Ahmadi Muslims have been preaching peace since the movement was founded. Now, they say they are trying to get the rest of the world to listen, Religion News Service reports.

They are pushing the Muslims for Peace movement, a public awareness campaign started by the Ahmadi community. The campaign advertises Islam as a peaceful religion, condemns terrorism and advocates for the separation of religion and state and human rights.

However, Ahmadis do not believe that Muhammad was God’s final prophet. Hence many extremist Muslims, who see Ahmadis as heretics, have carried out violent terrorist and harassment campaigns against the movement.

Why are Ahmadis persecuted so ferociously in Pakistan? Because anyone who defends an apostate is themselves an apostate, writes Mohsin Hamid in an opinion piece at Dawn.com.

This is what the persecution of Ahmadis achieves. It allows any Muslim to be declared an apostate. For the logic can be continued endlessly. When an Ahmadi man is wounded in an attack and goes to a hospital for treatment, if the doctor agrees to treat him, she is helping an apostate, and therefore she becomes an apostate and subject to threats. When a policeman is deputed to protect the doctor, since she is an apostate, the policeman is helping an apostate, so he too becomes an apostate. And on and on.

The collective result of this is to silence and impose fear not just on the few per cent of Pakistanis who are Ahmadis, or even on those who are Christians and Hindus, but on all of us. The message is clear. Speaking out against the problem means you are the problem, so you had better be quiet.

More than 80 worshipers of a minority Muslim sect, the Ahmadis, were killed and more than 110 wounded Friday in a coordinated assault by seven well-trained attackers on two mosques in Lahore, Pakistan’s second largest city, the authorities said.

The target was the Ahmadis, a group of about two million Muslims in Pakistan who are considered heretical by many mainstream Muslims because the Ahmadis believe that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who founded their movement in 1889, was the messiah foretold by Muhammad, the prophet of Islam.

Gunmen stormed two Pakistani mosques belonging to Ahmadiyya, a minority Muslim sect, in Lahore on Friday, seizing hostages among worshippers, setting off grenades and sparking a bloody shootout with police.

Rights groups say the sect has long been persecuted in Pakistan and has remained an occasional target of sectarian attacks.

In Indonesia, a series of attacks on followers of the Ahmadiyah sect by fanatical Muslims — who consider the movement to be a cult of Islam — continues to draw criticism.

Alfred C. Stepan, director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion at Columbia University in New York, an expert in religion and democracy urging the government to exercise its authority when there are violations of human rights.

Canada’s largest mosque was officially dedicated Saturday by an estimated crowd of 5,000 people that included religious leaders, Canada’s two top politicians and throngs of faithful.

In Indonesia, Islamic hardliners have forced the government to ban a cult or sect of Islam.

Liberal Indonesians accused the government of caving in to extremists yesterday after it placed restrictions on the Ahmadiyah movement, a minority Islamic sect, in the face of violent protests by Muslim hardliners.

The ‘religion of peace’: Islamic hard-liners broke up a religious tolerance rally Sunday in Indonesia, beating demonstrators with bamboo sticks and calling for the deaths of members of a Muslim sect they consider heretical, witnesses said.

An Islamic hate group has called on its supporters to wage war against the Ahmadiyya movement — theologically a cult of Islam.

The attack in West Java’s Sukabumi district came after a government team recommended this month the Ahmadiyya sect be banned because its teachings deviate from the central tenets of Islam.

More than 1,000 Indonesian Muslims gathered in front of the presidential palace on Sunday to press the government to ban a Muslim sect that has been branded heretical by most Muslims.

A government team has recommended that Indonesia outlaw a Muslim sect that has come under attack from hard-liners as heretical, angering human rights activists who accuse authorities of cowing to pressure from extremists.

A sect of Islam hopes to build a worship center in a Maryland, USA, town.

Scattered protests Tuesday accompanied a ground-breaking ceremony for the first-ever mosque in what used to be Communist East Berlin.

An Indonesian Islamic sect which claims it has been persecuted by extremist Muslims today met with Australia's consul in Bali to seek support, warning they may lodge pleas for political asylum.

DHAKA: Hundreds of hard-line Muslims rallied in Bangladesh’s capital on Sunday to demand the government declare a minority Islamic sect non-Muslim, police said.

Minority groups of Christians and Muslims are seeking judicial review of the new decree on houses of worship that they say will obstruct them from practicing their faiths.

JAKARTA, Indonesia--Nearly 1,000 Muslims armed with machetes attacked a housing complex belonging to a minority Islamic sect in Indonesia Saturday, some of them throwing Molotov cocktails, police and local media said.

ISLAMABAD At least eight people were killed and 20 wounded Friday in an attack on a congregation of a minority Muslim sect in central Pakistan.

1. The Ahmadiyya community, theologically a cult of islam, opens Canada's largest mosque
2. Hadhrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad,
3. Ahmadiyah fights back -- in civilized way
4. Ahmadiyya: Indonesian sect 'may seek asylum'
5. Maryland town resists arrival of Muslim sect
6. Fanatic tempers run high against Ahmadiyyas
7. Islamic sect debates public image
8. Indonesian Religious Leaders Condemn Attack on Ahmadiyah Followers
9. Protests greet first new mosque in former East Berlin
10. Ahmadiyya Muslims open their doors