Overviewing a Century. The Lahore-Ahmadiyya Mosque Archive in Berlin

Abstract

In 1923, Ahmadiyya Anjuman Ishaat ve Islam with headquarters in Lahore (hereafter: Lahore-Ahmadiyya) sent the pedagogue Maulvi Sadr-ud-Din to Berlin commissioned to erect a mosque, create a mission and enter in conversation with the Europeans. The European mission was a comprehensive answer to the challenge that the British Empire presented to Muslims. In their hometown, Lahore, Lahore-Ahmadiyya aimed at comparing religions in order to push back British missionaries and disprove Christian claims to superiority. Adapting to the German setting, which in the years to come would swiftly move from democratic to nationalistic politics, the mission in Berlin created many variations on that theme. Today, the mosque registry, holding records of almost 100 years of administration, bears witness to the efforts of the missionaries to explain to various German audiences their view of Islam. An important source for Muslim history in Germany, the archive highlights such different research subjects as Muslim modernity at work, the language of secular Islam, Indian-German approximations, conversion, and mixed marriage. In 2018, it was donated to the National Archive in Berlin, where the approximately 70,000 documents and 5,000 photographs were made available for research. This contribution offers an analysis of the contents.