Thinking Aloud: Hate mongering in God’s name

May 16th, 2012

By Razi Azmi

I wonder what the sentinels of the ‘fortress of Islam’ called Pakistan want to do about the fact that, in public places, one cannot distinguish an Ahmedi from a Muslim by his looks

A conference or meeting of Muslims where “Sunni, Shia, Wahabi, Barelvi, Deobandi…everyone is welcome” has to be as rare as a snow leopard in the Karakorams. But precisely such an invitation did the rounds via email in Sydney and beyond with the above welcoming words in the subject line.

The four-hour long conference, held in a Sydney town hall, rented from an avowedly secular city council, was organised by the Islamic Forum for Australian Muslims. While the invitation could have led one to think of it as an ‘inclusive’ Muslim conference, in fact the aim was to generate hatred against the Ahmedi minority sect, which was excommunicated by the Pakistani parliament (no less) in 1974 and by majority Muslim public opinion long before that. The persecution of this community has now extended to other Muslim countries, most notably Indonesia and Bangladesh.

The hate campaign against Ahmedis is particularly ironical, for their contribution to the creation and consolidation of Pakistan is very well known. Suffice it to mention here a few names: Sir Chaudhry Zafrullah Khan, Professor Abdus Salam, M M Ahmad, Lt-General Akhtar Abdul Malik, Lt-General Abdul Ali Malik and Maj-General Iftikhar Janjua.

This conference was remarkable for three things. Firstly, its overt inclusiveness (momentarily uniting all sects, who otherwise despise one another); secondly, its declared, exclusive focus on generating hatred against another community; and, finally, launching this campaign of hatred in a country that takes pride in its tolerance and diversity.

Consider the language of the invitation letter (italics are mine), “They [Qadiyani/Ahmedi] are not a sect of Muslims but a separate cult founded by an impostor Mr Ghulam Ahmad Qadiyani who claimed that he is a prophet of God. Pakistani Supreme Court (sic) and Islamic scholars all over the world have officially declared them as a ‘Non-Muslim cult’. Yet this ‘Non-Muslim’ cult is trying to deceive people in many parts of the world by introducing and propagating themselves as Muslims and declaring the founder of this false religion, Mr Ghulam Ahmad Qadiani as a prophet. Australia is becoming a hot spot for the activities of this cult. They are preying on newly arrived overseas Muslim students, helping them to become Australian citizens by getting them married to Qadiyani girls or lodging their asylum cases on Qadiyani bases. As a Muslim, it is our responsibility to protect innocent Muslims from their false religion and show the world their real face.”

One of the four speakers devoted himself entirely to the vilification and demonisation of the founder of the Ahmedi sect. It is noteworthy that, of the four, three were from India, the keynote speaker being a prominent leader of the Indian Jamaat-e-Islami.

Modernity, tolerance, peaceful coexistence, fraternity and diversity have been discarded in favour of rigidity, obscurantism and witch-hunting in the name of religious orthodoxy. As one has come to expect in a 21st century conference infused with Islamic fervour, men and women were not only seated in separate blocks divided by an aisle, but by a separation wall about three metres high, enough to suppress any desire to seduce a member of the opposite sex and frustrate any attempt to climb or jump the fence on the part of an overly-interested believer.

About two years ago, a friend in the US had forwarded to me an invitation to a wedding that he had received. The colourful e-card stated, pinpointed by an arrow, “This occasion is a men and women separate event, so there are two halls in which one is dedicated strictly to men and one strictly dedicated to women. If you would like to contact your family member, please let our liaisons know at the door and they will bring them to you. Thanks for your cooperation.”

I encouraged my friend to ask the hosts whether the ‘liaisons’ will be persons of neutral gender, like the castrated harem-keepers of the Ottoman Sultans!

Increasingly, in Muslim weddings and functions in western countries, men and women are segregated. Some maulanas (clerics) have threatened at the last minute to refuse to conduct the wedding unless the sexes are segregated. The hosts always cower before their demand and comply with their wishes, even if reluctantly. The maulana is the representative of God, the keeper and interpreter of the true faith, and who dare challenge him!

We can afford to be amused by the antics of religious obscurantists and puritans, but for the Ahmedis this is no laughing matter, for their persecution knows no bounds. According to a newspaper report of May 4, “a large contingent of police” descended on an Ahmedi place of worship in Pakistan and “scratched out Quranic verses written on the walls [and] and ordered [Ahmedis] to cover up short minarets at the entrance as they made the place look like a mosque.”

Before leaving, the police warned the Ahmedis that “they had a day to make the place look less like a mosque”, failing which they will be prosecuted. It is beside the point that mosques come in all shapes, their appearance vary markedly from country to country and within countries, even within the same city. Compare, for instance, Shah Faisal Mosque with Lal Masjid in Islamabad!

But I wonder what the sentinels of the ‘fortress of Islam’ called Pakistan want to do about the fact that, in public places, one cannot distinguish an Ahmedi from a Muslim by his looks. They have not yet woken up to the danger inherent in this obvious ability of Ahmedis to pose as ‘Muslims’ and deceive unsuspecting, ‘innocent’ Muslims.

Perhaps Ahmedis should henceforth not be allowed to shave their facial hair completely or to keep a full beard or a full moustache. They ought to be compelled by law to keep half a moustache or half a beard. Should any Ahmedi insist on both moustache and beard for religious reasons, I suggest he may be permitted to grow half of each, but only on opposite sides of the face, and with prior official permission. I cannot think of a more secure way to prevent the contamination of ‘real’ Muslims by these ‘false’ Muslims.

The writer is a former academic with a doctorate in modern history and can be reached at raziazmi@hotmail.com

The Daily News. Lahore. 16.5.2012.

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Religious intolerance in Muslim societies

May 7th, 2012

By Yasser Latif Hamdani

Much like Akbar the Great, the Mughal Emperor, Mehmet Fateh and Suleiman the Magnificent refused to give in to the whims of the Muslim clergy. Their courts were models of pluralism and heterodox ideas

The Second Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan made Ahmedis non-Muslims for the purposes of the law and constitution. Exclusivist and arguably ultra vires the scope of parliamentary power as it was, it did not impose any restrictions on the freedom of religion of Ahmedis, including their right to call themselves Muslims. To do so would have been a negation of Article 20 of the Constitution, which promises every citizen freedom to profess and propagate his religion.

Then in 1984 came Ordinance XX, which criminalised the very freedom the constitution bequeathed on Ahmedis as citizens of this country. Hitting at the root of the Ahmedis’ faith, the Ordinance took away the right to say salaam or even recite the Holy Quran. Ironically, Christian painters were given the task of whiting out Quranic verses on Ahmedi graves. It was forbidden for Ahmedis to call their places of worship mosques. They were forbidden to make any structures that remotely resembled a mosque. What, one wonders, does a mosque look like is anybody’s guess. Does the Shah Faisal Mosque in Islamabad look like a mosque? How about Ranjit Singh’s Marri? Does it not look like a mosque? In any event, some vague idea of what a mosque looks like was forbidden to Ahmedis.

Last Thursday, in Lahore, the Misri Shah police scratched out Quranic verses from an Ahmedi place of worship and destroyed parts of it to make it look less like a mosque. It reminded me of another incident not long ago in Switzerland where a ban on minarets for mosques was proposed. Ironically, that incident which had the entire Islamic world up in arms against the Swiss government pertained to an Ahmedi place of worship. Here Pakistan follows that fine Swiss tradition of forbidding religious freedom to a certain community and with a vengeance.

Complainants from as far as 15 kilometers away had become incensed at this small place of worship, which was suddenly threatening the spiritual well being and religious freedom of the good Muslims of Sultanpura and Misri Shah area.

The problem with Muslims in general is that they want themselves to be held to a different standard than that to which they hold others. In the west in general, Muslims seem to be perpetually outraged against ‘intolerant majorities’ for the slightest of slights. Goal posts change once it is a Muslim majority country. The human rights that Muslims assert in the west are almost always deemed as irrelevant to Muslim countries. There is no Muslim country in the world without a harrowing tale of minority persecution. From Coptic Christians in Egypt to Hindus in Pakistan and from the Druze to Ahmedis, almost every Muslim country has a minority or two that has been forcibly oppressed and targeted by a majority that is incapable of accepting diversity, not just vis-à-vis non-Muslims but also within Islam. Bahais and Sunnis face the wrath of the majority in Iran. In Syria, we have Alawites threatened and isolated. In Saudi Arabia, all non-Muslim modes of worship are banned and for expatriates living in Saudi Arabia, being a Shia may lead to deportation (though Saudi Shias are somewhat tolerated). The situation in Pakistan was considerably better until 1984 but since then, not just Ahmedis but Christians and Hindus have also faced systematic persecution. It is not enough to claim that Islam provides the most rights for non-Muslims; there should be some practical example of these rights. Going by what we have in the world today, that example seems to elude us.

At a time when the world was in darkness, Islam gave unprecedented religious freedom to non-Muslims. The Meesaq-e-Medina is evidence enough — Jews and others were declared one Ummat, one community, with the Muslims of Medina. That pact was perhaps the first genuinely pluralistic compact between a diverse people. Amongst the later Caliphs, Mamun-ur-Rasheed’s rule stands out for its acceptance of religious diversity and personal freedom. That his rule corresponded with the zenith of Islamic civilisation is no accident. The Ottoman Empire, in its heyday, was a prime example of this. Sultan Mehmet Fateh — the great conqueror of Constantinople — and Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent were both known for their enlightened and tolerant religious policy towards the non-Muslims in their realm. Far from theocratic Caliphs, these masters of realpolitik realised the importance of keeping their non-Muslim subjects happy. Fateh even assumed, for a time, the title of the head of the Orthodox Christian Church and its protector. Much like Akbar the Great, the Mughal Emperor, Mehmet Fateh and Suleiman the Magnificent refused to give in to the whims of the Muslim clergy. Their courts were models of pluralism and heterodox ideas, which is why Jews and Christians, who together outnumbered Muslims in the Ottoman Empire, remained loyal subjects of the Empire. Even Aurangzeb — who was the most puritan and fundamentalist of the Mughal emperors — had to adopt a measure of religious tolerance and pluralism towards the Hindus of his realm though it was not nearly enough in the end.

None of these examples matter though. The truth is that lack of tolerance, a skewed educational system with misplaced priorities and outright bigotry — taught from the pulpit — has so fantastically distorted our worldview that one wonders how we will dig ourselves out of this hole. In terms of our treatment of minorities, our utter disregard for diversity and our zero-tolerance for dissent has begun to fracture our society in ways that we have yet to comprehend fully. How long will we allow this country of ours to remain on the wrong side of history and known for a land of narrow-minded bigots who are incapable of even accommodating a tiny minority?

The Daily Times. Lahore. 7.4.2012.

The writer is a practising lawyer. He blogs at http://globallegalorum.blogspot and his twitter handle is therealylh

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Muslim Missions in Europe

May 5th, 2012

Achieving an optimal mobilisation of limited resources
The success of European Muslim missions owes a great deal to the AAII’s organisational skills. The Secretary’s Office in Lahore supervised the organisation of tabligh (propagation of Islam).1 This core activity was subdivided under two departments: one dealing with “tabligh through literature” – with a Book Depot in charge of correspondence, printing and dissemination of AAII’s publications – and the other one managing “tabligh through mubbalighs (missionaries)” conducted by permanent
missions and some itinerant mubbalighs. The development of Ahmadiyya activities in Europe and
elsewhere increased the need for properly trained missionaries. To respond to it, the AAII created in Lahore in 1914 the Ishat-i-Islam College, which was run in 1927 by Maulvi Sadr-ud-Din who used his experiences gained at the Woking and Berlin missions.2 Foreign missions benefited from the centralized organization even if they also demonstrated their ability to channel locally available resources. Indeed they made the best use of the religious zeal manifested in Europe by students and converts and attracted the keen assistance of traders and women.

An attempt to mix converts and foreign Muslim
Populations

In 1913, Khwaja Kamaluddin made a speech at a meeting arranged by the Islamic Society in front of some two hundred Muslim students resident in London.3 He called on his young audience “to continue the ceremonial observance of their religion, and to refuse to drink wine” and galvanized their religious pride in announcing the conversion to Islam of Lord Headley (1855- 1935). Securing converts was indeed an essential dimension of the work of European missions as they played the role of mediators between the host society and its foreign Muslim population. More than the number,
it was the converts’ social status4 – aristocrats, professionals, scientists, etc. – which was of great importance. It helped to deal with racist preconceptions of civil servants and served the religious propaganda in and outside Europe. The most efficient of those “gobetweens” was Lord Headley whose conversion enhanced the leadership position of the Lahori mission in its relation with both the government and other local Muslim organisations. It also had a major impact overseas, giving international fame to the organisation. Following the pilgrimage to Mecca that the aristocrat
performed in 1923 in the company of the imam of Woking, the Cairo Rabita al-Sharqiyya (Oriental
League) announced that it gave the title of Honorary Member to “Lord Headley Farooq and his collaborator the Khodja Kamaluddin.”5

Lahori missions showed concern in preventing the condescending attitude of born-Muslim towards European converts. Therefore, one might notice that the privilege of leading the outdoors ‘Id prayers at Woking was occasionally granted to British Muslims such as Marmaduke Pickthall in 1919 and William Bashyr-Pickard in 1932. But those gestures did not prevent some British Muslims from resenting the Indian leadership of Woking and trying to reduce its influence by incorporating the Lahori mission into a broader “United Muslim League.” To establish this new body, a conference
organised by Omar Wilkins, Reshid Sharp and Khalid Sheldrake was held in London on October 1926.6 This initiative of “linking together all Islamic Missions and Societies in the West to strengthen and unite Islamic propaganda” was short-lived, but was pursued by Khalid (Bertrand) Sheldrake (1888-1947). First associate with Woking and later with the Qadiani Mission,7 he finally achieved his ambition in founding and becoming the Life-President of the Western Islamic Association.
In 1936, K. Sheldrake blatantly claimed that “the bulk of the 30,000 Muslims of Great Britain, among whom some 5,000 were English by birth, are in the branches of this body,” denying any authority to “the little mosque of the distant county of Surrey.”8 In the same way. Khalid Sheldrake minimized the influence of the Berlin Mission and challenged the Lahori Anglo-German connexion
by underlining his relation with the French Fraternité Musulmane. Nevertheless, K. Sheldrake
could hardly challenge the intellectual stature of Marmaduke Pickthall or the social prestige of Lord
Headley, both of whom were associated with Woking. If the English mosque was proud of having “Al-Haj El- Farooq” Headley in its congregation, the most famous of the Berlin converts was Baron Omar von Ehrenfels.

