Ahmadiya

No one was inside the Ahmadiya Mosque and there were no casualties in the pre-dawn assault on Thursday.

The country has also seen the rise of hate groups that preach intolerance and violence against local religious and ethnic minorities, which include Shia and Ahmadiya Muslims.

The killing was particularly shocking because the victim, Asad Shah, was a member of the pacifist Ahmadiya sect, and his assailant was a Sunni Muslim from Bradford.

The Ahmadiya have long been harassed and discriminated against by mainstream Muslims in Pakistan and Indonesia, and this has often turned to violence.

One imam at the academy, a modest place in east London, argues that all this is merely “academic”, a learned refutation of Ahmadiya doctrine.