Source: belfasttelegraph.co.uk

‘Our motto is love for all, hatred for none, and we want to have dialogue with the people of Northern Ireland’

Irish-born Imam Ibrahim Noonan (left) at Jalsa Salana, the International Annual Gathering of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community

One of the most unnerving aspects of the current turmoil in Iraq and Syria has been the steady trickle of young British and Irish radicals joining extremists in their self-proclaimed ‘Jihad’.

Peter Robinson along with Muslim leaders outside the Islamic Centre in Belfast. Pic Arthur Allison

Whilst it has been reported that hundreds of EU citizens have fled their shores to join the purported ‘Caliphate’ of terror group Isis, one Irish Imam is making a very different kind of migration to meet a very different kind of Caliph.

Irish-born Imam Ibrahim Noonan has travelled not to the Middle East, but to the leafy English countryside of Hampshire, where he is attending the UK’s largest Muslim convention.

30,000 Muslims have gathered for the International Annual Gathering of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, known as Jalsa Salana. Imam Noonan, head missionary of the community in Ireland, is one of the thousands travelling there from abroad.

Pledging allegiance to the peaceful Ahmadiyya Caliphate

I catch him as he leaves one of the two 15,000-capacity marquees, having just listened to the speech of the Caliph of the Ahmadiyya Muslims, Mirza Masroor Ahmad. The Caliph leads tens of millions of Ahmadi Muslims worldwide, so seeing him in person is an experience relished by his followers. Imam Noonan tells me, almost in awe, that the Caliph’s message of purely peaceful Islam is something Ireland sorely needs to hear.

Imam Noonan said: “My message is that Islam is a religion of peace; it is a spiritual religion, a religion of reformation. You will not find anything in the Qur’an which suggests or orders or instructs any Muslim to go and fight a jihad which is being done in Syria or Iraq at the moment.

“So these Muslims who are leaving Ireland, have gone purely on …read more at belfasttelegraph.co.uk