The aristocrat, who converted in Berlin in 1927, went to Lahore at the end of 1932 and toured India together with the imam of Berlin, Shaikh Muhammad Abdullah. Another famous convert of the Berlin Mission was Dr. Hamid (Hugo) Marcus (1880-1966) who played a major role in the running of the mission. He acted as President of the Deutsch-Moslemische Gesellschaft (German
Muslim Society) which was formed on March 1930 and was open to non-Muslim members.9 The Society was closely associated to the Brienner St. Mission, meeting the electric, gas and some other repair charges of the mosque and taking the expenses of ‘Id functions and other meetings.10 Having a good command of English, Dr. Marcus could also translate Woking’s publications
into German.11 With other German Muslims like Dr. Khalid Banning and Dr. Arif Griffelt, he contributedto the running of the quarterly Moslemische Revue launched by Maulvi Sadr-ud-Din in January 1924.12 Converts with previous experience in journalism (Lord Headley)13 or as novelists (Marmaduke Pickthall) helped to improve the quality of Muslim publications. In Lahore itself, it was an Englishman, Hamid Snow, who produced a Muslim prayer book and catechism. The communication policy of the missions Lahori missionaries reached European public opinion
by giving lectures, visiting educational institutions,14 and getting coverage of their activities in the local press. Between 1931 and 1934, articles about the Brienner St. Mosque were published in a dozen German newspapers mostly from Berlin, but also in Hamburg and Essen.15 Journalists contacted by the mission wrote reports on the ‘Id al-Fitr, ‘Id al-Adha and Milâd un-Nabi held at the Berlin Mosque and presented some brief explanations of their religious meaning.16 Indeed it was an occasion to bring to a large audience some knowledge about Muslim rituals and to create a bond of sympathy and understanding by highlighting affinities with Christian and Jewish faiths.17 Visits of Muslim personalities such as the princes of Hyderabad or Shakib Arslan in 1931 were occasions for the mission to attract attention from the German press.18

Those events, as well as some religious functions, were broadcasted in Pathe film clips and on radio programmes showing the familiarity of the Lahori missions with the most modern propaganda tools.19 To serve the mission’s communication policy, proficiency in European languages was essential. Young converts were often sensitive to a modern approach to religious propaganda. The style of the Islamic Review reveals this curiosity for innovative communication techniques; see for example the statement of faith from a new convert that appeared from 1915 on the first page facing the photograph of a European Muslim.20 In the linguistic field, some converts considered the
Esperanto language as a practical way to match the medium with the universal character of the message ofIslam. Bertrand (latter Khalid) Sheldrake, who founded
articles in Esperanto in the Woking review presenting “the common ideal of Islam and Esperanto in breaking down barriers of colour, creed, and caste.”22 Esperanto supporters could also be found among Indian Muslims such as Professor Attaur Rahman and Maulvi Sadr-ud-
Din, the future imam of the Berlin Mosque.23 Nevertheless, the enthusiasm invested in this universal
language vanished in the post-war period, even if books in Esperanto on Islam continued to be published.24 Esperanto was a rather marginal aspect of a strategy
– probably modelled on the policy of protestant missionary
organisations such as the Bible Society – to
reach local people in their own native tongue. With its
limited resources, the AAII had to focus on languages
having a status of international lingua franca such as
English or German.
In 1922, the AAII started a fortnightly four-page journal
in English, The Light, that soon became a weekly publication.
At the end of the decade, the mouthpiece of the
Lahore headquarters had a print a little over 1,500 of
which a tenth was supplied free to “some European and
American libraries and notable personages.”25
Capitalizing on the success of The Light, the AAII
launched in Lahore two other newspapers in English:
the quarterly Muslim Revival in 1930 and Young Islam,
a fortnightly started in June 1934. Those titles were also
sent to Europe and added to the publications produced
by the Berlin and Woking missions themselves which
were printed on a good quality paper and often illustrated
with photographs. Alongside the Islamic Review, the
free circulation of a thousand copies of the quarterly
Moslemische Revue introduced Islam to a Germanspeaking
audience in Eastern and South-Eastern
Europe.26
In 1932, the AAII boldly announced that “the work of
translating the Holy Quran in all languages is under our
consideration.”27 The aim was not to publish a translation
in languages where none were available – that was
not the case for English or German –, but rather to present
a work made by a Muslim believer and not by a
Western scholar. Moreover, the publication of the
Qur’an conferred an obvious authority over Muslim
communities relying on that edition. As Maulana
Muhammad Ali’s English Translation of the Holy
Qur’an published by the Woking Trust in 1917 was too
difficult for a non-scholarly audience to handle, the mission
started around 1927 to prepare a more accessible
edition without the Arabic text. The AAII justified the
publication of “a cheap edition by a Muslim author”
saying that the several translations already on the market
were all by non-Muslims who “failed to present the
true Muslim point of view and here and there actually
misrepresented it.”28 The same motivation prevailed for
the launching of the first German translation of the
Qur’an made by Muslims, expecting that it “would
reveal the true spirit of the Holy Quran to the Germanspeaking
countries of Central Europe.”29 The project
launched in 1928 took more than a decade to complete.
The German Qur’an was finally printed in 1939, just as
the Second World War broke out when the Indian missionaries
had to leave Germany.30
The publication of newspapers, books and pamphlets
was the main activity of the AAII’s missions. Besides
expenditure for the free distribution of literature, the
Lahore headquarters subsidised all its English publications
which were constantly in deficit. That was the case
of the Islamic Review, even if subscriptions represented
a substantial income making up about half of the financial
resources of the Woking Trust. The deficit was covered
by the AAII’s central budget which, quite naturally,
tried to limit the shortfall by encouraging commercial
adverts.
The discourse to the mercantile community
The Woking Mission differed from the previous Muslim
organisations in England in not relying primarily on
Muslim world leaders and Indian rulers to provide
financial assistance for their project.31 Donations from
supporters were centralised in Lahore and members
were encouraged to give money on a monthly basis
through zakat. This financial organisation helped to provide
the missions with a regular income to maintain
their activity throughout the years. By centralising
funds, the AAII’s headquarters could more easily regulate,
organize and rationalize the missions’ expenses.
Besides regular subscriptions, funds were set up and targeted
for a specific foreign mission or translation
work.32
The Lahori European missions’ pragmatic approach to
“Muslim Banking” – making a distinction between
“interest” and riba (“usury,” forbidden in Islam) – was
appreciated by the Indian Muslim merchant class.33 The
city of Lahore, an important trading centre, was togeth-
10 THE LIGHT AND ISLAMIC REVIEW ???? APRIL – JUNE 2009
er with Egypt, at the forefront of the development of
Muslim banking. In 1907, the opening of the Orient
Bank of India in the Punjab capital was announced.34
The next year, a fatwa issued by religious scholars from
Lahore stated that “a Muslim can rightfully accept to
pay a fee to transfer money from one place to another …
as this fee is a salary and not interest.”35 The Muslim
Bank of India, which had its Head Office in Lahore,
extended its activities to Europe and, by 1928, opened
agencies in London, Berlin and Switzerland.36 With the
advertisements published by this bank in newspapers
supporting Lahori activities, one might presume that
there was a rather friendly relationship with the Woking
and Berlin missions.37 The AAII was interested in
adapting religious principles to the “modern capitalistic
and materialistic age,” and its leader Maulana
Muhammad Ali expressed his liberal theory of banking
and private loans for “Muslims living under non-
Muslim governments” in a long article on riba. The
text, originally published in The New Orient, was
reprinted in The Light of Lahore and in various other
Muslim newspapers.38 Not surprisingly, Ahmadi missions
gained sympathy among the major Muslim Indian
trading communities such as the Memons and Bohras.39
The spiritual head of the Bohras even financed the stay
in England of one missionary, who arrived in Woking in
1925 and remained for a period of five years.40
From the beginning, the Woking Trust received support
from individual businessmen established in London
such as Mirza Hashim Ispahani.41 He and his wife were
active members of the small congregation gathering at
the Woking Mosque for ‘Id and had friendly relations
with Khwaja Kamaluddin.42 The businessman was in
charge of the foreign activities of his father’s firm and
was the Managing Director of a firm importing tropical
products from East and West Africa, East India, Ceylon
and the Straits Settlements.43 Those international activities
are likely to have made him sensitive to the worldwide
ambitions of the AAII. He may also have appreciated
that advantages were to be gained from an association
with the Woking Mission whose activities were
extremely popular among Muslim communities from
places where he conducted business. In the same way,
the opening of the Berlin Mission was welcomed by
Muslim traders who had interests in Germany. For
instance, it was the owner of a tannery in Wazirabad,
Punjab who financed repairs to the Berlin Mosque after
a stay in Germany where he received advanced training
in leather tanning.44 For its self-financing activities, the
Woking Trust was quite innovative in organising its own
company named Oriental Products whose leading sale
product was a “Divine Elixir.”45 This general tonic for
the brain and body was publicised in newspaper adverts
with eulogized testimonials from Sir Mirza Abbas Ali
Baig, the Heir-Apparent of Mangrol State and Khwaja
Kamaluddin.46
To finance its publications, the Woking Mission
appealed to the generosity of wealthy Indians traders
and their wives throughout British colonies.47At the end
of his journey in South Africa, Khwaja Kamaluddin
wrote a letter to the Moslem Women’s Association of
S.A. asking “Sisters at the Cape to start a Fund to enable
us to publish a book entitled ‘The Position of Woman in
Islam’.”48 He concluded by giving the assurance “that
the book, if spread broadcast, will not only strengthen
the position of our Sisters in their own community, but
will also do excellent propaganda work.” This discourse
went beyond securing financial support and expressed
the AAII’s genuine concern for the improvement of
Muslim women’s social and educational position.
Gendering the European missions
The Woking Mission was proud to underline that its
mosque was named after Begum Shah Jehan, “Queen of
Bhopal, the only Indian state where a woman rules.”49
In 1926, when the new Begum came to England, she
made promises of help to build the London Mosque and
to add an annexe to the Woking Mosque, which her
mother had greatly assisted in founding.50 It was another
Indian lady, Mrs. Tayyiba Begum, who collected in
1914 a substantial amount of money that was sent to
Khwaja Kamaluddin.51 In the following years, the president
of the Islamic Women’s Association kept on delivering
lectures that urged upper-class women from
Hyderabad to give financial support to the “Imam
Khwaja.” In India, the AAII was well known for encouraging
women’s education and the Society presented
books to female students from all over the country who
passed their Degree Examinations.52
Muslim ladies from Indian high society were sensitive
to a discourse that opposed the offensive image of
Muslim women broadcast in Western medias. In the
first issue of his review, Khwaja Kamaluddin blamed
the Church’s historical prejudice against women. He
recalled that “it was the Council of Macon toward the
end of the sixth century, and not any Mohammadan
assembly, where a bishop raised the question whether a
woman really was a human being, and answered the
question by the negative.”53 In helping missions in the
West, this female elite thought that it would help to
strengthen their position at home.54 Progressive ideas
“made in Europe” were in a way more acceptable but, at
the same time, they were also suspected of having been
“christianised.” This ambiguity was well understood by
the mission’s people who, speaking to an Indian audience,
challenged the equation “modern = western.” For
instance, when the Austrian convert Omar von
Ehrenfels published in Hyderabad an article entitled
APRIL – JUNE 2009 ???? THE LIGHT AND ISLAMIC REVIEW 11
“Muslim women in present-day Europe,” he stated that
it was significant to see “European countries under
Islamic rule like Turkey and Albania… introducing
equal rights for both sexes.” He added that “this shows
clearly, that the impulse for improvement of the Muslim
women’s position really was originated by the Muslim
centres themselves and not borrowed from the Christian
European school of thought.”55
The relation of mutual interest was even more obvious
in the case of the Indian diaspora which, like its Muslim
coreligionists in Europe, had to face a racism which hid
behind humanistic considerations. In the colonial discourse,
the veil and female segregation replaced slavery
to illustrate the backwardness of Islamic societies. This
issue was a major argument for Christian propaganda,
and several books and articles highlighted the unattractive
fate of confined Muslim women.56 At the time of
the foundation of the Woking Trust, a circular was
issued by the Australian Government warning white
women against the “utterly degrading treatment”
reserved to those marrying “Muhammadans.”57 Khwaja
Kamaluddin took this opportunity to link the type of
prejudices found in the Southern hemisphere with the
misconceptions encountered in Europe. He insisted on
dissociating polygamy from the tenets of Islam and
spoke of the happiness of European wives in Muslim
families.58
The high proportion of European women in the congregations
of the Woking and Berlin mosques helped
Lahori missions to challenge the idea that the status of
woman in Islam was repulsive to the Western liberal
mind.59 Their publications aimed to dispel the idea “that
Islam, as a religion, may appeal to men (because it
allows polygamy) but cannot possibly appeal to any civilized,
enlightened woman.”60 In 1932, the German
Muslim Society sponsored the free distribution of 5,000
copies of S. M. Abdullah’s tract on “The Position of
Women in Islam.”61 Muslim missionaries knew how to
select arguments that were particularly attractive to
women; for example Khwaja Kamaluddin pointed out
that when a child “dies at his very birth, he must go to
heaven under Islamic teaching, but he is foredoomed to
hell according to Christian principles,” and concluded
“in other words heaven is our birthright under Islam.”62
Conclusion: Improving the self-esteem of Muslims
in and outside Europe
The activities directed from Woking and Berlin did not
intend to benefit only the Muslim population of Europe
but all places where Islam felt threatened. This
European-made discourse found a large audience, and
articles from the Islamic Review were reprinted in newspapers
published in English or in vernacular languages
throughout the world. The Woking and Berlin missions
played a important role in centralising information from
various parts of Europe and gave it an international
exposure. One might take the example of the outrageous
book by a French activist from the colonial lobby on
“Islam and the Psychology of the Musulman” whose
quotations, published in The Islamic Review, were
reprinted in a South African Muslim newspaper.63 The
European missions also had an impact amongst Muslim
reformists such as the famous scholar Rachid Rida.64 In
India, the Woking publications reached mainly a western
educated elite. Khwaja Kamaluddin was, for
instance, enthusiastically received at the Muhammadan
Anglo-Oriental College of Aligarh when he went to
open its Students’ Theological Society and delivered a
lecture on “Islam in England with Christianity on the
Wane.”65
The extension of Islamic propaganda to Europe and the
United States aimed to fight “at home” an evangelical
zeal that received most of its political and financial support
from the West.66 On the one hand, Muslim missionaries
were borrowing from Christian rhetorical tools
and methods while simultaneously denouncing the
Church’s insidious propaganda in Muslim lands. On the
other hand, their Christian counterparts found in this
new Muslim missionary activity arguments to denounce
the pan-Islamic menace to Western civilisation; as for
example Samuel Zwemer who expressed concern about
finding an article on the new mosque in Berlin in a
weekly Muslim newspaper from Borneo.67 The importance
given to Ahmadiyya activities in the Christian
missionary literature of the time shows how seriously
the success gained by the “anti-Christian arguments of
this Modernist sect”68 was taken.
Despite limited resources, the Ahmadi-Lahori movement
played a pioneering role in establishing Islam in
Western Europe. It helped to bring into contact various
foreign Muslim groups – students, traders, workers,
sailors, and diplomats – with the local converts, paving
the way to an embryonic community feeling. Moreover,
Lahori missions set up networks building the very first
linkage between the various Muslim communities living
in Europe, from Spain to Poland and from England to
the Balkans.

