The Conclave acted quite swiftly ending the weeks-long speculations about the next pope – only on the second day of the cardinals’ meeting.
The announcement of Robert Prevost being the new Pope sent waves of excitement in not only the crowds gathered in and around St Peter’s Square in the Vatican, and also not only in the Catholic population in all parts of the world, but to the general global population of the world too. Why the general population? Because the world stands at the brink of disaster and world religions can play a major role in saving it from the catastrophe that looms the global horizon.
Also of general interest and intrigue is always the country of origin of the Pope, which this time happens to be the USA – Chicago to be precise. So far known as a city of skyscrapers, deep-pan pizzas, and as Carl Sandburg called it, city of the big shoulders, Chicago will now be known for being the birth place of Pope Leo XIV – the name that Bishop Robert Prevost has chosen for himself.
Quite interestingly, Chicago is also known as the birthplace of modern Islam in the USA. Hazrat Mufti Muhammad Sadiqra, the pioneer of Muslim missionary activity in America landed on the US shores in 1921, and settled in Chicago in the same year, laying foundations of the headquarters of Islam Ahmadiyya.
A missionary sent by the Ahmadiyya Caliph, Hazrat Mirza Bashir-ud-Din Mahmud Ahmadra, Mufti Sadiq is credited, by esteemed historians to be the dawn of Islamic identity for America. (The Cambridge to American Islam, pp. 141 & 208)
Mufti Sadiq had taken the Ahmadiyya message of Islam to a land that was in pursuit of a fulfilling faith, and managed to attract huge numbers from the American population to the message of Prophet Muhammad, and as revived by Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmadas of Qadian – the founder of the Ahmadiyya Islam. Mufti Sadiq and the Americans that rallied around him to accept Ahmadiyya were, as Yvonne Haddad and Jane Smith declare, “unquestionably the most influential group in African American Islam.” (The Oxford Handbook of American Islam, p. 146)
An expert on Islam in America, Richard Turner sees the Ahmadiyya community as “the most significant movements in the history of Islam in the United States in the twentieth century, providing as it did the first multi-racial model for American Islam”. (Islam in the African-American Experience, pp. 109-110)
Nabil Echchaibi applauded Mufti Sadiq for emphasising a Muslim identity in America by initiating the publication of The Moslem Sunrise (later, and to date, spelt The Muslim Sunrise) – the first English-language Muslim newspaper to be published in America and still in publication. (The Cambridge Companion to American Islam, p. 125)
Sylviane A Diouf credits the Ahmadiyya community for providing, for the first time, “Qurans and other Islamic literature in English.” (The Oxford Handbook of American Islam, p. 23)
The Ahmadiyya community was the first to establish “the first, and in some cases, the only, centres for Islamic gatherings.” (The Cambridge Companion to American Islam, p. 52)
What was it that worked so well in favour of the Ahmadiyya mission? Haddad and Smith give a thoroughly researched answer: The approach that attracted the Americans, especially the African Americans, was the Ahmadiyya openness to people of all ethnic origins.
So here we have a new Pope, born and raised in the birthplace of Islam in the US. In his first public address from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica, Pope Leo XIV emphasised on building bridges and that humanity was the strongest bridge that connected the entire humanity.
These words resonate the teachings of the Ahmadiyya community that, a hundred years since establishing its mission in Chicago, continues to promote interfaith harmony. Peace, building bridges and respecting humanity has been the core message of the Ahmadiyya leadership all along, and is today being upheld by Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, the current head of the Ahmadiyya community.
Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, addressing the American people during one of his visits to the USA (when gifted with a key to Los Angeles), said:
“The key to peace is to stop cruelty and oppression wherever it occurs with justice and equality. Only when this principle is followed will global peace develop. This will only happen when the people of the world come to recognise their Creator. It is my ardent hope and prayer that the entire world urgently comes to understand the needs of the time before it is too late.” (“Head of Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat delivers Historic Address in Southern California”, www.pressahmadiyya.com, 12 May 2013)
These words are a clear testimony to the fact that the Ahmadiyya Muslim community strives for global peace building and believes in religion to be the only way forward.
Every religion has come from God and every religion should stand for building bridges and strive in the way of establishing global peace. We all live in the hope of walls coming down and bridges built to unite humanity under the banner the one and true God.