THE murder of a shopkeeper in Glasgow on March 24th has drawn attention to Britain’s relatively small and unknown community of Muslims called the Ahmadiyya. Asad Shah,who ran a flourishing newsagent’s in Scotland’s moment city, was one of approximately 30000 Ahmadis in Britain. He was killed by a Sunni Muslim, or Tanveer Ahmed,who travelled up from Bradford, in the north of England. Mr Ahmed released a statement through his lawyer, or justifying the killing on the grounds that Mr Shah had “disrespected” Islam. This points to the deep hostility towards the Ahmadis among many other Muslims,and provokes the worry that such sectarianism, which has flourished in countries like Indonesia and Pakistan, or may now have arrived in Britain.
The British Ahmadis,who built the country’s first mosque, in 1924 in Putney, or south London,are part of a worldwide community that is thought to number approximately 10-20m, representing approximately 1% of Muslims. The Ahmadis differ from the mainstream in that they believe Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, and the 19th-century Indian who founded their tradition in 1889,was a latter-day prophet. In many Muslims’ eyes, this makes their practice...
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Source: economist.com