References:
1 Sheikh Md. Din Jan, op.cit., pp. 2, 8, 11.
2 Sheikh Md. Din Jan, op.cit., pp. 15-16. Some ten students were
trained in this institution.
3 “Moslem Missionaries,” Manchester Guardian, 17 November
1913; quoted in MIIR, I/11, December 1913, p. 412. Most of those
who attended were Indians, but there were some Egyptians and
Turks.
4 “What Means this Mission,” MO, op.cit., p. 4. When articles
referred to Muslim English women, it was mentioned that they were
“wearing costly furs;” “East Meets West in London Suburb,” MS,
12 THE LIGHT AND ISLAMIC REVIEW ???? APRIL – JUNE 2009
II/4, October 1923, p. 256.
5 M. ‘Ajjan el-Hadîd, “Le Trait d’Union Oriental – Er-Râbitat Ech-
Charqîya,” Revue des Etudes Islamiques (REI – Paris), IV, 1930,
pp. 289-296. Lord Headley was also invested with the Order of the
Nahda of Arabia by the King of Hedjaz; “The Muslim Mission to
South Africa,” MO, II/55, 20 February 1926, p. 3.
6 “London Conference,” MO, II/94-95, 27 November 1926, p. 6.
7 In 1924, K. Sheldrake helped to organise the visit to UK of the
leader of the Qadian Movement; “His Holiness visits Brighton,”
RoR, XXIII/12, December 1924, pp. 446-452.
8 K. Sheldrake, “The Pioneers of Islam…” and “The First Moslem
Conference of Europe,” GI, I/1, January 1936, pp. 26, 30-31.
9 Nasir Ahmad, op.cit., pp. 22-23.
10 Ezad Bakhsh, op.cit., p. 9.
11 Nasir Ahmad, op.cit., p. 8. Hugo Marcus received his PhD. in
Vienna.
12 Ibid., p. 11.
13 He was editor of the Salisbury Journal for a couple of years; “Peer
of 58 converted to Mohammadism,” The Daily Sketch, 17
November 1913, quoted in IR, I/11, December 1913, pp. 405-406.
14 Missionaries visited the Railway Orphanage of Woking and provided
meals to children the day when the Prophet’s birthday was celebrated;
IR, IX/10, October 1921, inside front cover, and IR, XIII/12,
December 1925, p. 428.
15 “Das Echo unserer Arbeit,” MR, IV, October 1934, pp. 89-98.
16 Such a communication policy was inspired by the one developed by
the Woking Mission; see for instance the news reports taken from
six British newspapers published IR, X/6-7, June-July 1922,
pp. 250-256.
17 The Daily Telegraph of the 29th May 1922, reporting the ‘Id al-Fitr
celebration at Woking, said: “Fasting, too, was common to the
Moslem, Christian, and Jewish faiths. Purification came with fasting”;
ibid., p. 252.
18 “Das Echo unserer Arbeit,” MR, III-IV, October 1935, pp. 89-95.
19 British Pathe Ltd website listed on www.wokingmuslim.org. In
1931, the Berlin Mosque was instrumental in the hour-long programme
about ‘Id al-Fitr broadcasted on radio nationwide; Nasir
Ahmad, op.cit., p. 24.
20 One may also mention the statement entitled “What is Islam?” that
appeared on the back-page of the Review from the mid-1920s.
21 “Muslim and Esperanto,” The Crescent (Liverpool), XXXI, 8
January 1908, p. 28.
22 K. Sheldrake, “Islam and Esperanto,” MIIR, II/6, July 1914,
pp. 298-299.
23 Professor Attaur Rahman, M.A., “Birdperspektivo de la Vivo de la
Sankta Profeto,” MIIR, II/9, October 1914, p. 466. Maulvi Sadr-ud-
Din, “Mia Studado de la Biblio,” MIIR, II/11-12, December 1914,
p. 576.
24 Isma‘il Colin Evans, Islamo esperantiste rigardata, London: IKRO
1946. A Polish convert paid tribute to this book and some Lahore
publications; S. A. Khulusi, op.cit., p. 118.
25 Sheikh Md. Din Jan, op.cit., p. 19. The Anjuman stated that “Each
copy of the Light is a Missioner” to justify the money spent on the
free distribution of literature.
26 Ibid., p. 17. During WWII, Omar von Ehrenfels translated into
German Maulana Muhammad Ali’s works.
27 Ezad Bakhsh, op.cit., p. 10.
28 Sheikh Md. Din Jan, op.cit., pp. 16-17. Translation of The Holy
Quran (without Arabic text), with short notes and introduction by
Maulana Muhammad Ali, M.A., LL.B., President Ahmadiyya
Anjuman-i-Isha’at-i-Islam, Lahore: Ripon Press 1929, 747 pp., the
book was printed in 3,000 copies.
29 Maulana F. K. Khan Durrani, B.A., “A German Translation of the
Quran: A Review,” The Truth, reproduced in Genuine Islam (GI –
Singapore), III/1-2, January-February 1938, pp. 46-51.
30 Ezad Bakhsh, op.cit., p. 10. Der Heilige Koran in deutscher
Sprache mit gegenüberstehendem arabischem Text. Eingeleitet,
übers. u. eingehend erläutert von dem indischen Gelehrten u.
bekannten Korankenner Maulana Sadr-ud-Din, Berlin, 1939.
31 It differed from the Liverpool Institute – supported by the Ottoman
Sultan and the Ameer of Afghanistan –, Dr. Leitner’s Oriental
Institute of Woking – helped by the Begum of Bhopal and the
Nizam of Hyderabad – or Sayyid Ameer Ali’s London mosque project
under the patronage of the Ottoman Sultan.
32 Notwithstanding the publicity given to donors in the AAII’s newspapers,
generosity was stimulated by the visit of European converts
in India or the publication of calendars with photographs of the
Woking and Berlin mosques; IR, VIII/12, December 1920, advert
p. 464 and Nasir Ahmad, op.cit., p. 30.
33 Editor’s Notes, “Islam, usury and interest,” IR, XIII/1, January
1925, pp. 3-4; and “Letter by Sheikh A. Hafeez of New York,” IR,
XIII/2, February 1925, pp. 77-78.
34 Mulk and Millut, 18 June 1907; quoted in “Nouvelles diverses,”
RMM, II/8, June-July 1907, p. 567.
35 “La Question des banques,” RMM, IV/2, February 1908, pp. 433-
434.
36 Advert in IW (Lahore), VI/12, October 1928, inside front cover. The
bank incorporated in British India in 1912 offered “special terms for
Orphans, Widows, Students and Public Institutions.”
37 One could note that the Qadiani Mission in Berlin was located in the
American Express Co. offices; RoR, XXIII/12, December 1924,
inside front cover.
38 H. Atta Ullah, “The Problem of ‘Riba’,” MO, II/53, 6 February
1926, pp. 11-12.
39 Memons and Bohras are trading Hindu casts that converted to Islam
around the 15th century.
40 “New Workers in the Mission Field,” IR, XIII/3, March 1925,
pp. 82-83. “His Holiness Sayyed Abu Muhammad Tahir Saif-ud-
Din,” ibid., pp. 83-84.
41 “Biography of Mr. Ispahani, a prominent London merchant,” The
African Times and Orient Review (ATOR – London), IV/2, February
1917, p. 38. H. Ispahani was Vice-President of the Central Islamic
Society in London.
42 “Eid-ul-Fitr at the Mosque, Woking,” ATOR, V/2, August 1917,
p. 45.
43 Advertisement for Jules Karpelés & Co., ATOR, IV/2, February
1917, p. ii. Ispahani & Sons was based in Bombay; the family, of
Persian origin, had been settled in India for over a century.
44 Nasir Ahmad, op.cit., p. 29.
45 The Liverpool Institute initiated this practice in supporting an
“Hillal Soap– made especially for the use of Muslims and
Brahmins” manufactured by the Ali Othman & Co. of Liverpool;
adverts in The Crescent in 1908.
46 “Divine Elixir,” MO, II/55, 20 February 1926, p. 3. The Elixir could
be obtained from: “Oriental Products, Memorial House, Oriental
Road, Woking.”
47 Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, Islam and Christianity, 1931, p. vi.
Foreword thanking the generosity of Mahomet Allum Khan of
Adelaide, Australia, who made possible this publication.
APRIL – JUNE 2009 ???? THE LIGHT AND ISLAMIC REVIEW 13
48 “Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din’s Appeal,” MO, II/60, 27 March 1926, p. 7.
The booklet published in English in Woking was translated into
German by the Berlin Mission.
49 “End of a month’s fasting,” Daily News, 29 May 1922, quoted in IR,
X/6-7, June-July 1922, p. 251.
50 In 1932, these promises had not yet come to fruition; “Memoirs of
the late Rt. Hon. Syed Ameer Ali,” IC, op.cit., pp. 503-504.
51 M. H. Khan Ghori, Rabitah A‘lam-i Islami and Hyderabad Deccan,
Karachi: Darul Adab 1978; “Liaison with the Muslim World,”
pp. 181-188, translation in English kindly given to us by Mr. Nasir
Ahmad.
52 Sheikh Md. Din Jan, op.cit., p. 6.
53 Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, “Foreword,” MIIR, op.cit, p. 3.
54 “Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din’s Appeal,” MO, op.cit, p. 7.
55 Omar Rolf Ehrenfels, “Muslim women in present-day Europe,” IC,
X, 1936, pp. 471-476.
56 Ellen Fleischmann, “The Impact of American Protestant Missions
in Lebanon on the Construction of Female Identity, c.1860-1950,”
Islam and Christian Muslim Relations, XIII/4, 2002, pp. 411-426.
57 “White Wives of Brown Men. Letter by Sir John Rees, M.P.,” MIIR,
I/8, September 1913, p. 309.
58 “Polygamy a Ban” and “Interesting Debate at Cambridge on
Polygamy,” MIIR, I/2, March 1913, pp. 41, 75. “White Wives of
Brown Men. Outcasts in the Harem,” MIIR, I/6, July 1913, pp. 229-
232.
59 From a picture taken in the 1930s, women made up half of the
Berlin Mosque’s congregation; L. Günther and H.-J. Rehmer, Inder
Indien und Berlin, Berlin: Lotos 1999, p. 125.
60 M. Pickthall, “An English Lady’s Pilgrimage,” IC, VIII/4, October
1934, pp. 674-679 (article reviewing Lady Evelyn Cobbold, A
Pilgrimage to Mecca, London: J. Murray 1934).
61 Ezad Bakhsh, op.cit., p. 9. Aftab-ud-Din Ahmad, “The Status of
Woman in Islam,” IR, XXI/1-2, January-February 1933, pp. 49-58.
62 Khwâja Kamâl-ud-dîn, Islam My Only Choice, op.cit., p. 19. The
issue of “unbaptised children” had already been addressed by
Abdullah Suhrawardy, The Sayings of Muhammad, London: A.
Constable 1905, p. 28.
63 André Servier, L’islam et la Psychologie du Musulman, Paris: A.
Challamel 1923. The English translation published in London in
1924 was reviewed by Khwaja Nazir Ahmad in IR, XII/4-5, April-
May 1924, p. 170. “Arab Culture – It Is Barbarian?,” MO, II/36, 3
October 1925, pp. 10-11.
64 Rachid Rida was the vice-president of the Rabita al-Sharqiyya that
made Lord Headley and Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din honorary members.
The famous scholar seems to have borrowed some of his criticisms
of protestant literature from Lahori publications; M. ‘Ajjan el-Hadîd,
“Le Trait d’Union Oriental,” REI, op.cit., p. 291.
65 “Al-Haj Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din,” MO, I/5, 27 February 1925, p. 2.
66 Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din accused Churches in Africa of being particularly
eager to present Islam as “a barbarian creed and a menace to
civilisation”; “The Modern Religious World We Live In,” MO, I/38,
17 October 1925, pp. 11-12.
67 Basil Mathews, op.cit., pp. 23-24.
68 Rev. A.R. Hampson, The Mission to Moslems in Cape Town, January
1934, Cape Town, p. 9.

