Dr. Asif Mahmood is candidate for lieutenant governor of California.

“As a Muslim immigrant from the great blue state of California, I’ll be a triple threat to Donald Trump. I’m running for office to fight against him, and to fight for our families.”

That was Dr. Asif Mahmood, a Democrat, last Wednesday outside ICE headquarters in Los Angeles, announcing that he is running for lieutenant governor of California.

The 56-year-old physician was born in Pakistan, but as he explained, “I wanted to live in America because of my children. I wanted them to grow up in a place that celebrates diversity and tolerance… Donald Trump continues to attack people like me – immigrants and people of color and Muslims. I say President Trump has it all wrong. It’s time to get tough on hate. California must be the leader of the Trump resistance and I will fight every step of the way.”

CAIR representative Danna Elneil told reporters, “We’re not 100 percent sure whether he’s the first Muslim to run.” Many Muslim countries, organizations and scholars would not be 100 percent sure if the candidate is a Muslim.

Dr. Asif Mahmood is a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, founded in 1889 on the belief that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908) was the long-awaited Messiah. Allah sent him, the Ahmadis believe, to end religious wars, condemn bloodshed and reinstitute morality, justice and peace.

According to the Congressional Record, in 2012 Democrat representatives Brad Sherman and Zoe Lofgren welcomed to Congress “His Holiness, Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad.” Based in Britain, he is “the worldwide spiritual leader of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, which has tens of millions of adherents around the world in 190 countries and tens of thousands of adherents here in the United States.” Sherman commended the Ahmadi motto, “Love for all. Hatred for none.”

Sherman also welcomed “distinguished leaders” Dr. Asif Mahmood and Kareem Ahmed

who show such leadership of the Muslim community in the Los Angeles area. As Dr. Stephen M. Kirby noted in 2015, the Sunnis who represent nearly 90 percent of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims would have a problem with the Ahmadi claim that they represent the “true” Islam.

In 1984, Dr. Mahmood’s native country of Pakistan added Section 298 to the penal code, prohibiting the Ahmadis from calling themselves Muslims, posing as Muslims by reciting Koranic verses, referring to their faith as Islam, and preaching or propagating their faith. The Pakistani law even prohibits Ahmadis from sounding the call to prayer.

Indonesia and Kyrgyzstan deploy similar prohibitions and in 1997 Sheikh Ali Bin Abdur Rahman Al Hufaifi, chief Imam of the Al-Masjid an-Nabawi mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia, condemned the Ahmadis as “traitors” spouting “false Quranic commentary.” As Dr. Kirby noted:

“Saudi textbooks teach that Ahmadis are not Muslims, and Ahmadis can be arrested and prosecuted solely because of their religion. The focus of such arrests is largely on foreign national workers brought into Saudi Arabia, although some Saudi nationals have been arrested for becoming Ahmadi. Hajj is the pilgrimage to Mecca that Muslims are required to take once in their life if they are able. The Saudi government has officially banned Ahmadis from making the Hajj, but some Ahmadis do so anyway.”

Dr. Kirby also compiled a list of Islamic organizations and scholars in Egypt, South Africa, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom declaring that members of the Ahmadiyya Community are not Muslims. The scholars include Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, founder of Zaytuna College, in Berkeley, California, and Sheikh Ahmed Kutty of the Islamic Institute in Toronto.

Dr. Mahmood told reporters “I’m a proud Muslim,” and he was consistently presented as a Muslim candidate for lieutenant governor. That elected official performs ceremonial duties but also sits on the University of California Board of Regents and serves as the president of the state Senate. When the need arises, the lieutenant governor becomes “acting governor.”

In his press conference Dr. Mahmood promised Medicare for all Californians, free community college, and promised to lead the fight against Donald Trump. On the anti-Trump front, the doctor would have a hard time surpassing current governor Jerry Brown.

Back the 1970s Brown gave sanctuary to violent criminals and recent murders by illegal aliens such as Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, who gunned down Kate Steinle on a San Francisco pier, have done nothing to change his mind. After the 2015 San Bernardino attack by radical Islamic terrorists Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, Brown said he would make sure “that our federal-state collaboration really is working.” As the deadly attack confirmed, the collaboration is not working and Brown has done nothing to make it work.

Meanwhile, Dr. Mahmood’s campaign claims he was raised in poverty in Pakistan, went to a school with no roof or desks, yet became the first student in his village be accepted to medical school. He earned a medical degree from Sindh Medical College, immigrated to the United States, and is now an experienced pulmonary specialist at multiple hospitals, including Garfield Medical Center.

That’s a terrific story, as Michael Corleone said in The Godfather, but the Democrat doctor is a long shot to gain the office he seeks. On the other hand, his Ahmadiyya connection raises an issue certain to be overlooked by the old-line establishment media.

Like Dr. Mahmood, Ahmadis claim to be “proud Muslims,” yet orthodox Islamic countries, organizations and scholars denounce and persecute them. Orthodox Muslims have been known to take sterner measures with proud unbelievers, kafirs and such. Radical Islamists like Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik effectively reverse the Ahmadi motto. Love for none. Hatred for all.