A. The Expert
1. My name is Massimo Introvigne. I am an Italian sociologist of religions and have taught courses in several universities, including one of Sociology of Religions until 2016, when I retired, at Pontifical Salesian University in Torino, Italy. I am the co-founder and, since 1988, the managing director of CESNUR, the Center for Studies on New Religions, one of the largest research centers on religious pluralism in Europe.
2. I am the author of some seventy books on new religious movements, sociology of religions, and religious liberty (two of them published by Oxford University Press, and one by Cambridge University Press), and of more than one hundred articles in peer reviewed journals and chapters of collective books in several languages. A full bibliography of my writings is available at https://www.cesnur.org/introvigne_biblio.htm.
3. I have been called by senior Italian sociologist Roberto Cipriani, in what is the best-known manual in Italian on Sociology of Religion, “one of the Italian sociologists of religion most well-known abroad, and among the world’s leading scholars of new religious movements” (Nuovo manuale di sociologia della religione, 2nd ed., Rome: Borla, 2009, 470). Writing in one of the official publications of the American Academy of Religion, the largest professional organization in the world in the field of religious studies, Swedish historian Per Faxneld, reviewing one of my books, called me “one of the major names in the study of new religions” (https://readingreligion.org/books/satanism).
4. In 2011, I was called to serve as the Representative of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, of which the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada are also participating states) for combating racism, xenophobia, and intolerance and discrimination against Christians and members of other religions. In 2012, I was appointed chairperson of the National Observatory of Religious Liberty, established by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and served in this capacity until 2015.
5. I serve in the boards of directors and executive boards of several specialized academic journals in my field, including University of Pennsylvania Press’ Nova
Religio (https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/51647/information/editorial.pdf), and Baylor University’s Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion (https://www.religjournal.com/editorialboard.php).
6. In 2018, I started publishing as editor-in-chief the daily magazine Bitter Winter, which mostly covers issues of religious liberty. It has rapidly emerged as a trusted sources of religious liberty information internationally. For example, the section on China of the U.S. Department of State yearly report on religious liberty for the year 2020, published in 2021 (https://www.state.gov/reports/2021-report-on-international-religious-freedom/china/) quoted Bitter Winter 85 times, making it the most quoted media outlet in that document. We continued to be quoted in subsequent years in documents by the U.S. Department of State, USCIRF (the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom), and other national authorities for our coverage not only of China but of other countries as well.
B. The Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light (AROPL)
7. In connection with a refusal of registration by the UK Charity Commission of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light (AROPL), I have been asked to answer two questions, whether AROPL is a “distinct religion” with respect to the existing religions and present all the features normally associated with a religion, and whether it serves the “public benefit” in the UK.
8. I am familiar with the teachings and activities of the AROPL in the UK and other countries. For a general introduction to the AROPL, please refer to the series of five articles I have published in Bitter Winter recently, co-authored with my colleague Karolina Maria Kotkowska of Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland: (1) https://bitterwinter.org/the-ahmadi-religion-of-peace-and-light-1-a-drama-and-its-characters/; (2) https://bitterwinter.org/the-ahmadi-religion-of-peace-and-light-2-from-ahmed-al-hassan-to-abdullah-hashem/; (3) https://bitterwinter.org/the-ahmadi-religion-of-peace-and-light-3-esotericism-and-progressive-millennialism/; (4) https://bitterwinter.org/the-ahmadi-religion-of-peace-and-light-4-the-divine-just-state/; and (5) https://bitterwinter.org/the-ahmadi-religion-of-peace-and-light-5-why-are-they-persecuted/.
9. There is no doubt in my mind that the AROPL is a religion. I participated in 1999 in a European-Union-sponsored project on the definition of religion (see my contribution: “Religion as Claim: Social and Legal Controversies,” in Jan G. Platvoet and Arie L. Molendijk, eds., The Pragmatics of Defining Religion: Contexts, Concepts and Contests, Leiden: Brill, 1999, 41–72). While the definition of religion remains a contested notion, it is generally agreed that three elements are both needed and sufficient to define a religion: a shared system of beliefs that would answer questions about the “ultimate concerns” through an appeal to supernatural entities, be they immanent to our world or transcendent; an organization promoting such beliefs; and a ritual. In the case of AROPL there is, first, a complete and articulate system of beliefs affirming the existence of a personal God, his action in human history, his appointment of different messengers, rules he gave to humanity about morality and society, where does evil come from, what happens to humans after they die, and how a religious community coherent with God’s plan should be organized. The sacred scripture of the AROPL, The Goal of the Wise, which I have studied in detail, is a text of more than 600 pages that offers comprehensive and coherent answers to these questions (and many others). Indeed, the theology of the AROPL, with its rich extension to historical, moral, and social issues, appears as more detailed and complete when compared to many other religions generally recognized as such, particularly those founded recently.
10. AROPL has a hierarchical organization, which is defined in The Goal of the Wise and functions in practice, with a leader regarded as God’s appointed messenger for our time who has the power of defining the doctrine and organizing the religion, and appoints local leaders and those in charge of special tasks. I have seen these rules applied in the daily life of AROPL, which functions as many other hierarchically organized religions do.