The Islamic Light (USA) (April–May 2009)

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The First Muslim Missions on a European Scale:

April 30th, 2012

Ahmadi-Lahori Networks in the Inter-War Period

By Eric Germain

Introduction:

The origins of Muslim missions in Europe An article first published in Austria and reproduced

in 1909 in several Russian Muslim newspapers presented a picture of Islamic propaganda in Western Europe at that time.1

It shed light on two countries: Germany, where Islam was promoted by a couple of converts, and England with a far more organized propaganda spread by the Liverpool Institute of Abdullah (William Henry) Quilliam (1856-1932). One shall highlight the pioneering work done by this small institute, which paved the way for the various Muslim organisations emerging after Quilliam’s departure to Turkey in 1908. Through weekly and monthly papers, pamphlets, public lectures and letters to the local press, the Liverpool Institute developed a specific communication style in which securing converts became an essential part of its agenda for the defence of Islam.2

In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the Institute established a correspondence with Muslims from several places across Europe, sending its magazines to Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, Greece, Bulgaria, and also Crete, Malta and Gibraltar.3

Shaikh Abdullah Quilliam claimed that “scarcely a week passes without an extract from one of our journals being quoted in some other publication,” adding that he regarded this “as one of the most important features of our [missionary] work.”4

The mission that Khwaja Kamaluddin (1870-1932) founded in Woking (Surrey) reactivated and increased Quilliam’s English reading public throughout Europe and within the British Empire. Its propaganda effort was a direct response to the worldwide intensification of Christian proselytism among Muslim populations. This new missionary zeal grew together with an “evangelical Orientalism”5 exemplified by the periodical The Moslem World founded by the Reverend Samuel Zwemer in London in 1911.6

In the foreword of the first issue of his monthly newspaper, Khwaja Kamaluddin expressed his determination to challenge the “campaign against Islam” orchestrated by this “pseudo-Muslim paper, under the name of the Moslem World.”7

The Indian barrister arrived in London in September 1912 to plead the legal case of a Bombay businessman and started to give public lectures on Islam. 8

Prominent member of the Ahmadiyya movement, Khwaja Kamaluddin quickly gained control of the vacant mosque of Woking – about twenty-five miles to the South-West of London – to base his Muslim Mission and Literary Trust. One may be surprised to

see that the launching of this European Muslim mission was initiated from the remote Indian city of Lahore. That was precisely the point questioned by a book entitled “Young Islam on Trek, a study of the clash of civilizations,” stressing in 1926 that “it is Indian Islam that has built the mosques and finances the able propaganda at Woking and at Berlin.” 9

How an Indian movement became the voice of Islam in Europe The movement founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (c.1836-1908) was registered by the Government of India in the 1901 Census as a “distinct Mohammedan sect.” Soon after the death of its founder, the Ahmadiyya community split in two antagonistic groups. The majority of its members joined the Qadian Party 10 which proclaimed the prophethood of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, whereas a minority group based in Lahore spoke of the “Promised Mahdi and Messiah” as a mujaddid (a renewer of his century as known in the Sunni orthodoxy). In 1914 the latter group founded the Ahmadiyya Anjuman-i-Isha’at-iIslam (Ahmadiyya Society for the Propagation of Islam, styled thereafter by its Urdu acronym AAII) under the leadership of Maulana Muhammad Ali (1874-1951). When Khwaja Kamaluddin decided to join the Lahore Party, the mission he had just founded in England became the spearhead of an IslamoChristian dialogue/controversy that soon developed into a distinctive feature of this branch of the Ahmadiyya.

Engaging Christian Churches in an assumed polemical argument Indian Muslims studying in British universities showed interest in the historical interaction between Europe and Islam. Such curiosity is illustrated by the translation made by the young barrister Haroon Khan Sherwani of the classic French book on the incursions of Saracens into France and Switzerland, a text published as a serial story in the Indian Muslim press.11

In launching a European Muslim mission, Khwaja Kamaluddin placed his action within a resolute historical perspective, claiming that “the fate of the Moors in Spain awaits us everywhere, and our annihilation is only a question of time.” 12

He claimed that it was the Christian missionary propaganda that made possible the atrocities currently suffered by

Muslims in the Balkan wars. In order to “counteract the poison thus created,” Khwaja Kamaluddin called upon his Indian brethren to collect the means to allow the free circulation of his Islamic Review among members of Parliament and the Church as well as the numerous clubs and libraries of Great Britain.

More than simple lobbying work, he expressed the ambition to undertake “the dissemination of Islam in Western lands” saying that “the trend of modern philosophy, ethics and socialism is towards Islam.”13

Such a self-confident attitude was shared by a growing number of intellectuals, including one who lamented in a Lahore paper of 1907 that “in Muslim countries, governments as individuals have abandoned all idea of proselytism.”14

As a religious minority, Indian Muslims felt particularly threatened by the Christian missionary propaganda conducted since the beginning of the nineteenth century.15

Mission schools were ironically instrumental in forming the new Western educated elite that engaged itself in “counter-missionary” work. Such was the case of Khwaja Kamaluddin who, during his studies at the Forman Christian College of Lahore, acquired a fairly good knowledge of the Bible. 16

In England, the eloquent barrister was particularly willing to engage himself into IslamoChristian debates. On several occasions he was requested to address Christian audiences about Islam17 and, in July 1913, travelled to Paris to speak at an Interfaith Congress convened by liberal Christians. 18

After the war, the founder of the Woking Mission adopted an increasingly polemical discourse targeting the kind of evangelists such as Samuel Zwemer who was accused of engineering “slanders against Islam.” 19

On the one hand, Lahori missionaries questioned the validity of the Christian scriptures by raising contradictions and variations in the accounts of the four Evangelists or mocking some doctrines like the Trinity or the virgin birth of Jesus. 20

The defence of Islam, on the other hand, focused mainly on questions such as the authenticity of the Qur’anic revelation, the holy war, slavery, polygamy and the position of women.

On Kamaluddin’s rhetorical talents, it is interesting to quote the opinion of William “Muhammad” Marmaduke Pickthall. 21 The famous British convert stated that he “had a gift for summing up a train of arguments in striking form” and “unlike much polemical writing it is not devoid of literary grace.”22 Khwaja Kamaluddin showed a true ability to reach an audience having little or no knowledge of Islam, a quality that, according to M. Pickthall, was lacking to most “Muslim ‘missionary’ publications” of the time. Even within the same movement, there was a noticeable difference between publications from Woking and the ones issued in Lahore. Commenting on a book by Maulana Muhammad Ali, the same M. Pickthall stressed that its argument and style were the ones of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), which “differ from that of Christian polemics and can only be appreciated in the West by the few who have already made some study of Islâm.”23 Muslim missions in Europe brought a true added value to the worldwide effort of Islamic propaganda by publishing a popular kind of literature rather like those question/ answer dialogues and compilations containing favourable references to Islam from famous western writers.24

An apolitical discourse securing official
Recognition

The little mosque at Woking was built in 1889, as part of the educational complex that Gottlieb Leitner – a former registrar of the University of Punjab, Lahore – dedicated to the study of oriental languages and civilisations. When the institution closed after the death of
Dr. Leitner in 1899, the mosque remained open on only rare occasions.25 One such event was the visit of Abdul Baha to Woking on January 1913.26 The head of the Baha’i Faith announced, on behalf of the heir of Dr. Leitner, that “the mosque would in future be open for Muhammadans to worship at any time they pleased.”27 A Trust for guardianship of the mosque was then created with a membership made up of three public figures having strong connexions with India –
the Right Hon. Sayyid Ameer Ali, Sir Mirza Abbas Ali Baig and Sir Thomas Arnold28 – who appointed Khwaja Kamaluddin as imam of the mosque. One could hardly consider that this appointment would have been made without the implicit consent of the India Office.

In his Memoirs, Sayyid Ameer Ali regretted that the inner city of London did not possess a “suitable place of worship for the Moslem subjects of the king and Moslem visitors coming to England.”29As a matter of fact it was the Woking Mosque that fulfilled the need and, as its first imam, Khwaja Kamaluddin could present himself as the paramount Muslim authority for London and the whole kingdom. In 1924, the mission claimed to assume a spiritual leadership not only
over the thirty persons who regularly attended prayers at the mosque, but also over “the thousand British Muslims scattered about the country and the 10,000 Muslims from overseas.”30 The British press acknowledged the pre-eminence of Khwaja Kamaluddin, referring to him as the “Very Reverend,” on the analogy of the Chief Rabbi.31 The Woking Mission constantly reinforced its status and prestige by the visit of diplomats and Muslim dignitaries. The bucolic setting of the Surrey mosque saw princes and begums from India, African chiefs
and Arab sovereigns.32 A trip to Woking became part of the usual agenda of foreign leaders coming to London, such as the Emperor Haile Selassie in 1936.

In March of the same year, the former Prime Minister Lloyd George chose this mosque to deliver a speech on “Islam and the British Empire” in front of an audience made up of “ambassadors and ministers, charges d’affaires, London mayors, ex-governors of Indian
provinces and famous Oriental scholars.”33 Illustrious visitors helped the mission to present itself as the heart of Islam in Great Britain as is shown by the name chosen for the telegraphic address of the mosque: “Islamabad” (City of Islam).34

The Woking Mission gave a positive image of Islam in UK and attested to the benevolent attitude of the Crown towards its Muslim subjects. If Woking publications denounced prejudice against Muslims in the Empire, Khwaja Kamaluddin stated that “sedition and anarchical movements are haram, and strictly prohibited in Islam.”35 Wartime censorship influenced the
content of Muslim India and the Islamic Review, which focussed even more on religious and social issues (significantly, the title was shortened in Islamic Review in 1921). Such a restrained political stance was common to most Muslim organisations in Britain at that time,36 but the Ahmadiyya’s unequivocal condemnation of jihad (in its martial sense) surely made a decisive argument to generate sympathy. With the outbreak of the war, the mission tried to take advantage of its long-claimed loyalty by petitioning the government officially to be in charge of the plot opened for the burial of Muslim soldiers at the Woking Cemetery.37 The imam supported his demand by pointing to the spiritual task that the mission fulfilled in hosting Indian soldiers coming on leave to Woking. Khwaja Kamaluddin kept on enlarging contacts with members of influential circles of British society that felt attracted by new thoughts and “exotic” oriental religions. The Lahori barrister was particularly keen to debate with other faiths and was “often requested to address the Theosophists, Spiritualists, leaders of New Thought.”38 He was one of those Muslim intellectuals who found inspiration in the modern methods deployed by the flourishing alternative spiritualities.

This was also the case of the London Central Islamic Society which aimed to “establish branches in England and all over Europe like those of the Theosophical and other world-important societies.”39 This wish was realised by the AAII whose leader announced the launching of a German mission at the Annual Conference of December 1921.40
In Germany, a country dispossessed of its colonies, Indians like other Muslims from the British Empire found a space where they could have relative free speech on many political subjects.41 The presence at the Berlin Mission Mosque of Indian revolutionaries such as Maulvi Barakatullah or the Arab activist Shakib Arslan might have indicated a more political
inclination of the German mission. Nevertheless, from the reading of their publications, it seems that Berlin missionaries did not use this extraterritoriality to be more critical about British policy towards its Muslim colonial populations.

