The endeavour to spread the message of Islam is prescribed to each Muslim in the Qu’ran. Accordingly, any Muslim is expected to be a missionary (da‘i). The central term for this task is da'wa. It derives from the Arabic and, in the religious context, it refers to the invitation to join the prayer and the true faith. Many Muslim groups and networks are today exploring new territories and initiating news ways to join Islam. Muslim movements that are engaged in education or in social welfare and that associate religious with secular knowledge, view these activities as da'wa, i.e. invitations to join Islam. The Ahmadiyya movement is one of these Muslim missionary groups.
Although its members are active in public life and, with approximately 30,000 followers in Germany, this group represents the second largest Ahmadi community in Europe, this movement remains relatively unknown. In Hesse, they were granted the status of a corporation under public law in 2013. Thus, they have attracted somewhat more attention from the general public.
Founded in 1889 in British India, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is present in 206 countries throughout the world today. Being a religious movement with a strong sense of mission, it has been flanked by the NGO Humanity First involved in the area of development cooperation since 1994. It raises funds for supporting social projects, emergency aid in disaster zones, and medical projects. Both organizations are willing to collaborate with non-Muslim secular or religious partners.
The Ahmadiyya movement is characterized by its strong missionary orientation supported by an international media network, and educational and charitable activities as means of conversion. Furthermore, its features are a high level of ritual practice, a charismatic, centralized organization, and a restrictive normative apparatus. It is characterized by a strict gender separation, which, surprisingly, is attractive to women too, by a rigid set of rules to which the individual has to submit, and by the coincidence of hierarchical charismatic structures on the one hand, and global space for individual liberty on the other hand.
Although the members of the Ahmadiyya consider themselves Muslims, they are not recognized as such by the Muslim majority because they believe their founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, is not only the reformer of Islam but “the promised Messiah and Imam Mahdi”. This belief is contrary to Islamic precepts, including the interpretation of the dogma that Mohammed is the “Seal of the Prophets”. Theological differences and disagreements about leadership triggered the separation of the Ahmadis into two groups as early as 1914: the Lahore Ahmadiyya and the Quadian Ahmadiyya, which is now called Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. Since 1984, the administrative seat of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and the residence of the spiritual leader have been set in London because Ahmadis are seriously persecuted in their country of origin, Pakistan. Today, the 5th caliph, Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, is leading the worldwide community.
The development of an international media network of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is directly linked to their peaceful approach of Jihad: “Jihad of the pen, not sword”. The movement owns several publishers (e.g. Der Islam in Germany), printers in every region, radio stations, and the international TV channel MTA (Muslim Television Ahmadiyya). The secular and religious education of all the members is a key objective of the movement. Education and training are viewed as a precondition for individual and national development. Since the beginnings of the movement until today, Ahmadis have been part of a transnational Muslim elite. They honor their university graduates in public events and celebrate their renowned members in recurrent exhibitions. The encouragement to educate all members, according to their intellectual skills, and to train their critical spirit goes hand in hand with a permanent religious training. The Ahmadiyya explicitly attempts to link Islam with Western science. This transnational network organization is based on the education of full-time, international missionary teams who are donated the resources so that they can undertake their traveling around the world.
The Ahmadi Community offers a large panel of social and welfare facilities: in Africa, hospitals, medical camps, schools, student residences, and emergency aid; in Europe, blood donations, cleaning of public spaces, and relief actions for the homeless. But since 1994 the religious movement of the Ahmadiyya has additionally founded a humanitarian organization: the NGO Humanity First dedicated exclusively to humanitarian assistance which benefits the entire population in the countries they intervene.
On the website of the German Humanity First group, the members can donate alms which have to be paid during Eid-ul-Adha. Their money is thus used to buy sacrificial animals and to distribute it to the needy in West Africa, Turkey, or Eastern Europe. Religious practices such as Islamic sacrifices and alms are translated into a humanitarian narrative. On the other hand, the policy of development cooperation is interpreted as a religious practice and an example of worship, such as in the case of a German Ahmadi who increased his engagement to Humanity First’s medical work, because he had had a dream in which the caliph himself urged him to dedicate more of his time to medical care.
Humanity First may well be described as much as a philanthropic enterprise as an effort to disseminate an Islamic alternative to Christian charity. Humanity First is one of the Muslim NGOs that illustrates the tendency of "NGOisation" in the Islamic field, much similar to the one described in Christian denominations. Based on a centralized, state-like organization with its own administration, a justice court, a proper flag, and an international fund-collecting board, the Ahmadiyya movement and Humanity First show that an Islamic welfare system can exist alongside a Christian one in modern, secular states.
Dr. Katrin Langewiesche
Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz,
Anthropology and African Studies,
Forum Universitatis 6, 55099 Mainz
Email: langewie@uni-mainz.de