The Sialkot Ahmadiyya Mosque before it was destroyed by a lynch mob

Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times

The right wing supporters of President Trump, are very willing to ignore his racism,  sexism, Islamophobia, sexual exploits and constant lying, as long as he is serving their political purposes.

The ground reality is very similar in almost every country of the world.

A mob led by right-wing Muslim clerics tore down the dome and minarets of a 100-year old Pakistani mosque belonging to the marginalized Ahmadi community, officials and the community said on Thursday.

Ahmadis are one of the most persecuted groups in Sunni-majority Pakistan, with Islamists and religious hardliners labelling them heretics, while harsh Pakistani laws ban them from calling themselves Muslims or using Islamic symbols.

Saleemuddin, a spokesman for the Ahmadi community, said a mob stormed the mosque complex in Sialkot, near the Indian border in Punjab province, overnight. He put the number at several hundred.

He said there was collusion between the mob and local government officials, but police denied such accusations.

In the mean while, a leading Jewish organization has criticized the Vatican’s decision to move World War II-era Cardinal August Hlond along the path to possible sainthood, saying the Polish primate was “extremely” hostile to Jews and failed to condemn a 1946 pogrom.

In a letter to top Vatican officials released Wednesday, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) said it was “profoundly” concerned that Pope Francis approved a decree recognizing Hlond’s “heroic virtues,” the first main step in the sainthood process.

AJC’s director of interreligious affairs, Rabbi David Rosen, cited a 1936 pastoral letter Hlond wrote in which he urged Poles to stay away from the “harmful moral influence of Jews” and to boycott Jewish media.

The same day as I read this genuine protest by a Jewish group I also read what follows.

Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount

In an image released Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador David Friedman can be seen laughing and smiling — while standing next to an aerial view of Jerusalem that has been digitally altered to replace one of Islam’s holiest sites with a Jewish temple.

The photograph, which was first reported on by the ultra-Orthodox news site Kikar Hashabat, was taken while Friedman was in the Israeli city of Bnei Brak, known as a center of ultra-Orthodox Judaism. The ambassador had been touring the city with Achiya, a charity that works with disabled children.

The Jerusalem Post reports that the altered image was given to Friedman as a gift from an activist who works with Achiya.

While the Rohingya Muslims are undergoing a genocide at the hands of the extremist Buddhist or the national army, some new details have surfaced.

Amnesty International said Wednesday that Myanmar’s army was not the only group that has slaughtered civilians in the country’s volatile west. In a new report, it accused ethnic Rohingya insurgents of carrying out at least one brutal massacre when the long-running conflict in Rakhine state exploded last year.

The London-based rights organization said it had investigated the widely reported killing of dozens of minority Hindus on Aug. 25 in a village called Ah Nauk Kha Maung Sei, and concluded that Rohingya militants were responsible.

We all have an evil side and a good side. Sometimes we push our might and at others we insist on our rights. We are all born with an id and a conscience, as Sigmund Freud suggested. Sometimes one wins and at other times the other.

The Catholic Church had been hiding child abuse in its walls all over the world for centuries while it launched one crusade after another against all others.

We often see our goodness but are blind to our weaknesses.

Jesus, may peace be on him, described it the best for us:

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? (Matthew 7:3-4)

The Sunni Muslims worry about the Jewish conspiracies to demolish the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount, which has existed for more than a thousand years now, but they turn away in oblivion, when their extremists destroy an Ahmadiyya mosque in Sialkot, Punjab, Pakistan, which was more than a 100 years old.

As the Chief Editor of the Muslim Times, I have been constantly browsing news from all over the world, for the last ten years, and see a similar populist tendency in every country of the world and such parochial tendencies are shown by almost every religious group, as well. Such tendencies unfortunately are actually gaining momentum, more or less every where.

The sane and the just voices are getting quieter.

It is easy for me to see the mischief of all others, but, am I ignoring the log in my own eyes, as Jesus so aptly pointed out?

We, the Ahmadi Muslims don’t rule any country so we cannot be accused of forcing our might in face of others’ rights.

But, sometimes I wonder, how often do we take away in our individual lives, what we don’t completely deserve?

How often do we worry that we are not wielding or flaunting our wealth, intelligence, influence or status to take away what is right of others?

I believe, the more just and honest we become, the greater is the likelihood that the Almighty God will avenge atrocities done to us and will be our vindicator, God Willing!

Suggested Reading

Kripkean Dogmatism: The Best Metaphor to Understand Religious and Political Debates