The founding of the first mosque of Berlin to reach continental Europe Muslim students in Europe were a key target for Lahori missionaries as those educated young men could bring time and energy to the propaganda work. The AAII expressed its willingness to reach this audience by offering special prices to students who subscribed to its publications.42 Among Indian students, a prominent figure was the great poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal who came to Cambridge in 1905 and received his Ph.D. in Munich three years later.43 Despite the harsh material conditions of the post-war period, Germany remained an attractive
place for Indian students. The Muslim press of Lahore encouraged this trend saying that “if
Afghanistan can send twenty-five students in Berlin, India ought to be able to send a thousand.”44 The fact that Germany was the second most popular overseas destination for Indian students surely motivated the opening of a second mission in Berlin.45

In the aftermath of WWI, Khwaja Kamaluddin visited France, Belgium and Germany to study the conditions for extending missionary activities in Continental Europe.46 On his advice, the Lahore headquarters decided to open a mission in Berlin and sent Maulvi Abdul Majid who arrived at the end of 1922 followed a couple of months later by Maulvi Sadr-ud-Din.47 A missionary from the rival Qadian movement stated that Muslim propaganda expected
the greatest achievements “among a people whom defeat and humiliation have sobered a good deal, and whose hearts are now turned from materialism to things spiritual.”48 The success met by the German Mission in the cosmopolitan Berliner Muslim community might be attributed to the “outsider” image of Indian Islam. It allowed the mission to play the benevolent mediator between the numerous Muslim movements organised on national lines. The building of a superb mosque located in a smart residential area49 of Berlin was designed to be a landmark
asserting the perennial presence of Islam in the heart of Europe. Drawings and pictures of the
Brienner St. mosque were circulating in the Muslim press all over the world; the architecture of the mosque had to be sumptuous, even if its dimensions made it difficult to heat during the long winter. Despite its lavish Mogul style, the building was in search of symbols of its European character such as those Arabic calligraphies crowning the inside dome of the mosque reproduced from the Alhambra palace.50 The reference to the Andalusian “golden
age” of European Islam, common in the discourse of Lahori missionaries, was part of the propaganda function assigned to the mosque. The adjacent hostel was built to accommodate the imam and “at least four missionaries” showing that Berlin was expected to become the headquarters for itinerant missionaries to the Balkans, Central and Eastern Europe.51

In August 1932, the imam of the Berlin Mosque passed through Austria and Czechoslovakia “with a view to gain insight as to the possibilities of spreading Islam there.”52 He came in contact with several Muslims who were propagating their faith “individually in their circles of influence.” At the same time, another missionary from Berlin, S. M. Abdullah, was in Lahore along with the Baron Omar (Rolf) Freiherr von Ehrenfels (1901-1980).53 The Austrian convert had first heard about the Berlin Mosque from an imam of Sarajevo, while he was travelling in Yugoslavia.54 Back from his journey to India, the aristocrat founded the short-lived Vienna Muslim Mission in 1934.55 The same year, the AAII envis envisaged launching a new mission in Spain, probably
with the idea of securing help from the Arab students of Madrid and Granada who had founded in 1933 a review in Spanish published under the evocative title Al-Andalus.56 For this purpose a fund was raised and regularly advertised in The Light that proposed to name the ‘Id al-Adha of 1934 “Spain Day.”57 At this celebration presided over by Maulana Muhammad Ali, a medical student volunteered to go to Spain. It is interesting to note that articles from the Lahore
newspaper dealing with the Spanish Mission were translated to Albanian and published in the Tirana journal Zani i naltë.58 Albania, the only country in Europe with a Muslim majority, was of great interest to Lahori missionaries. 59 The Muslim press from Punjab expressed concern
about the progress made by Christian missions to Muslims in the Balkans, and the AAII was eager to help Muslim communities living in those countries.60 Among them, Albania was considered as the European outpost of dar al-Islam (land of Islam), a present day Andalusia, and a gateway to gain access to Muslim populations spread throughout the Balkans.61 The keen interest in Europe’s historic Muslim communities led the Berlin Mission to secure contacts with Tatars from Finland and Poland; a Tatar from Poland had translated several Lahori books and
in 1929 contemplated starting a paper in Polish “on the style of The Light.”62

Opposition to Lahori missions
The desire for control of the financial resources collected among Muslims throughout the British Empire led to an increasing competition between the various Missionary organisations. In 1936, the ex-Secretary of the London Muslim Society argued that his main objection to Woking’s activities was motivated by the fact that the mission was channelling the largest part of funds coming from the Muslim world towards its own trust.63 Newcomers in the field of Islamic propaganda had to present themselves as more orthodox than their “competitors” and constantly outbid them in a battle of image.

At the time the Woking Mission was launched, the only organisation of some importance in England was the Central Islamic Society. The fact that “the oldest Muslim institution in the British Isles” could not achieve what the Woking Mission did in a short time created a good deal of jealousy among some of its members. This is quite noticeable in the foreword of a leaflet from the Islamic Society. While acknowledging the good work undertaken by the Woking
Trust, it recommends “to keep the missionary work separate and limited in its scope.”64 However, such resentment could not have been expressed more openly as the imam of Woking was also a member of the Managing Committee of the Islamic Society… In Berlin, the Lahori mission met with hostility from the Islamische Gemeinde founded in 1922 by two Indian brothers,65 but the most serious competitors were the Qadiani missionaries.

Soon after Khwaja Kamaluddin affiliated the Woking Trust to the newly founded AAII,66 the Qadian headquarters tried to establish their own mission in England.67 Its opening in 1919 may have benefited from the slowing down of Woking’s activity after Khwaja Kamaluddin had to depart for India the very same year owing to his deteriorating health.68 In 1924, the spiritual head of the Qadian movement came to England to lay the first stone of the Mission Mosque
in the south-west London suburb of Southfields.69 The opening two years later of the “first London Mosque” was announced at the same time as the inauguration of the Paris Mosque and the Qadian movement played on this coincidence in its publicity.70 Qadianis shared with Lahoris a similar approach to how Muslim propaganda should operate and were struggling to represent
the voice of Islam in the interfaith conferences organised in Europe.71 In 1924, Qadianis were operating in London and Berlin and a third mission was even planned to open in Greece.72

At the grass-roots, there was a somewhat blurred frontier between the two branches of the Ahmadiyya. Despite their assumed rivalry, Qadiani newspapers mentioned the work accomplished by Lahori missions, and it was not uncommon to find people who
subscribed to both Qadiani and Lahori newspapers.73 In England, some people attended celebrations in Woking as well as in Southfields.74 It is difficult to know whether they were fully aware of the conflict between the two groups, but such a confusion was somehow more convenient for the Qadianis whose impact on the European scene was less important in
the inter-war period. One could not say the same for Lahori missions, which suffered from the “anti- Ahmadi” campaign that grew in India at the beginning of the 1930s.

After Khwaja Kamaluddin’s death in December 1932, the Woking Trust became attacked more often for its link with the Lahore branch of the Ahmadiyya. Opposition to Ahmadi missions in Europe was supported by the All Malaya Muslim Missionary Society and its newspaper, Genuine Islam, published in Singapore.75 Aiming to carry on work “in Europe, America, Japan, Australia and Africa,”76 this new organisation led by Maulana M. A. Siddiqui became a direct rival to Ahmadi missions. The Society was eager to stress its difference in targeting more specifically “the Lahori sect of the Qadianees.”77

The expression is not innocent because we know that in the 1930s several Egyptian and Indian fatwas hadalready condemned Qadianis for being “outside the pale of Islam,” whereas the Lahore movement was still considered by many as a modernist, atypical, but orthodox Sunni group. This positive image explains why the Muslim Missionary Society focussed on trying to undermine the esteem that Lahori missions had gained all over Europe.78 The Singapore-based organisation wrote to Hlas, the monthly Islamic journal of Prague, to warn Czechoslovak Muslims against translating Muhammad Ali’s articles.79 The first issue of Genuine Islam proudly announced the results of a campaign calling on European Muslims to “sever all connections with Mirzais.”80 This campaign received support from some leaders of the Muslim Society of
Great Britain who were evicted after the Woking Trust took over the association at the end of 1934. Its former secretary argued that “the Woking Mission teaches nothing about Ahmadi doctrines,” but denounced an “indirect Ahmadi influence” in the “Salvation Army, milk-and-water, or Christened Islam” presented by the mission. 81

References
1 “Europe,” Revue du Monde Musulman (RMM – Paris), X/1, January 1910, p. 103.

2 John J. Pool, Studies in Mohammedanism. Historical and Doctrinal. With a chapter on Islam in England,
Westminster: A. Constable, 1892, p. xiv. He mentioned Quilliam’s propaganda made in England as threatening the success of Christian missions in India, China, and Africa.

3 “Annual Meeting of the Liverpool Muslim Institute,” The Islamic World (IW – Liverpool), IV/39, July 1896,
pp. 65-93, see pp. 82, 86. The Institute was on the exchange list of European journals written in English,
French, German, Dutch, Russian, Spanish, Bulgarian and Rumanian.

4 W. H. Quilliam, “Our Literature,” IW (Liverpool), IV/39, July 1896, pp. 77-78.

5 Expression taken from Avril Powell who refers to the way that missionaries like C. G. Pfander studied Arabic and Persian sources in order to demonstrate how Islam “fell short of Christianity;” A. Powell, Muslims and Missionaries in Pre-Mutiny India, Richmond: Curzon 1993, pp. 144-151.

6 Samuel Marinus Zwemer (1867–1952) founded the Arabian Mission of the Dutch Reformed Church and
was for 36 years the editor of the Moslem World.

7 Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, “Foreword,” Muslim India and the Islamic Review (IR – Woking), I/1, February 1913, pp. 1-4, see p. 1.

8 “To the Memory of Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din,” IR, 50th anniversary volume, 1962. He gave his first lectures at the Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner and in meetings of British theological societies.

9 Basil Mathews, Young Islam on Trek. A study of the clash of civilizations, London: Edinburgh House Press 1926, p. 120.

10 The movement was generally called after Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s hometown in Punjab where it had its
headquarters.

11 Translation of J. Reinaud’s book (1836) by Haroon Khan Sherwani, “Incursions of the Muslims into
France, Piemont and Switzerland,” Islamic Culture (IC – Hyderabad), from January to October 1930 (IV/1 to IV/4).

12 “The Message of the Khwaja,” The Review of Religions (RoR – Qadian), May 1913, pp. 210-219, on line on www.wokingmuslim.org

13 Ibid.

14 Article from the Lahore-based The Observer quoted in “L’Avenir de l’Islam,” RMM, III/11-12, November- December 1907, p. 599.

15 A. Powell, op.cit., p. 229. The Ahmadiyya fought anti-Muslims polemics launched in India by Christian missionaries and Hindu revivalists from the Arya Samaj.

16 “Can Dogmas Rule The Religious World?,” The Moslem Outlook (MO – Cape Town), II/58, 13 March
1926, p. 13.

17 “What Means this Mission,” MO, II/62, 10 April 1926, p. 4.

18 Special Features of Islam, a paper read by Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din at the Sixth Congress of Religions, in Paris, on July 19, 1913, London: J.S. Phillips 1913, 16 pp.

19 Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, Message of Islam, London/ Woking: Unwin Brothers 1927, p. 5.
20 Those arguments were often taken from the numerous books written by European rationalist thinkers
throughout the nineteenth century.

21 Marmaduke Pickthall (1875-1936) was a novelist and Qur’anic translator known for The Meaning of the Glorious Koran, New York: A. Knopf 1930.

22 Marmaduke Pickthall, “The Claim of Islam,” IC, VIII/3, July 1934, pp. 506-507.

23 M. Pickthall, “The Perfect Polity,” IC, X/4, October 1936, pp. 659-662. In this posthumous article, he
reviewed Maulana Muhammad Ali’s The Religion of Islâm, Lahore: Ahmadiyyah Anjuman Ishâ’at Islâm
1936.

24 See Dr. H. Marcus, “The Message of the Holy Prophet Muhammad to Europe,” IR, XX/6-7, 8, 9, June to September 1932, pp. 222-239, 268-278, 281-286. These articles were also edited as a tract distributed by the AAII in thousands of copies; Ezad Bakhsh, 19th Annual Report of the AAII from 1st October 1931 to
30th September 1932, p. 12.

25 Such as for the memorial service of the death of Shah of Persia in 1907 or an ‘Id whose prayers were led by Abdullah Suhrawardy; “First Eid in England (1903),” Daily Dawn (Karachi), 10-16 June 1999, p. 13, quoted in N. Ahmad, “G. W. Leitner,” on www.wokingmuslim. Org

26 The Baha’i Faith was founded by Baha’ullah who was succeeded in 1892 by his eldest son Abdul Baha (1844-1921). Its initial expansion in the West was confined in the USA, despite the founding of branches in Britain and Germany in 1923; Peter Smith, The Babi and Baha’i religions, Cambridge: CUP 1987, pp. 106, 181.

27 W.M.C.M., “Abdul Baha’s visit to Woking – a memorable gathering,” The Asiatic Quarterly Review
(London), I/2 (New Series), April 1913, pp. 225-236.

28 Sayyid Ameer Ali was a former member of the Indian Judicial Committee (1849-1928), T. W. Arnold (1864-1930) a renowned Orientalist scholar, and Abbas Ali Baig (d. 1933) acted in the Council of the Secretary of State for India as its Muslim advisory member; Dr. Ashiq Husain Batalvi’s account on www.wokingmuslim.org.

29 “Memoirs of the late Rt. Hon. Syed Ameer Ali,” IC, VI/4, October 1932, pp. 503-525, see pp. 503-504.

