Muslim sect resisted in Md. - USATODAY.comWALKERSVILLE, Md. — Intisar Abbasi looks over the rolling farm field that his Muslim sect hopes to buy for a worship center and annual convention site. The Pakistani immigrant knows many in this small town of unpainted barns and church suppers are "troubled by foreigners" and suspicious of Muslims in particular.
If the local people who spoke out against his group's plans at recent public meetings knew more about the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, he says, they would drop their opposition.
"It really, really hurts," says Abassi, 60, a retired U.S. Army pharmacist who works on biowarfare vaccines at nearby Fort Detrick. "We were chased out of Pakistan just because of our religious belief, and then to come here and have to put up with this again — it's a double-whammy."
If the local people who spoke out against his group's plans at recent public meetings knew more about the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, he says, they would drop their opposition.
"It really, really hurts," says Abassi, 60, a retired U.S. Army pharmacist who works on biowarfare vaccines at nearby Fort Detrick. "We were chased out of Pakistan just because of our religious belief, and then to come here and have to put up with this again — it's a double-whammy."
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