The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of the RMI held its fourth annual Jalsa Salana Convention last month at the Marshall Islands Resort. The theme of the two-day convention was the Islamic teachings regarding serving mankind.
About 145 people attended the convention including the US Ambassador Karen Stewart.
The convention featured a message from his Holiness Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad who is the worldwide leader of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. He said: “Remember that the aim of the Jalsa is to achieve closeness to Allah; to advance in religious knowledge and understanding; to bring about virtuous changes and integrate them into one’s life; to save oneself from the desires and futilities of this finite world; to enhance the relationship of love, affection and brotherhood with our fellow beings and to strive to fulfill these noble tasks with all of one’s abilities and capabilities; and finally to make a promise to spread the peaceful message of Islam to all the people of the world.”
In a related development, the US State Department issued last week its annual review of religious freedom globally, including a section on the Marshall Islands. The three-page report on the Marshall Islands opens by noting the RMI Constitution provides protections for religious freedom.
“Ahmadi Muslims continued to report some difficulties in receiving government approval for conducting community-sponsored social welfare projects and in obtaining meetings with government officials,” the State Department report noted. Prejudice against Muslims, reported by members of the Ahmadiyya Muslin Community, “continued to contribute to government delays in approving certain humanitarian and social welfare projects sponsored by the Muslim community,” said the report.
Read more about this in the June 8, 2018 edition of the Marshall Islands Journal.