30 Peter Clark, Marmaduke Pickthall: British Muslim, London: Quartet Books 1986, p. 41.

31 Ibid., p. 40.

32 Some political activists visited Woking like Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Adal Arslan, brother of
Shakib Arslan; Aftab-ud-Din Ahmad, “East meet West in Oriental Road,” IR, XX/4, April 1932, pp. 101-103, see p. 103.

33 Morning Post, 9 March 1936, quoted in Simon Naylor and James Ryan, “The Mosque in the suburbs: negotiating religion and ethnicity in South London,” Social & Cultural Geography, III/1, 2002, pp. 39-59, see p. 51. JANUARY – MARCH 2009 ???? THE LIGHT AND ISLAMIC REVIEW 13

34 The Times, 12 July 1935, quoted in S. Naylor and J. Ryan, ibid., p. 51.

35 “Message of the Khwaja” [letter addressed to the meeting of the All-India Muslim League in Lucknow], RoR, May 1913, pp. 210-219, on www.wokingmuslim.org

36 Commenting on the project of founding Urdu newspapers in Istanbul and in Switzerland, M. H. Kidwai of the London Pan-Islamic Society suggested that those newspapers “shall restrain themselves from discussing Indian politics”; “Journaux ourdous,” RMM, VI/11, November 1908, pp. 571-572.
37 The Central Islamic Society, The Central Islamic Society and its Need – An Appeal, Woking/London:
Unwin Brothers 1916, p. 5.

38 “Can Dogmas Rule The Religious World?,” MO, op.cit., p. 13.

39 The Central Islamic Society, op.cit., p. 6.

40 Nasir Ahmad, A Brief History of the Berlin Muslim Mission (1922-1988), 2004, 52 pp., see p. 3 (on www.aaiil.org).

41 Berlin hosted Egyptian activists fighting British imperialism; Joseph Castagné, “Les Indes et l’Egypte vues de Russie,” RMM, LIX, 1st trimester 1925, pp. 213- 271, see p. 264 .

42 For example, students had a 40% discount on the annual subscription to the English weekly The Light; Ezad Bakhsh, op.cit., adverts appearing on the last page.

43 M. Iqbâl (1873-1938) studied at the University of Lahore where he attended Sir Thomas Arnold’s lectures; his education illustrates the link between India, England and Germany that we find in the Lahori network.

44 “Afghan King at Berlin,” The Islamic World (IW –Lahore), VI/6, April 1928, p. 226.

45 This choice was not obvious as one of the capitals of countries with large colonial Muslim populations, such as France or the Netherlands, could also have been a suitable option.

46 “What Means this Mission,” MO, op.cit., p. 4.

47 “The Berlin Mosque,” IR, XIII/3, March 1925, pp. 81- 82.

48 “Ahmadia News Abroad,” The Moslem Sunrise (MS –Chicago), II/2-3, April-July 1923, p. 196.

49 This residential area was also chosen, at the same period, for the building of the Berlin Russian Orthodox Church. The minarets of the mosque were completed in 1927; C. H. Seiler-Chan, op.cit., p. 116.

50 Those calligraphies may have been drawn from an article by Prof. O. Tallgren on the decorative inscriptions of the Alhambra reviewed by M. Pickthall in IC, IV/2, April 1930, pp. 329-330.

51 “The Berlin Mosque,” IR, op.cit., pp. 81-82.

52 Ezad Bakhsh, op.cit, pp. 9-10.

53 Opposed to Nazis, he left Austria for India in 1938 where he led an Academic career at the Madras
University; S. A. Khulusi, Islam Our Choice, Woking: Muslim Mission & Literary Trust 1963 (2nd ed),
pp. 234-235.

54 Baron Omar Rolf Ehrenfels, “An die Schriftleitung der „Moslemischen Revue“,” MR, X/2-3, April-July 1934, pp. 43-44. I am grateful to Fikret Karci???? for having identified this “imam Knobegovi????” met by Ehrenfels as Abdullah effendi Kurbegovi???? (1873-1933) who had been military imam in Vienna from 1904 to 1915.

55 Syed Muhammad Hussain Shah, Annual Report for the year 1933-34 of the Ahmadiyya Anjuman-i-Isha’at-i-Islam Lahore (A Digest), 1934, p. 4.

56 The second volume of Al-Andalus was reviewed in Islamic Culture (VIII/3, July 1934, pp. 508-509), the
Hyderabad newspaper being on an exchange list with the Moslemische Revue.

57 Syed Md. Hussain Shah, op.cit., p. 4.

58 “The first voluntary for a Mission in Spain” (translated from The Light by H. Selami), Zani i naltë (Tirana), X/2, February 1935, pp. 56-58. Thanks to Nathalie Clayer who brought this article to my attention.

59 Nathalie Clayer, “La Ahmadiyya Lahori et la réforme de l’islam albanais dans l’entre-deux-guerres,” in V. Bouillier and C. Servan-Schreiber (eds), De l’Arabie à l’Himalaya, chemin croisés, Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose 2004, pp. 211-228.

60 Dr. Freytag, “German Missions to Muslims in the Balkans,” IW (Lahore), VI/12, October 1928, p. 417.

61 Sheikh Muhammad Din Jan, Annual Report for the year 1928-29 of the Ahmadiyya Anjuman-i-Isha’at-i- Islam Lahore, 1929, p. 14.

62 Ibid.

63 Ahmed Bennet, “Why I Resigned from the Secretaryship of the Muslim Society in Great Britain,”
GI, I/1, January 1936, p. 28, objecting that “the Woking Mission draws its funds from the WHOLE of
the Muslim world.”

64 The Central Islamic Society, op.cit., pp. 5-6.

65 K. Sheldrake, “The Pioneers of Islam in England, France, Germany and America,” GI, I/1, January 1936, p. 26. The Lahori mission was a direct rival of Abdul Sattar and Abdul Jabbar Khairi’s own mosque project.

66 This affiliation was not clearly stated as the Woking Mission was proud to “count among its zealous supporters Sunnis, Shias, Ahl-i-Hadis, Ahmadis, Bowahirs (Bohras), Khojas, and every other school of thought in Islam”; “Editor’s Notes,” IR, XIII/3, March 1925, p. 84.

67 A first missionary from Qadian briefly sojourned in London in 1914; S. Naylor and J. Ryan, op.cit., p.45. 14 THE LIGHT AND ISLAMIC REVIEW ???? JANUARY – MARCH 2009

68 “Ahmadia Moslem Mission News Abroad,” MS, I/1, July 1921, p. 20.

69 “The First Mosque in London,” RoR, XXIII/12, December 1924, p. 428.

70 “New London Mosque” and “Islam in Paris,” MO, II/82, 28 August 1926, p. 11.

71 If the Qadiani Abdur-Rahman Dard attended the Geneva Universal Congress of Religious Forces for
Peace, it was a Lahori who spoke at the Congress of Religious Liberals in St Gallen; Union des Eglises
pour la Paix, Les religions contre la guerre, Paris, 1929, p. 32. Ezad Bakhsh, op.cit., p. 9.

72 The other foreign missions were in the USA, the Gold Coast, Mauritius and Egypt; RoR, XXIII/12, December 1924, inside front cover. “Moslem Mission News Abroad,” MS, I/1, July 1921, p. 20.

73 “One day Christians,” in RoR, XXIII/2, February 1924, p. 75. “Congratulations,” MS, III/2, April 1924, p. 74.

74 Afghan diplomats as well as Abdullah Quilliam attended ‘Id in Southfields in 1922 and in Woking in 1925; “Ahmadia News Abroad,” MS, I/6, October 1922, pp. 140-142 and “General,” MO, op.cit., p. 3.

75 The All Malaya Muslim Missionary Society was founded in 1931 by Maulana Muhammad Abdul
Aleem Siddiqui Al-Qadri and the first issue of Genuine Islam appeared on January 1936.

76 “Reception to Famous Muslim Missionary,” GI, III/9, September 1938, pp. 304-305.

77 “Truth about Qadianism,” GI, III/1-2, January- February 1938, pp. 43-45. In the same issue “Islamic
pictures from Denmark, Poland and Germany” were published.

78 The Muslim Missionary Society tried to establish a foothold in Poland and published pictures of the Wilno Mosque and of the Grand Mufti of Poland, GI, 02- 1938, vol. III, no. 1-2, p. 32.

79 M. A. Brickcius’ letter published in GI, III/10, October 1938, pp. 365-367.

80 “Ahmadi Propaganda,” GI, I/1, January 1936, p. 35. “Mirzai” was the pejorative name given to Ahmadis (Qadianis as well as Lahoris) referring to the founder of the movement Mirza Ghulam Ahmad.

81 Ahmed Bennet, “Why I Resigned…,” GI, op.cit., p. 28.

82 Daily Zamindar, 30 August 1936, quoted in GI, III/1-2, January-February 1938, p. 56.

www.muslim.org/light/licht091.pdf

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Female circumcision anger aired in India

April 23rd, 2012

NEW DELHI: Eleven years ago, Farida Bano was circumcised by an aunt on a bunk bed in her family home at the end of her 10th birthday party.

The mutilation occurred not in Africa, where the practice is most prevalent, but in India where a small Muslim sub-sect known as the Dawoodi Bohra continues to believe that the removal of the clitoris is the will of God.

“We claim to be modern and different from other Muslim sects. We are different but not modern,” Bano, a 21-year-old law graduate who is angry about what was done to her, told AFP in New Delhi.

She vividly remembers the moment in the party when the aunt pounced with a razor blade and a pack of cotton wool.

While the sect bars other Muslims from its mosques, it sees itself as more liberal, treating men and women equally in matters of education and marriage.

The community’s insistence on “Khatna” (the excision of the clitoris) also sets it apart from others on the subcontinent.

“If other Muslims are not doing it then why are we following it?” Bano says.

For generations, few women in the tightly-knit community have spoken out in opposition, fearing that to air their grievances would be seen as an act of revolt frowned upon by their elders.

But an online campaign is now encouraging them to join hands to bury the custom.

The anti-Khatna movement gained momentum after Tasneem, a Bohra woman who goes by one name, posted an online petition at the social action platform Change.org in November last year.

She requested their religious leader, the 101-year-old Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin, ban female genital mutilation, the consequences of which afflict 140 million women worldwide according to the World Health Organisation.

Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin is the 52nd Dai-al Mutalaq (absolute missionary) of the community and has sole authority to decide on all spiritual and temporal matters.

Every member of the sect takes an oath of allegiance to the leader, who lives in western city of Mumbai.

When contacted by AFP, Burhanuddin’s spokesman, Qureshi Raghib, ruled out any change and said he had no interest in talking about the issue.

“I have heard about the online campaign but Bohra women should understand that our religion advocates the procedure and they should follow it without any argument,” he said.

A gathering protest

But over 1,600 Bohra Muslim women have since signed the online petition.

Many describe the pain they experienced after the procedure and urge their leader to impose a ban.

“The main motive behind Khatna is that women should never enjoy sexual intercourse. We are supposed to be like dolls for men,” 34-year-old Tabassum Murtaza, who lives in the western city of Surat, told AFP by telephone.

The World Health Organisation has campaigned against the practice, saying it exposes millions of girls to dangers ranging from infections, hemorrhaging, complicated child-birth, or hepatitis from unsterilised tools.

In the Middle East, it is still practised in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan and Syria.

“It is an atrocity committed under the cloak of religion,” says Murtaza, who along with her husband was asked to leave their family home when they refused to get their daughter circumcised.

“My mother-in-law said there was no room for religious disobedience and we should move out if we cannot respect the custom,” she explained. “It is better to live on the street than humiliate your daughter’s body.”

Speaking out

Asghar Ali Engineer, a Bohra Muslim and expert on Islamic jurisprudence, has known the dangers of fighting for reform.

He has authored over 40 books proposing changes, particularly around the status of women, and has been attacked by hardliners inside a mosque in Egypt and had his house trashed by opponents.

While both France and the United States have laws enabling the prosecution of immigrants who perform female circumcisions, the practice remains legal in India and Engineer expects this to remain the case.

“Female circumcision is clearly a violation of human rights, the Indian government refuses to recognise it as a crime because the practice has full-fledged religious backing,” he said.

“No government has the courage to touch a religious issue in India even if the practice is a crime against humanity.”

He says many fathers are simply unaware of the damage they are doing by following the custom.

“I prevented my wife from getting our daughters circumcised but in many cases even fathers are not aware of the pain their daughters experience,” he says.

Dawn. Karachi. 23.4.2012.

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WHO was Master Abdul Qudoos Ahmad?

April 19th, 2012

Nasir Abbas

How would you know even if you care? The 43-year-old schoolteacher’s story received scant attention in the media.

Described by his students and peers as a well-known and ‘much-loved’ schoolteacher, perhaps far more ominously for him, he was also the president of the Nusratabad chapter of the Jamaat-i-Ahmadiyya in Rabwah.

He was taken into custody on Feb 10 after a murder in his area. There were no warrants, no police remand. Since the man was never formally charged or even remanded in police custody, wouldn’t one be right in assuming him to be innocent?

While in custody, apart from the routine ‘hang him upside down and beat him black and blue till he confesses’, the schoolteacher was also pinned to the floor by policemen holding his legs and arms and a weighted wooden down roller run over him causing untold internal injuries.

He was released without charge some 46, yes 46, days later. In fact, his family were told by the police to take him home as he was unwell. He had been subjected to severe torture. The family were made to sign a blank piece of paper.

