Solidarity in Saskatchewan
The province’s Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at was visited by their caliph, Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad in 2016 to host the inauguration of the province’s largest purpose-built mosque. The Jama’at was also instructed to reach out to local Indigenous communities to establish relationships. This has led to a friendship between the Standing Buffalo Dakota Nation and Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at. As Chief Rodger Redman of the Standing Buffalo Dakota Nation says, the local Ahmadiyya Muslim community started visiting in 2017, organizing food runs and working on the school. In the meantime, Redman has travelled to London (United Kingdom) along with a coalition of First Nations chiefs, elders and young people from across Canada, to share their story with Ahmadiyya Muslims from around the world at the 2018 annual convention - the Jalsa Salana. The local Ahmadiyya Muslim ccomunity extending invitations to Indigenous communities for the annual western conference in Saskatchewan. Since establishing a friendship, the two communities also built a new playground for the youths of Standing Buffalo in 2018, where the Band paid for the materials while the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at volunteered to build it. Since then, Zeeshan Ahmed who is is an Imam for the Regina Chapter of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat Canada, has also reached out and visited over 50 different First Nations across Saskatchewan.