About 40,000 Ahmadiyya Muslims from around the world are expected at the 50th Jalsa Salana. Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian
Source: The Guardian
By Harriet Sherwood; Religion correspondent
Driven from Pakistan and now reeling from murder of Asad Shah in Glasgow, Ahmadis seek ‘spiritual uplift’ at Jalsa Salana
By mid-morning, Agha Abdul Karim Abed had already baked 56,000 roti. He had been at work in an outhouse on a Hampshire farm since 5.30am, and his target was 150,000 circles of the flat bread before the day was out.
Giant mixers combined flour, water, salt, sugar and yeast into a dough that was rested before being fed into a machine. At the end of a long conveyor belt, two men and a boy piled up the roti for bagging and transporting to enormous meal tents.
The roti operation overseen by Abed was just one element of the huge logistical challenge of organising the 50th Jalsa Salana, a 40,000-strong international gathering of Ahmadiyya Muslims taking place this weekend at Oakland farm, near Alton.
For the UK’s Ahmadis, this affirmation is particularly apt after the jailing this week of Tanveer Ahmed for the murder of Glasgow newsagent Asad Shah in a sectarian attack motivated by hatred of Shah’s Ahmadi faith.
The Jalsa, which opened on Friday lunchtime and runs until Sunday, is an opportunity for “spiritual uplift” among members of the Ahmadi community and others, according to Abdul Quddus Arif, a 26-year-old imam. “We stand together and pray together as an international community across cultures and boundaries. It’s an amazing and beautiful thing,” he said shortly before Friday prayers, marking the opening of the Jalsa.