From the police station, the family took Master Qudoos to hospital where doctors tried to revive his crushed body. Four days later, ongoing ‘internal bleeding and severe loss of blood’ drained whatever life the police had left in his body.There may be elements of the case I may not be familiar with but it is clear he was kept in illegal confinement for a month and a half and subjected to torture. The local community believes he was thus treated because biased policemen wanted to defame and
humiliate the Ahmadis and did so by targeting a respected community leader.

The police have now admitted Master Abdul Qudoos was ‘innocent’ and have promised action against some constables (with no known arrests) but crucial questions remain about the level of involvement as an innocent man was held and tortured at a police station not in some private jail.

Surely, some senior officers would have heard him screaming for mercy, been aware of the torture. Would you blame members of the persecuted and hounded Ahmadi community for believing they won’t get justice because soon the case will be forgotten by all but the victim’s widow and four children?

I wouldn’t because they are right in all probability. Let me share with you why I feel so. The incident came into focus because activists raised it on social media though to be fair a Pakistani TV channel or two also covered the story in passing.However, one’s attention was drawn to it, as a Twitter discussion developed on why the media and others weren’t following up on a police torture death in custody with the same vigour as a slap by a Sindh Assembly candidate, or for example the killing of a suspect by the Rangers in a Karachi park.

The obvious question was whether the human rights of some — in this case the most basic right to life of an Ahmadi — had precedence over the others’. Despite being nearly certain this was the case, one still put the hypothesis to test, perhaps rather naively.

Twitter is monitored by all major political parties, many government functionaries. Some of the more responsive personalities on Twitter are Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, PML-N’s Maryam Nawaz Sharif and Federal Interior Minister Rehman Malik.

Yes, I know some of you will say that these personalities don’t manage their Twitter accounts themselves and aides look after them. The argument here is not whether they read and respond to Tweets themselves or someone else does, it is in their names.

For example after Osama bin Laden’s killing in Abbottabad last May, Indian NDTV presenter Barkha Dutt tweeted, asking Rehman Malik for a visa. The interior minister responded, telling her who to contact at the Pakistan mission in New Delhi. A few days later she arrived in Islamabad.

There are similar examples of Shahbaz Sharif, who has responded to tweets positively off and on. Maryam Nawaz Sharif always responds whenever one has sought her attention and defends her party’s position. She promises to ask the Punjab government to look into an issue like she did when someone asked her for a laptop.

So, when Master Abdul Qudoos Ahmad’s tragic story came into the public domain one requested many official/party functionaries to look into the matter so justice could be provided to his shattered family.

Guess what? There wasn’t a single response: a silence as dark as the darkness that must fill the lives of Abdul Qudoos’s family.

Isn’t it enough we ruled on their faith and legislated them out of the folds of Islam? Couldn’t we stop there?

Esteemed columnist Ardeshir Cowasjee often quoted from the address of the Quaid-i-Azam to the members of the Pakistan Constituent Assembly, on Aug 11, 1947:

“You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the business of the state … We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one state … I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in due course Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the state.”

Jinnah died on Sept 11, 1948. Exactly six months and a day after his death, we buried his dream, adopted the Objectives Resolution and made religion the business of the state. And we haven’t felt the need to look back since.

Dawn. Karachi. 7.April 2012.
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.

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Grass schreibt, was die deutsche Mehrheit denkt

April 11th, 2012

Von Yoav Sapir

Mit seinem Gedicht “Was gesagt werden muss” stieß Literaturnobelpreisträger Günter Grass eine Grundsatzdebatte über das deutsch-israelische Verhältnis an.

Die Grass-Affäre ist viel wichtiger als ihre sensationellen Aspekte. Der Streit zwischen Grass und Israel ist nur die Spitze des Eisbergs, ein weiteres Indiz für den grundlegenden Wandel, den die deutsche Gesellschaft durchmacht. Die meisten Meinungsmacher haben Grass zwar kritisiert und tun es noch, aber wir sollten uns nicht von den ersten Reaktionen irreführen lassen. Auch im Fall Sarrazin versuchte die Elite, seine Kritik schnell zum Schweigen zu bringen.

Trotzdem wurde das Sachbuch zum größten Bestseller seit 1945. Die Tiefströmungen, die jahrzehntelang verdrängt wurden, kommen langsam an die Wasseroberfläche – und gewinnen an politischer Bedeutung.

Der deutsche Nationalismus blüht

Zur Fußballweltmeisterschaft 2006 wunderten sich viele, vor allem die Deutschen selbst, über den unverkrampften, vergangenheitslosen Nationalismus. Wie Freud uns lehrte, muss das Verdrängte wiederkehren, und zwar in gesteigerter Form. Zurzeit können wir beobachten, wie der deutsche Nationalismus wieder blüht. Grass ist nur ein Beispiel. Das politische System bietet schon ein anderes: die Piratenpartei.

Dieser Partei ist mit den sofortigen Einzügen in die Landtage von Berlin und dem Saarland etwas gelungen, was keine andere Partei seit 1949 erreichen konnte. Dies ist kein zufälliger Erfolg. Die Piraten sind, gerade in ihrer unerzwungenen Normalität, eine Partei ohne Vergangenheit, ohne Last und vor allem ohne Verantwortung für das heutige Deutschland als Rechtsnachfolger des Dritten Reichs. Ihr Erfolg zeugt ebenfalls vom Abstand, der zwischen der etablierten Politik und der Realität im Volke herrscht.

Grass hat geschrieben, was die Mehrheit in Deutschland seit Jahren denkt und fühlt. Die Diskrepanz zwischen der politischen Elite und dem Großteil der Deutschen in der Grass-Affäre läuft parallel zur Diskrepanz von Volk und Führung in allen Fragen, die mit Israel zu tun haben. Im Mittelpunkt steht die grundsätzliche Frage nach dem deutschen Verhältnis zu Israel. 2008 hat Merkel vor der Knesset die Solidarität Deutschlands bekundet. Seitdem ärgerten sich viele Deutsche über diese Erklärung.

Wenige haben sich öffentlich gegen Merkel gewendet. Denn das hätte den Schlussstrich bedeutet, und dieser wiederum galt bislang als politisch inkorrekt. Immer wieder haben deutsche Intellektuelle versucht, den Schlussstrich zu ziehen, sind aber, wie Martin Walser, von der politischen Klasse weitestgehend abgelehnt worden. Jetzt ist es anders. Durch das Loch, das Grass gebohrt hat, bricht zusehends der Damm politischer Korrektheit.

Kein anderer als Walsers leiblicher Sohn, Jakob Augstein, hat es so explizit zum Ausdruck gebracht: „Es muss uns nämlich endlich einer aus dem Schatten der Worte Angela Merkels holen, die sie im Jahr 2008 in Jerusalem gesprochen hat.“

Israel muss sich auf die Zukunft vorbereiten

Ob wir es wollen oder nicht, der Schlussstrich ist da. Das antizipierte Ende von Deutschlands historischer Verantwortung geht allmählich in Erfüllung. Merkels Solidarität wird nicht mehr lange dauern, Deutschland wird früher als erwartet kein Freund Israels mehr sein.

Für Israel lautet das Gebot der Stunde, sich auf die Zukunft vorzubereiten und in der Lage zu sein, sich vor allem auf sich selbst verlassen zu können.

Der Autor ist Deutschlandkorrespondent der israelischen Zeitung „Maariv“

Die Welt. Berlin. 11.4.2012

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Was gesagt werden muss - Solidarität mit Günter Grass

April 9th, 2012

Vom Reuven Jisrael Cabelman

Die Aufregung ist erschreckend, denn einer der größten deutschen Schriftsteller Nachkriegsdeutschlands hat es tatsächlich gewagt, sich mit einem Gedicht friedenspolitisch zu positionieren und damit - so die veröffentlichte pro-zionistische Meinung - den über alles erhabenen “Staat Israel” angegriffen. Dies ist natürlich das kapitale Verbrechen schlechthin. Allerspätestens seit dem die Interessen des zionistischen Staates seitens einer deutschen Bundesregierung höher bewertet werden als eigene deutsche.

Günter Grass will keinen Krieg gegen den Iran. Gut. Er will schon gar keinen, der mit an den zionistischen Staat gelieferten deutschen U-Booten geführt werden könnte. Noch besser. Als orthodoxer Jude kann man diese Haltung nur untersützen. Denn nur so würde sich Deutschland wirklich seiner “historischen Verantwortung” bewusst sowie dem Grundgesetz gerecht werden und ließe sich vor allem nicht noch einmal in ein verheerendes Kriegsabenteuer hineinmanövieren. Der Dichter will das nicht - so verstehen wir ihn zumindest - weil er vollkommen zurecht nicht einsieht, dass ein neuer vom Nationalzionismus provozierter Weltbrand zudem noch mit deutscher Unterstützung entstehen sollte.

In den Augen selbsternannter Judensprecher der zionistischen Botschaft und des Zentralrates, den üblichen von der Springer-Presse oder von Bundes-Wehrmacht-Akademien ausgehaltenen Alibijuden ist wahrlich kein Frieden mit dem Friedensgedicht von Grass zu machen, denn sie ziehen ihre alt-verstaubten und fanatisch-zionistischen Register selbst aus der untersten Schublade, wenn es darum geht einen Großen der deutschen Literaturwelt als “antisemitisch” motiviert diffamieren zu können.

Der Dichter selbst ist doch alles andere als ein “Antizionist” und wenn es inhaltich und aus Sicht des authentisch-orthodoxen Judentums innerhalb des Gedichtes etwas zu kritisieren gäbe, dann wäre das eher der unreflektierte und mit nichts zu rechtfertigende Seitenhieb gegen den die jüdische Gemeinde des Iran unterstützenden Präsidenten der Islamischen Republik.

Doch “Antizionist”, also jemanden den man in Zionistenlogik der schlimmsten Sorte Kreatur zurechnet, muss man ja auch noch nicht einmal sein, um in die Schusslinie der nationalzionistischen Lobby zu geraten.

Es genügt bereits ein im Grunde eher harmloses “Friede-Freude-Eicherkuchen-Gedicht” und man ist sozusagen mitten drin im verbalen Kugel- und Bombenhagel paranoider und gleichwohl selbstgerechter Menschenverachter des Nationalzionismus, die Meinungsallgewalt längst schon nicht mehr anstreben müssen, um darüber zu entscheiden wer was in Deutschland sprechen, schreiben oder drucken darf.

Denn diese haben sie längst in der deutschen Bananenrepublik, in der sich jedermann duckt, sobald die selbsternannten Möchtegern- und falschen Vorzeigejuden den Massenmord am europäischen Judentum für ihre schmutzige politische Agenda missbrauchen und dabei die jahrzehntelang festgeklopfte Lüge immer wieder bemühen angeblich im Namen des Judentums zu agieren.

Es kann kaum noch ein Schauspiel geben, das niederträchtiger und ekelerregender ist als dieses und im Grunde nur dem Zweck dient dem antijüdischen Schurkenstaat in Palästina als 5. Kolonne zu dienen und dabei dessen Verbrechen gegen das arabisch-pälastinensische Volk sowie den Frontalangriff auf die jüdische Religion und das Judentum zu legitimieren.

Armes Deutschland. Meinungs- und Redefreiheit sind längst verkümmert, zusehends eine Farce geworden. Eine aggressive Art zionistischen Meinungsterrors durchzieht mehr und mehr das Land, die politische Klasse und die angeblich freie Medienlandschaft sind längst im Würgegriff einer selbstauferlegten oder aufoktroyierten pro-zionistischen Kontrolle. Eine Gleichschaltung der schlimmsten Sorte, weil obendrein noch als “Pressefreiheit” verkauft.

Nicht nur die Atommacht “Isreal” ist es, die den Weltfrieden und damit die Menschheit mit ihrem Waffenarsenal bedroht. Es ist die Ideologie des Nationalzionismus insgesamt in all ihren Facetten. Aus Sicht der jüdischen Lehre ist sie die größte spirituelle Unreinheit auf diesem Planeten und vergiftet die ganze Welt.

Nur das Ende dieser Ideologie und als Folge davon das Ende des zionistischen Gaunerstaates wird die Erlösung des jüdischen Volkes und damit auch die der gesamten Menschheit einleiten.

Aus: Der Israelit. Ein Zentralorgan für das orthodoxe Judentum. vom 6. April 2012.

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A voice of reason and sanity in Europe

April 7th, 2012

By AIJAZ ZAKA SYED

Speaking truth to power is the ultimate jihad, said the Prophet (peace be upon him). Few of us dare to open our mouth, let alone say what must be said in the face of tyranny and oppression.

Germany’s most celebrated living author and Nobel laureate Guenter Grass therefore deserves three cheers for holding a mirror to the West’s hypocrisy, as he puts it, and the strife and chaos its Frankenstein has unleashed on the Middle East and the world.

The 85-year-old litterateur has set off a storm in Germany and across the Western hemisphere by terming Israel as the greatest threat to world peace. Considering the prevalent culture of mollycoddling Israel in the West, especially in a Germany weighed down by its oppressive past, the Nobel laureate’s audacity to confront Zionist crimes shows his uncommon valor.

In a poem aptly titled, What Must Be Said, Grass minces no words in warning the West of consequences of continuing appeasement of Israel. “Why did I wait until now, at this advanced age and with the last bit of ink, to say what I say now that the nuclear power Israel endangers an already fragile world peace? Because that must be said which may already be too late to say tomorrow,” writes he. “Also because we as Germans, burdened enough (by past), may become a subcontractor to a crime that is foreseeable. Germany’s Nazi past and the Holocaust are no excuse for remaining silent now about Israel’s nuclear capability. I will not remain silent because I am weary of the West’s hypocrisy.”

