About Ahmadiyya Gazette

Ahmadiyya Gazette

Overview

The Ahmadiyya Gazette Canada is the official magazine of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at in Canada, the Canadian branch of the worldwide Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. Established in 1972, it is a monthly magazine that entered its 55th year of publication in 2026, making it one of the longest-running religious community periodicals in the country. The Gazette is produced in two language sections, English and Urdu, and serves a dual purpose: it is a source of spiritual and religious education for Ahmadi Muslims across Canada, and it is the community's own running chronicle, documenting the sermons and messages of its leadership, the life of its local congregations from coast to coast, and the milestones of the Canadian Jama'at. Although its editorial home is the Ahmadiyya community's Canadian headquarters at Peace Village in Vaughan, Ontario, in the Greater Toronto Area, its readership and its reporting span the whole country, and the magazine says its readership extends internationally as well. In February 2026 the Gazette launched a full website and mobile app, moving a half-century-old print institution firmly into daily digital publishing.

History

The Gazette was established in 1972, in the early years of the organized Ahmadiyya Muslim presence in Canada, and it has been published continuously since. For more than five decades it has recorded the growth of the Canadian Jama'at — the arrival of new congregations, the building of mosques such as Baitul Islam in Vaughan, the annual Jalsa Salana conventions, and the visits and messages of the community's worldwide head, the Khalifatul-Masih. According to the Gazette itself, the current Khalifatul-Masih V reads the magazine and conveys his appreciation in letters to its team, a point of pride the publication mentions in its own account of its work. The Urdu section has been a constant of the magazine's life: Sayyed Hidayatullah Hadi, a scholar who had lectured on research methodology at Jamia Ahmadiyya institutions in Canada, Rabwah and Qadian, served as the Gazette's Urdu editor from 1988 until his death in April 2026 — a tenure of nearly four decades that illustrates the volunteer continuity behind the magazine. The print era also produced the reference work to which he contributed, the History of Jama'at Ahmadiyya Canada.

The magazine's most visible recent milestone came on February 13, 2026, when its new website was officially launched at a ceremony at Aiwan-e-Tahir in Peace Village, Vaughan, attended by members of the national executive, former editorial board members and the Jama'at's publications team. The Missionary-in-Charge of the Canadian Jama'at, Maulana Sohail Mubarak Sharma, formally inaugurated the site. The Chief Editor described the effort involved in continuing to print and mail a monthly magazine while simultaneously building the digital platform — a transition undertaken, he noted, with limited resources and volunteer technical help.

Programming and Content

The Gazette's content follows the rhythm of Ahmadi Muslim religious life. Each issue and the website carry material on the Holy Qur'an and its commentary, the writings of the community's founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, and the guidance of the Khalifatul-Masih; a standing feature, "This Week With Huzoor," reports on the activities of Khalifatul-Masih V. Articles address theology and contemporary questions — the Qur'an and science, the meaning of jihad, responses to distortions of the community's teachings — alongside devotional poetry and essays. Just as important is the reporting: dispatches from local Jama'ats across Canada record conferences, charity work, interfaith visits and community firsts, such as a delegation from the Wasauksing First Nation received by the community, the inaugural university and college fair held for Ahmadi students, and the Abdus Salam science conference. Notices, obituaries and announcements — including funeral notices for members — serve the magazine's function as a community bulletin. The website organizes this material into articles, reports, notices and Khilafat coverage, updated many times a month; in early October 2026 alone it carried the Khalifa's special message for Jalsa Salana Canada 2026 and a run of reports from across the country.

Audience and Reach

The Gazette's readers are the members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at in Canada, together with readers abroad whom the magazine says it reaches internationally; it publishes no audited circulation, and none is claimed here. Its audience is defined less by geography than by affiliation: Ahmadi families in the Greater Toronto Area, Calgary, Vancouver, Montreal and smaller centres read it as their own community record, in English, in Urdu, or in both. Because it is the official organ of the Canadian Jama'at, the Gazette is also a source consulted by researchers and government bodies documenting the Ahmadiyya community in Canada — Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board, for example, has cited the Gazette among its sources on the community.

Digital Presence

The Gazette's digital home, ahmadiyyagazettecanada.ca, launched in February 2026 together with a mobile app. The site republishes material from the monthly print magazine and adds web-only reports and notices at a pace the print cycle never allowed, with dated items appearing throughout each month — the homepage in mid-October 2026 led with the week's report on the Khalifatul-Masih and articles dated within the previous fortnight. The launch was explicitly framed by the Jama'at as an expansion of its outreach, pairing the printed magazine that is still mailed to subscribers with a website intended to reach younger readers and an international audience.

Ownership and Organisation

The Gazette is owned and published by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at Canada, and it is produced by a volunteer editorial team working under the Jama'at's direction. As of 2026 its Chief Editor is Maulana Hadi Ali Chaudhary; the English section is edited by Furhan Hamza Qureshi, assisted by Hafiz Mujeeb and Umar Akbar; the magazine's manager is Mubashir Khalid; and the Urdu section was led for decades by the late S. H. Hadi. The team works from the community's headquarters at Peace Village in Vaughan, Ontario — the planned community built around Baitul Islam Mosque — where the website launch was held and where the magazine's appreciation awards for long-serving volunteers were presented in 2026.

Contact and Availability

The Ahmadiyya Gazette Canada is available in print by subscription through the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at Canada and free to read online at ahmadiyyagazettecanada.ca, where new articles, reports and notices are posted throughout the month. The publication's editorial office is at the Jama'at's headquarters in Peace Village, Vaughan, Ontario, in the Greater Toronto Area. Readers interested in the magazine's parent community can also follow the wider work of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at Canada through its mosques and local chapters across the country.

The Magazine and the National Community

The Gazette's reporting map mirrors the structure of the community it serves. The Canadian Jama'at is organized into regional districts and local congregations spread across the country's six time zones — a structure described in the community's own reporting as eleven imarats and some thirty local jamaats at the time of its nationwide Musleh-e-Maud Day observances in February 2021 — and the magazine is the thread that ties those congregations together between national gatherings. Its February 2021 issue, for example, published the full text, in both Urdu and English, of the community's foundational Musleh-e-Maud prophecy, so that members marking the occasion at home during the pandemic could read the same pages in every province. Speeches from the annual Jalsa Salana Canada convention — such as a 2023 address on "Jihad of the Pen," delivered at the International Centre in Mississauga — are transcribed and published in its pages, turning a three-day gathering into a permanent record. For a small, geographically scattered religious community, that archival function is the Gazette's quiet importance: births, deaths, sermons, conferences and acts of service are all preserved in one place, and the website launched in 2026 has made that archive searchable and immediate in a way the mailed monthly never could be.