Can I say, as the local member, how much we appreciate your invitation to us here today. Because I think one of the great disadvantages in this world is ignorance and lack of understanding. And we very much appreciate it. And I think the question I would like to ask you is to tell everybody here more about your community.
You very kindly invited me and the leader of the local council to a meal with you at the London Mosque the other day, and we had a very happy two hours talking about the Ahmadiyya community. And I think many other people here, please, would like to know a little more. I’m going to have to go fairly shortly. Before I do go, I would like to say that you, Mr. Khan, sent me some more information about your community and about what was happening in Pakistan. And I want you to know that I wrote yesterday to the foreign secretary to ask him about the treatment of the Ahmadiyya community in Pakistan, about the persecution and the discrimination that you gave me evidence over.
And when I have that information, I shall certainly give it to you as soon as possible. So kind of you, so kind of you. Well, I’m so grateful to Mrs. Bottomley, who has very kindly visited us before. And we had a very nice evening together, warm and very, very, I think, intimate discussion was held on various aspects. And we came to understand each other much better with the result that I, in fact, look forward to meeting all of you because she was an ambassador for you as well.
And I think this is very kind of her to ask this question, because mostly when you are introduced to a community who is religious and also who happens to be a Muslim community, there are many suspicions which take root in people’s minds. And the more conservative a society is, less questions would be asked. And it will be taken for granted, as I understand, that, well, they have their own ways. And let’s remain apart and safe at a safe distance.
So this session, I mean, this invitation was given to you to break that barrier of ignorance, as you call it, but lack of knowledge, I should say, and to give you an opportunity to know us yourself from close quarters. The Ahmadiyya community is a peaceful community, which has always been on the receiving end as far as the persecution goes. So that is the major difference between us and other volatile religious communities. As a gentleman previously asked me this question in particular, I think that is relevant. So I should answer that question here before everyone, because it’s a part of the question which Mrs. Bottomley asked. He was wondering why it was religion who was always after others’ blood and was creating disorder and persecution and everything, which is against human values.
So I told him that it is a most misunderstood aspect of religion, because if you truly define a religion, then this question would automatically drop and then re-erupt in a very different shape. Religion should be understood at closest to its original foundation. When the religions come into being, it is only then when they are in purest form, and it is only then that they should be understood. As they travel far away from the source, they become corrupted, and in the name of religion something else begins to develop, which has ultimately broken all relationship to its own original value at the source.
So by defining religion as such, you can see now this question in a very different perspective. It is always religion which is persecuted, unfortunately in the name of religion, by those people who claim themselves religious, but who have become corrupted because their contact with the source has also almost been lost with the passage of time. For instance, Jewish community persecuted Christianity in the beginning, for a few hundred years of course, and that was true Christianity. Later on, when Christianity travelled away from the source, it became the persecutor.
During the black days of plague of 1400, 50,000 or so Jews were burnt alive by the Christians, so called I should say, and that does not reflect in any way upon Christianity, because according to my standards, religion must be studied at the source. Christianity in its true form always remained persecuted, it was never a oppressor. So this is the case with every religion, and we fortunately are passing through a phase in history of Ahmadiyyat, where we are at the receiving end of the hatred in the name of religion, not that it emanates from us. So any society around us must rest at peace. We have no grain of Khomeiniism whatsoever.
We do not agree with what is happening in Sudan. We do not agree with the shape of government which is taking place in Pakistan in the name of Islam. All these regimes are entirely, totally un-Islamic in their values, and they have no right to represent Islam, in fact they are bringing bad name to Islam by associating it with persecution. And in all these places we are persecuted, so you should have the least fear from a persecuted hunted community.
