This is a cross-post from Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens at Standpoint
A local Surrey newspaper has reported that extremists are disseminating leaflets in the local area, urging Muslims to kill the Ahmadiyya.
From the Surrey Comet:
A police investigation was launched last month, after police saw leaflets being handed out calling on Muslims to murder Qadiyanis, a derogatory term for Ahmadiyya Muslim…
[…]
A teenage Ahmadiyya girl, who did not want to be named, said she was “shaken and scared” after being handed a leaflet written in Urdu saying: “kill a Qadiyani and doors to heaven will be open to you.”
Surrey is home to a large Ahmadiyya community, and is also the location of the Baitul Futuh Mosque, the largest Ahmadiyya mosque in the country. It is no coincidence that extremists have targeted this area: they are attempting to sow distrust and sectarian hatred between the Ahmadiyya and other Muslim groups in the hope of creating a similar situation to that of Pakistan, where this small community is regularly persecuted. The terrorist attacks on two of their mosques in Lahore, which killed 80 people, are perhaps the bloodiest examples of Islamist hatred for these people.
This should be taken as a warning that extremist ideology continues to gain traction in Britain, and a reminder that the fates of Pakistan and Britain in this regard are inexorably linked; what happens there will eventually trickle through the many connections that are here in Britain.
According to the British Ahmadiyya’s national president, Rafiq Hayat:
Freedom of speech one thing, but incitement of hatred is another matter. We want the authorities to nip this in the bud, otherwise this campaign of hatred against Ahmadi Muslims will grow into a threat against other moderate Muslims and indeed the wider society.
In giving this issue a broader context, he has hit the nail on the head. Attacks, be they physical or verbal, on the Ahmadiyya should not be seen in isolation: the often murderous hatred of this community is part of the extremist ideology espoused by numerous Islamist organisations, including al-Qaeda. In other words, those who want to kill the Ahmadiyya are not a long way from wanting to kill everyone else who doesn’t agree with them.