Tag: Tablighi Jamaat

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.

The leaders of the July 7, July 21 and liquid bomb plots all attended mosques and meetings run by the group Tablighi Jamaat, which is planning to build a large mosque near the site of the 2012 Olympics.

Tablighis follow a strain of Islam which has been associated with the Taliban in Afghanistan and with a terrorist group in Pakistani Kashmir.