In Ramadan this year, terrorists in Gujranwala, Pakistan set fire to homes belonging to Ahmadi Muslims, killing four innocent Ahmadi Muslim women.
On December 27, 2014 terrorists in Gujranwala fired a bullet towards the back of Luqman Ahmad's head and killed him. These terrorists hated him only because he chose to join the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. As the only Ahmadi Muslim in his family, Luqman certainly knew what it meant to follow Prophet Muhammad's command to all Muslims that "When you hear of the arrival of Mahdi, go to him and take bai'at (initiation) at his hand even if you must travel across glaciers of ice and snow on your hands and knees." Luqman thus joined the world's single largest Muslim community -- founded 125 years ago by the Messiah and Mahdi Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, and still united today under one Imam -- His Holiness the Khalifa of Islam, Mirza Masroor Ahmad.
But pause for a moment.
This isn't just about the barbaric murder of Luqman Ahmad. Nor is it just about the fire-breathing hate preacher Amir Liaqat Hussein, or the fact that this is the second time his anti-Ahmadi spitfire has resulted in the murder of innocent Ahmadi Muslims. This also isn't just about Pakistan's state sanctioned persecution of Ahmadi Muslims.
Luqman Ahmad's murder and the deafening silence from Muslim leadership worldwide is about something far beyond his life and death alone. And it is something terrorists who kill Ahmadis don't seem to understand. It is something Muslim leaders don't want the Muslim Ummah to understand. You see Muslim leaders are incapable of bringing peace to the Muslim world. I'll repeat that again. Muslim leadership today is incapable of bringing peace to the Muslim world. The fire that burns Syria, Palestine, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Central Africa Republic, Egypt, and Libya is secondary to the fire that burns inside each Muslim worldwide who literally screams for God to intervene and extinguish this burning flame -- but doesn't find Him.
This external fire cannot be extinguished until the raging internal fire is extinguished.
While the external fire exists due to a number of reasons, including illegal occupations, western imperialism, despots and dictators, oppressive laws, corruption, and a lack of Muslim unity, that internal fire rages on solely and wholly due to the failures of Muslim leadership.
Luqman Ahmad was once one such individual who could no longer withstand that internal fire that hundreds of millions of Muslims experience daily. But rather than turn to corrupt politicians and clerics who superficially preach peace but practically preach their own pocket books, Luqman Ahmad followed Prophet Muhammad's guidance and turned to the world's only Muslim community united by a Khalifa under Divine appointment. Luqman saw that through Divinely-guided Khilafat, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community has peacefully spread to over 200 nations worldwide, has tens of millions of adherents from every nationality on Earth, and is uniting Sunni and Shia Muslims in absolute peace and love -- and he wanted in.
Meanwhile, the same clerics who stand to lose everything if the Muslim masses turn away from them took yet another cowardly and barbaric step to ensure they keep their masses captive -- either mentally, physically, morally, and spiritually. They once more claimed that, "all sects of Islam are united against the fitna that is Qadianiyat [a pejorative for Ahmadi Muslims] and that Muslims must stop [Qadianis]."
Some Muslims are mentally captive to such hate clerics because many Muslim majority nations have censored all literature of Ahmadi Muslims, preventing Muslims from performing their own independent investigations. Some Muslims are physically captive because of prevailing draconian death for blasphemy ideology that quells any dissent -- as Luqman Ahmad experienced. Some Muslims are morally captive, as Muslim leadership has convinced all too many that Islam somehow needs barbaric and oppressive laws to protect it from insult or critique. And some Muslims are spiritually captive as any talk that the Imam Mahdi or Messiah has come in the person of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad to unite the Ummah is met with laughter, mockery, hatred, and takfir from Muslim leadership -- intimidating the masses into submission.
Just as Meccan leaders did everything in their power -- including the use of terrorism, intimidation, and misinformation -- to detract people from Prophet Muhammad, Muslim leaders today do everything in their power -- including the use of terrorism, intimidation, and misinformation -- to detract Muslims from the Messiah Ahmad whom was foretold by Prophet Muhammad.
This is a fact.
Native Palestinian Ahmadi Muslims are not persecuted by Jews in Israel -- but they are persecuted by fellow Palestinian Muslim leaders in Gaza and the West Bank. Arab Ahmadi Muslims worship secretly in Arab countries, lest Arab Muslim leaders arrest, torture, and destroy their lives. In the UK, British Ahmadi Muslims faced their most vehement backlash in 2014 not by Islamophobes, but by a group of Muslim clerics who cited Pakistani Mullahs and American Sheikh Hamza Yusuf as validation to declare that Ahmadis are "outside the fold of Islam." It is no coincidence Prophet Muhammad declared 1400 years ago that "the Muslim clerics will be the worst creatures under the canopy on heaven. Fitna [Chaos] will emerge from them and fall right back on them."
Ahmadi Muslims aren't violently persecuted by anyone outside the Muslim Ummah. But even when persecuted and killed -- like in the case of Luqman Ahmad -- we follow Prophet Muhammad's example and respond with peace. Why? Because our internal fires of fear are extinguished and replaced with peace and security, just as the Qur'an 24:56 promises to those who unite in peace under the Khalifa of the time.
Meanwhile, the Muslim world burns, and the fire inside Muslims screaming for Divine guidance burns with even more fury. All the while Muslim leadership censors from the Ummah that the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community continues to advance peacefully as the fastest growing Islamic sect on Earth, is united worldwide under the Khalifa of Islam, and is at the forefront of championing the perfection and greatness of the Master Prophet Muhammad, who is Khaatam-un-Nabiyyeen.
So, my fellow Muslims, while Muslim leaders persecute Ahmadi Muslims, it is you they hold captive. Put out that fire with education and morality, and break free from captivity under "the worst creatures under the canopy of heaven."
Exchange your fear for peace.