In the poem published by Suddeutsche Zeitung and other European dailies this week, Grass warns of catastrophic consequences of an Israeli attack on Iran, demanding international community take control of Israel’s nukes to save the region and the world. He also calls for checks on Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

This comes at a time when Germany has announced the sale of a sixth Dolphin submarine to Israel and is even going to shoulder part of the cost. For the uninitiated, the highly advanced Dolphin subs are capable of carrying and launching the Middle East’s only nuclear weapons against distant, tempting targets like Iran. The country has been in Israel’s crosshairs — and those of its guardian angels — for some time with its defiance.

The Israelis have been increasingly obsessing about taking out Iran, with or without US blessings. And the world seems to have psychologically and mentally resigned itself to the inevitable. In an election year, US politicians on both sides of the isle, forever dancing to Israel’s tune, can’t wait to do an Iraq to Iran. And no one in Western capitals seems to be losing sleep over the apocalyptic price the world would inevitably pay for the Zionist shibboleths.

This is not just about the coming Armageddon over Iran, defying common sense and collective wisdom of US-Western intelligence agencies. The issue here is and has always been the criminal and evil nature and agenda of the regime that has driven the original inhabitants of the land from their homes, continues to occupy the territory of at least four neighbors and is nothing but a clear and present danger to the peace and well being of the world.

Yesterday’s victims have been quick to cross over to the other side, forgetting their own predicament as they visit the worst possible abuse and suffering on a helpless, proud people. And to top it all, in a typical kettle-calling-the pot black case, it has the cheek to shout from the rooftop about the existential threat it faces from the ayatollahs, just as it did from Saddam Hussein’s fabled weapons of mass destruction. By the way, it was Israeli jets that attacked Iraq in 1981, destroying its civilian nuclear installations, not the other way round. Today it’s once again itching to repeat the history, keeping the volatile region and the world forever dancing on the edge of a nuclear precipice.

So is Grass really exaggerating when he sees in Israel a clear and present danger to world peace? I wouldn’t think so. He is only holding a mirror to the reality of Israel, something that European and American politicians and elites have failed to do all these years. In an interview with Der Spiegel in 2001, soon after 9/11, he offered his own solution for the Mideast peace: “Israel doesn’t just need to clear out of the occupied territories. The appropriation of Palestinian territory and Israeli settlements are also a criminal activity. That not only needs to be stopped, it needs to be reversed. Otherwise there will be no peace.”

Of course, the deaf ears in Washington and European capitals never heard that voice. But, thankfully, Grass’ is not a lone voice of reason in the wilderness. Of late, an overwhelming majority of humanity has rallied around the Palestinian quest for justice. It’s losing patience with the obfuscation and intransigence of the Apartheid state founded on stolen land.

Thanks to the emergence of alternate media, truth cannot be controlled and manipulated anymore. You can’t fool all the people all the time. The world is beginning to see that Israeli crimes and their suppression by its powerful patrons are fueling extremism and have made our world a dangerous place.

Not only does Israel refuse to give up an inch of Arab territory and continues to build those ghastly settlements for people born in Europe and America on the land where Palestinian homes and olive farms used to be, it’s perpetually plotting and using US-Western arms and power to destroy one Muslim country after another. Yesterday, it was Iraq. Today, it appears to be Iran’s turn. Who knows who is next on the hit list?

Not content with the recent sanctions that have crippled the Iranian banks and financial sector, including its oil trade, Obama has just unveiled the “third party” curbs targeting countries still doing business with Tehran. The yes-we-can president, however, has no answer to Israel’s continuing defiance, constantly expanding Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, in violation of international law and numerous UN resolutions. But then it has always been like this, whether it’s a neocon or a Nobel laureate in White House. Is it any wonder then Grass says he is ‘weary’ of Western hypocrisy? The man who promised a fresh start and a “new way forward” with Muslims and is often suspected to be a “closet Muslim” by the famously informed Americans is trying hard to prove that when it comes to fealty to Israel, his credentials are as impeccable as anyone else’s.

Yet he is accused by rivals like Romney of “throwing Israel under the bus” and of not doing “enough” to confront Iran. In other words, he’s a traitor to the cause of glorious Israel for not hitting Iran. By the way, no one seems interested in talking about what is in America’s own interests.

The US has bankrupted itself in fighting Israel’s wars across the Muslim world, not to mention the burning anger and hatred its blind support of Israeli policies and actions have sparked across the globe. The recent killings in France were a chilling reminder of the toxic harvest the West has earned itself. If speaking truth to power demands courage, it requires even greater audacity to accept it. The world would ignore the voice of sanity from Berlin at its own peril.

Aijaz Zaka Syed is a Gulf-based commentator. Write him at aijaz.syed@hotmail.com

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Debattenbeitrag zu Günter Grass Es musste gesagt werden

April 6th, 2012

Ein Debattenbeitrag von Jakob Augstein

Mit seinem Gedicht “Was gesagt werden muss” liegt Günter Grass richtig: Er holt Deutschland aus dem Schatten der Worte von Kanzlerin Merkel, die Sicherheit Israels gehöre zur deutschen “Staatsräson”. Und der Schriftsteller kritisiert zu Recht, dass Israel der Welt eine Logik des Ultimatums aufdrängt.

Ein großes Gedicht ist das nicht. Und eine brillante politische Analyse ist es auch nicht. Aber die knappen Zeilen, die Günter Grass unter der Überschrift “Was gesagt werden muss” veröffentlicht hat, werden einmal zu seinen wirkmächtigsten Worten zählen. Sie bezeichnen eine Zäsur. Es ist dieser eine Satz, hinter den wir künftig nicht mehr zurückkommen: “Die Atommacht Israel gefährdet den ohnehin brüchigen Weltfrieden.” Dieser Satz hat einen Aufschrei ausgelöst. Weil er richtig ist. Und weil ein Deutscher ihn sagt, ein Schriftsteller, ein Nobelpreisträger, weil Günther Grass ihn sagt. Darin liegt ein Einschnitt. Dafür muss man Grass danken. Er hat es auf sich genommen, diesen Satz für uns alle auszusprechen. Ein überfälliges Gespräch hat begonnen.

Es ist ein Gespräch über Israel. Und darüber, dass Israel einen Krieg gegen Iran vorbereitet, dessen Führer Mahmud Ahmadinedschad Israel bedroht, es als Schandfleck bezeichnet, der beseitigt werden müsse. Israel, ein Land das seit Jahren von Feinden umgeben ist, die zum Teil noch immer dem Staat sein Existenzrecht absprechen - und das unabhängig von dessen Politik.
Es ist ein Krieg, der die Welt in den Abgrund stürzen kann. Wenn ein Deutscher davon spricht, muss so ein Gespräch auch von Deutschland handeln, und von der deutschen Verantwortung. Es gibt da Gesetzmäßigkeiten. Grass wusste, dass man ihn als Antisemit beschimpfen würde. Das ist das geläufige Risiko eines deutschen Israel-Kritikers. “Politisch korrekten Antisemitismus” hat ihm auch gleich Mathias Döpfner vorgeworfen, Chef des Springer Verlages, der sich im Besitz der Deutungshoheit über das deutsch-israelische Verhältnis wähnt. Und auch, dass man ihm gleich einen Platz im Reha-Zentrum deutsche Geschichte zuweisen würde, Abteilung Walser, Flur für geriatrische Flakhelfer, auch damit musste Grass rechnen.

Aber Grass ist weder Antisemit noch ein deutscher Geschichtszombie. Grass ist Realist. Er prangert das nukleare Potential Israels an, das “keiner Prüfung zugänglich ist”. Er beklagt die deutsche Rüstungspolitik, die ein weiteres nuklearwaffenfähiges U-Boot nach Israel liefert. Und er wendet sich voll Überdruss von der “Heuchelei des Westens” ab, die - das muss er gar nicht ausführen - seit jeher Richtschnur unseres Handelns im Nahen Osten ist, von Algerien bis Afghanistan.

Grass schreibt auch Unfug. Er schwurbelt sich was zurecht: dass er lange schwieg und jetzt nicht mehr schweigt - “gealtert und mit letzter Tinte” - und dass sich nun viele mit ihm vom Schweigen befreien mögen, das ist alles nicht so toll formuliert. Er spinnt sich auch was zurecht: Die Auslöschung des iranischen Volkes, vor der er warnt, steht nicht auf der israelischen Agenda. Dieser Text hätte besser gegen Angriffe gewappnet werden können. Aber darum tut er nicht weniger not.

Es muss uns nämlich endlich einer aus dem Schatten der Worte Angela Merkels holen, die sie im Jahr 2008 in Jerusalem gesprochen hat. Sie sagte damals, die Sicherheit Israels gehöre zur deutschen “Staatsräson”. Und damit es keine Missverständnisse gebe, fügte sie hinzu: “Wenn das so ist, dann dürfen das in der Stunde der Bewährung keine leeren Worte bleiben.”

Helmut Schmidt hat dazu gesagt, für Israels Sicherheit mitverantwortlich zu sein, sei eine “gefühlsmäßig verständliche, aber törichte Auffassung, die sehr ernsthafte Konsequenzen haben könnte.” Wenn es zum Krieg zwischen Israel und Iran käme, “dann hätten nach dieser Auffassung die deutschen Soldaten mitzukämpfen”. Die Israelis halten Deutschland seitdem neben den USA für das einzige Land, auf das sie sich verlassen können.

Mit der ganzen Rückendeckung aus den USA, wo ein Präsident sich vor den Wahlen immer noch die Unterstützung der jüdischen Lobbygruppen sichern muss, und aus Deutschland, wo Geschichtsbewältigung inzwischen eine militärische Komponente hat, führt die Regierung Netanjahu die ganze Welt am Gängelband eines anschwellenden Kriegsgesangs: “Netanjahus Israel hat die globale Agenda auf eine Weise bestimmt wie kein kleiner Staat je zuvor”, schreibt die israelische Zeitung “Haaretz”. Vom Ölpreis bis zum Terrorismus - die Welt hat Gründe genug, einen israelisch-iranischen Krieg zu fürchten.

Niemand behauptet, dass Iran eine Atombombe besitzt. Niemand weiß, ob Iran an einer solchen Bombe arbeitet. Im Gegenteil: Die Amerikaner gehen davon aus, Teheran habe sein Atomwaffenprogramm im Jahr 2003 eingestellt. Das interessiert die Israelis nicht. Es geht ihnen inzwischen nicht mehr nur darum, eine iranische Atombombe zu verhindern. Es geht ihnen darum, zu verhindern, nicht mehr verhindern zu können, dass die Iraner eine solche Bombe bauen könnten. Sie wollen sich nicht mit dem Problem herumschlagen, das die USA seinerzeit mit dem Irak hatten: Die glaubten nämlich noch, sie müssten beweisen, dass ihr Gegner über Massenvernichtungswaffen verfügte. Solche Beweise waren im Irak nicht zu finden - ebensowenig wie solche Waffen. Also fälschten die Amerikaner die Beweise.

Israel hat der Welt eine Logik des Ultimatums aufgedrängt: Es will gar nicht beweisen, dass Iran eine Bombe hat. Es will nicht einmal beweisen, dass Iran eine Bombe baut. Die israelische Doktrin lautet einfach, dass Teheran die “Zone der Immunität” nicht erreichen dürfe. Israel droht darum mit einem Angriff, bevor die Iraner ihre Atomanlagen so tief im Granit versenken können, dass auch die größten bunkerbrechenden Bomben der Amerikaner sie nicht mehr erreichen.

ANZEIGE

Israel spielt mit Iran eine Pokerpartie, bei der beide gewinnen, solange es nicht zum Krieg kommt. Den “Irren aus Teheran” nennt der Boulevard den iranischen Präsidenten. Aber Ahmadinedschad ist nicht irre. Er will sein Amt behalten und unterdrückt deshalb die Opposition: Die Massenproteste gegen sein Regime vor drei Jahren ließ er blutig niederschlagen, viele Oppositionspolitiker einsperren.
Ahmadinedschad hält die Welt bewusst im Unklaren über seine nuklearen Absichten. Er profitiert von dieser strategischen Zweideutigkeit ebenso wie die Israelis von ihren Kriegsdrohungen profitieren. Beide Länder helfen sich gegenseitig, ihren Einfluss weit über ihr eigentliches Maß hinaus zu vergrößern. Auf eine perverse Weise befinden sie sich in einer wechselseitigen Abhängigkeit. Das bliebe ihre eigene Sache, hätten sie nicht die ganze Welt als Geisel genommen. Es ist an der Zeit, wie Grass schreibt, darauf zu bestehen, “dass eine unbehinderte und permanente Kontrolle des israelischen atomaren Potentials und der iranischen Atomanlagen durch eine internationale Instanz von den Regierungen beider Länder zugelassen wird”.

Iran steht bereits durch eine Fülle von Sanktionen unter Druck. Jetzt muss endlich auch auf Israel Druck ausgeübt werden. Wohlgemerkt: Wer das sagt, versucht nicht, “die Schuld der Deutschen zu relativieren, indem er die Juden zu Tätern macht”, wie Döpfner sagt. Hier geht es nämlich nicht um die Geschichte Deutschlands. Sondern um die Gegenwart der Welt.

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