By Carol J. Williams LOS ANGELES TIMES
May 9, 2013, 5:00 a.m.

Just weeks after the terrorist bombings at the Boston Marathon, the global leader of the world’s 10-million-plus Ahmadiyya Muslim Community has brought his religion’s message of peace, public service and uplift to the faithful of Southern California.

While those principles are embraced by most of the Muslim world, the Ahmadis’ outlook is distinctive. The visiting khalifa, Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, is critical of mixing religion and governance and points to the restive Middle East countries in the “Arab Spring” aftermath as examples of discord born of religious rule. He speaks laudingly of Western democracy and praises Israeli President Shimon Peres for his ideas on restoring stability to the conflict-plagued region.

The first West Coast visit of the khalifa was scheduled long before the April 15 attacks in Boston that have newly shaken the American public’s sense of security and serenity. But in the nervous aftermath of that latest terror strike, which may or may not have had any connection to radical Islam, the need to tackle misconceptions and prejudices about Muslims is all the more obvious and challenging, in the view of the religious leader.

Ahmadis, like other adherents to moderate Islam, denounce violence and abhor the scorn that the acts of a few inflict on the many. Yet the community has internal and doctrinal conflicts of its own. Founded in 1889 in the Indian village of Qadian, the movement split in 1914 into the khalifa’s community and a smaller rival movement. With the 1947 partition of India, it fractured again, when many of its followers fled to the new state of Pakistan. There, Ahmadis have been shunned and prohibited by law from calling themselves Muslims. The 62-year-old khalifa has been the target of anti-Ahmadiyya terrorists, including a May 2010 attack on Friday prayers in Lahore in which 86 Ahmadis died. Ultimately the Ahmadi leadership took refuge in London.

Now based in London and active in worldwide outreach, the khalifa spoke with The Times on Wednesday about his mission and the troubled state of the world.

Q: How do you spread the message of Islam as a religion of peace in the circumstances you find in the United States where, because of terrorist attacks by Muslim extremists, some people harbor misconceptions about the nature of Islam?

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