11. Scholars of religions have expanded for at least the last fifty years the notion of “ritual” beyond the 19th-century model that looked everywhere for something similar to a Protestant Sunday service, a Catholic Mass, or a Jewish Saturday rite. There is obviously nothing similar in Buddhist groups or even in more recently established forms of Christianity such as the Quakers. The AROPL is what scholars would call a “dispensationalist” group, meaning that it divides history into epochs or dispensations. What was appropriate, and indeed corresponding to God’s will, in one dispensation is no longer needed in the subsequent dispensation. The five daily prayers, the Friday sermons in the mosques, or the pilgrimage to Mecca belong for the AROPL to the sixth covenant or dispensation. We live now in a new time, the seventh covenant, and these practices are no longer needed. But this does not mean that the AROPL does not have its own ritual. It calls “basilica” the hall in its center devoted to religious services rather than “mosque.” It looks like a typical place of worship (see image 1) and includes a pulpit from where sermons are delivered to a partially seated and largely standing audience.
Believers gather regularly there for hearing sermons, praying, meditating, and listening to readings from the holy book The Goal of the Wise and other sacred texts. This is not an unusual “ritual” and indeed is found in many Christian-derivative and Muslim-derivative religions. For example, the Jehovah’s Witnesses except for their yearly celebration of the Lord’s Supper, gather regularly to hear instructions and readings from their publications. “Ritual” today has many and different forms. Whoever attends a gathering of the AROPL clearly understands that this is a religious ritual meeting where believers affirm and celebrate their religion.
12. A further question is whether the AROPL is a distinct religion or simply a “sect” of Shiite Islam. In my opinion, the AROPL is a new religion. Of course, no new religion is totally new. When it was born, Christianity was largely based on Judaism, and Islam incorporated elements of both Judaism and Christianity. Yet, Christianity and Islam inaugurated new religious traditions and were not simply variations of pre-existing religions. Scholars of religion distinguish between the “emic” point of view of the devotees and the “etic” (not to be confused with “ethic”) perspective of the outside scholarly observers. The emic point of view of the AROPL members is that they represent the true Islam, in fact the true universal religion. From the etic perspective of scholars, they are part of a new religion, as different from what is normally called Islam as Christianity is different from Judaism. There would be no Christianity without Judaism, yet Christianity is a different religion from Judaism. There would be no AROPL without Shia Islam, yet the AROPL is a different and autonomous religion. The Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Latter-day Saints both have an emic claim of being the true and the original form of Christianity. Yet, from the etic point of view of scholars they are new religious traditions emerging from Christianity just as Christianity once emerged from Judaism. That the AROPL is a new religion is obvious to any reader of The Goal of the Wise and explicitly proclaimed there. We read in the book that ninety-nine per cent of what Islam currently teaches is wrong, which would be hardly compatible with the theory that the AROPL is just a sect within Islam. “Ninety-nine percent of religion is wrong, not ninety-nine percent of all religions, ninety-nine percent of each religion, even Islam” (The Goal of the Wise, p. 110). “The Islam that the Riser/Qaim [i.e., the leader of the AROPL], brings shall be almost entirely different from the Islam that Mohammed… came with and the Islam that is currently practiced today. Essentially, it is a new religion” (The Goal of the Wise, p. 113). The AROPL devotees believe that the real Kaaba is not in Mecca (but in Petra, Jordan), that fixed times for prayer are not necessary, that Ramadan is in December, headscarves are not mandatory from women, alcohol can be freely if moderately drunk, LGBTQ people should not be judged or persecuted, and all prophets made mistakes. In short, they believe that we have entered a seventh and final covenant between the humankind and God, where the teachings and jurisprudence of the sixth covenant, stipulated with Muhammad, are no longer in force. Their movement was born in a Shiite context, yet they teach that the present Shia leadership in both Iraq and Iran is made up of “non-working scholars” who lead believers astray with false doctrines. All these teachings clearly establish that the AROPL is a new religion and not a variation of sect of Islam.
13. I am not a specialist of British law on Charities and its notion of public benefit. I would however include some comments on this aspect as well. The moral teachings that the AROPL imparts to its members are undoubtedly beneficial for society, particularly considering that these members often come from Islamic countries plagued by fundamentalism and conflict. The AROPL has paid a heavy price for its human-rights-friendly approach to Islamic teachings, particularly for its defense of the rights of the LGBTQ community, which has led to the arrest and harassment of its members in Malaysia and elsewhere. The Goal of the Wise teaches that “Religion is good treatment of others, and whoever doesn’t treat others well has no religion” (The Goal of the Wise, p. 362). I saw no evidence that this precept is not sincerely believed and practiced.
14. I respectfully suggest to consider that the AROPL is in the UK a religion with many members who escaped religious persecution in other countries. Obviously, their first need is to survive in safety, which perhaps explains why the outreach activities in the UK are still in an initial stage of development. In general terms, however, in all countries where the AROPL is present, based on its theology and moral teachings, presenting the message of the religion to everybody and offering several forms of help to those in need, including non-members of the group, are typical features of the movement. Certain meetings and gatherings of AROPL are reserved to members, as it happens in many religions, but others are public and even massively broadcasted via the Internet. The AROPL has even organized an international conference for scholars of religion last March, where its beliefs have been candidly presented and discussed with academics coming from such diverse countries as Australia, Lithuania, the United States, and Canada, in addition to the United Kingdom. I understand that charitable activities benefiting also non-members are in an advanced state of planning and, as mentioned earlier, correspond both tho the AROPL’s worldview and to its activities in other countries. In short, I believe that the AROPL does offer “public benefit” services in the UK, consistent with the situation of its members but with larger plans for the future that have already started to be implemented.
April 10, 2024
Massimo Introvigne
Comentarios