence under any circumstances, except self-defense. However, he said the reality is that the violent sects of Islam have become the most prominent.

"They have hijacked Islam," Ahmad said. "The concept of jihad has been perverted. We feel they are hurting us more than anyone else."

In Arabic, "jihad" means a struggle and Ahmad said the Ahmadi interpret that to mean peaceful struggle that comes from within.

However, some other more extreme sects of Islam often use the term as a synonym for holy war.

The secretary for the Chicago West Chapter of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community said this has led to the misconceptions about Islam.

"Some of it is that people don't know and the extremists get the headlines," Haris Ahmed said. "We have got to speak up against that. We believe our faith has been hijacked."

Ahmadiyya Muslims are a minority sect in Islam that comprises about 160 million of the world's 1.65 billion Muslims. One of those followers is Haroon Chaudhry of Rolling Meadows.

He said his wife's cousin was one of those killed in Pakistan last week. Since then, he says he calls frequently to hear the latest news.

"Every other day I call my mother, crying nonstop," he said. "The shock is there, then it's just more prayer."

He said the main problem is a Constitution in Pakistan that supports the singling out of the Ahmadiyya minority. In the early 1980s, the Pakistani government ruled that the Ahmadiyya were not real Muslims and soon thereafter criminalized any Islamic actions by non-Muslims.

Chaudhry said this creates a situation where, by Pakistani law, Ahmadiyya Muslims who pray to Allah are committing a crime.

"The fundamental problem is the law," Chaudhry said. "The law is on the side of the extremists."

Ahmad said the only way for things to change is for outside intervention.

"It's so terrible," Ahmad said. "It will continue unless America puts pressure on Pakistan to change inhumane laws that have taken freedom of religion from the Muslim community."