Ahmadis pray and believe like other Muslims. What does the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat offer that is new?

No new prayers and no new religion, but an understanding of the Holy Qur’an that agrees with conscience and reason. And a unity across all nations and races that is actually lived, showing what belief in the One God means.

In prayer, fasting and the other duties there is indeed no difference. The difference lies in understanding. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat answers many questions about the Holy Qur’an, the Hadith and life in the world differently from conventional scholarship.

A good way to test this is to compare. You can look at Islam once as most scholars explain it today, and then as the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat understands it. Whatever is closer to your own conscience, your own nature and plain common sense is what you should follow. Someone who seeks the truth has no reason to reject an answer they have recognised as right.

The second point is unity. If God is One, He does not give people teachings that contradict each other. At its core every true religion has the same task. It connects people with God and with one another. This is meant not only to be believed but to be lived.

This is exactly what can be seen in the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat. It includes people from China and Japan, from the south and the north of Africa, from America, Canada and Europe. Yet they form one single community. Anyone who meets Ahmadis from different countries soon notices that the barriers of origin and colour between them have disappeared. The verses above describe this unity of hearts.

Among many Muslims, by contrast, little brotherhood remains. Groups fight one another, sometimes even with weapons. A community in which the Oneness of God becomes the oneness of people is therefore what the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat offers as new, even though it is really the most original thing in Islam.