Asking whether Ahmadiyya Muslims are Sunni or Shia is like asking whether Jehovah’s Witnesses are Catholic or Protestant. They’re neither, they’re entirely different. There are approximately seventy-three different sects of Islam There are approximately seventy-three different sects of Islam and the belief that their founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, was a messiah places the Ahmadiyya community in conflict with many mainstream Muslims. By way of contrast, the Ahmadi message of peace makes them very popular with British politicians in general and David Cameron in particular.

Driving up St. James’s Road from London Road, you may have noticed an orange brick building with boxes of flowers outside and banners on the fence carrying the message ‘Love for all, hatred for none’. This is the Croydon Ahmadiyya Mosque, which has four hundred young people associated with it who public spiritedly donate blood, pick up litter, support the poppy appeal,plant trees and visit the elderly. I had been invited by one of their number to attend the 12th Annual Peace Symposium at their headquarters in Morden – the largest mosque in Western Europe.

I was driven over by a gracious and stylish Ahmadi mother, Syeda Maimona Shah from east Croydon, clad in black with twisted and tucked head scarf that’s super-modest while also being super-practical when you come to put your forehead to the carpet in the prayers – but more of that later.

The rows of police and security staff at the Baitul Futuh Mosque car park entrance underlined what a high-profile event this was; a thousand guests including ambassadors and dignitaries of all flavours and, of course, the World Head of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, the fifth Khalifa, His Holiness Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, who currently resides in Putney.

Inside the mosque were groups of multi-faith delegates being given guided tours, and everywhere you could hear snippets of the guides’ claims: yes, there are Ahmadiyya in 206 countries… our Messiah Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was born in India in 1835… terrible persecution in Pakistan… our social action charity is called ‘Humanity First‘.

After my tour round the impressive building there was the chance to join in the prayers. Heck, if as a Christian woman you can’t join in the prayers at a ‘love for all’ peace symposium, when can you? So I borrowed a headscarf and headed to the women’s hall. I wished I could remember what the various prayer postures meant as we stood, knelt and touched our foreheads to the floor in unison while the praises to Allah crackled through the satellite link-up.

More: