Intro
Benin was colonized by the French, its a West African nation and is the birthplace of the vodun (or “voodoo”) religion and home to the former Dahomey Kingdom from circa 1600–1900. Islam was entrenched in the north, they are mostly Maliki-Muslims. Mirza Mubarak Ahmad in his famous “Foreign Mission” (1958) doesn’t mention any Ahmadiyya mission in Benin (See the 1961, 3rd edition), Fisher doesn’t mention Ahmadiyya in Benin either (1963). The first ever Qadiani-Ahmadi missionary was sent in the 1980’s.
By 1998, per Ahmadiyya sources, there were scarcely 1000 Ahmadi’s in the whole country, however, this is a lie, it was most likely less than 100. The Ahmadiyya movement announced 2-3 million converts and specifically in the area of the The Trans–West African Coastal Highway, the Khalifa claimed that there are 328 cities around the border with Niger and most of the converts came from this area.
By 2001, the Ahmadiyya jamaat and the Khalifa were claiming 1.3 million Ahmadi’s in Benin, which is a total farce.
At the 2002 UK annual Jalsa, the Khalifa, Mirza Tahir Ahmad brought many so called Kings from Benin and claimed to have specifically fulfilled a prophecy of MGA, wherein it was described that kings would seek blessings from MGA (or his descendants) garments. However, by 2002, there were barely 4-5 Ahmadiyya mosques in the entire country and even those were very small and in villages, nothing in any major city.
By 2004, the new Khalifa, Mirza Masroor Ahmad visited and thus for the first time ever, a sitting Khalifa visited. He opened the Baitul Tauheed mosque, which was the biggest Ahmadiyya mosque in the country.
The Khalifa visited again in 2008 and opened the Al-Mahdi mosque in Porto Nova. In 2020, the Ahmadiyya movement fraudulently reported 1000 converts for the 2019-2020 fiscal year, which is a total lie. At the annual Jalsa, barely 200 people attended, most of which were probably guests.
Continue reading “The history of Ahmadiyya in Benin” →