A Florida pastor who burned the Quran after a mock trial and guilty verdict in March missed the whole point of Islam’s most holy book, an imam said Saturday at a national Muslim convention in Harrisburg.
“The Quran is the word of God,” Imam Mubasher Ahmad, head of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of Silicon Valley, Calif., said at the state Farm Show Complex. “Burning it was hurtful to Muslims and to Christians, too.”
Ahmad spoke at the 63rd annual Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA convention, which attracted more than 7,000 Muslims from throughout the nation. The convention opened Friday and will close after a 10 a.m.-1 p.m. session today.
Ahmadiyya Muslims believe that Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, India, is the metaphorical second coming of Jesus whose advent was foretold by Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam.
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, which has millions of members in 197 countries, rejects terrorism, violence and hatred.
Most American Muslims are Sunnis who don’t accept the Ahmadiyyas’ Messianic claims.
Terry Jones, the radical pastor of the Christian Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., put the Quran on trial in March, declared it guilty, then condemned and burned it.
“The Quran is not guilty,” Ahmad said. “But it’s not understood. The text with its 114 chapters is authentic. People criticize its teachings on paradise, but humans can’t conceive what paradise is.”
Categories: Islam, Islamophobia, United States
