Reproducing and Performing Diaspora through Ijtema: The Ahmadiyya Community in Finland

Abstract This article presents ethnographic research exploring how the Ahmadiyya Muslim diaspora enacts and reproduces itself through the annual Ijtema (congregation) in the face of displacement and persecution. In simple terms, the Ijtema is an annual structured competitive Ahmadiyya event in which participants display the religious knowledge they have acquired through the previous year. As a persecuted minority, the Ahmadiyya community uses the Ijtema to reaffirm its religious and cultural identity in the diaspora across generations through oratory, rhetoric and poetry. Drawing on Harvey Whitehouse’s theory of modes of religiosity, this study examines how the event integrates doctrinally-based practices – such as structured rituals and religious education, with “imagistic” elements, including emotionally charged experiences that cultivate deep communal bonds. Thus, the Ijtema functions as a ritual space where religious knowledge is transmitted, and communal fusion is achieved through various competitions using memory functions and shared practices.