From Sufism to Ahmadiyya: A Muslim Minority Movement in South Asia

By Adil Hussain Khan

The Ahmadiyya Muslim community represents the followers of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908), a charismatic leader whose claims of spiritual authority brought him into conflict with most other Muslim leaders of the time. The controversial movement originated in rural India in the latter part of the 19th century and is best known for challenging current conceptions of Islamic orthodoxy. Despite missionary success and expansion throughout the world, particularly in Western Europe, North America, and parts of Africa, Ahmadis have effectively been banned from Pakistan. Adil Hussain Khan traces the origins of Ahmadi Islam from a small Sufi-style brotherhood to a major transnational organization, which many Muslims believe to be beyond the pale of Islam.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Release date: Apr 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9780253015297

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FROM SUFISM TO AHMADIYYA

FROM SUFISM TO AHMADIYYA

A MUSLIM MINORITY MOVEMENT IN SOUTH ASIA

Adil Hussain Khan

Indiana University Press

Bloomington & Indianapolis

This book is a publication of

Indiana University Press

Office of Scholarly Publishing

Herman B Wells Library 350

1320 East 10th Street

Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

iupress.indiana.edu

© 2015 by Adil Hussain Khan

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.

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ISBN 978-0-253-01523-5 (cloth)

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For my parents

Contents

Acknowledgments

A Note on Transliteration and Translation

Introduction

1   Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiani before Prophethood

2   The Prophetic Claims of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad

3   Authority, Khilāfat, and the Lahori-Qadiani Split

4   Politics and the Ahmadiyya Movement under Mirza Bashir al-Din Mahmud Ahmad

5   Religion and Politics after Partition: The Ahmadi Jihad for Kashmir

6   Early Opposition and the Roots of Ahmadi Persecution

7   Persecution in Pakistan and Politicization of Ahmadi Identity

Conclusion

Appendix: Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s Family Tree

Glossary

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

MANY PEOPLE HAVE contributed to the publication of this book in various capacities. I am deeply indebted to Professor Christopher Shackle, whose support and guidance shaped this project from its earliest stages. I would also like to thank Professors Paul Gifford, Kate Crosby, Oliver Scharbrodt, David Azzopardi, James Alexander Kapalo, and Sarah Stewart for their stimulating discussions and input in the direction of my research. Dr. Matthew Nelson and Huma Chughtai provided valuable insights into Pakistani politics and the National Assembly debates. Professors Ian Talbot and Avril A. Powell provided constructive feedback on earlier drafts of this project, from which I benefited greatly. I would also like to thank the editorial staff at Indiana University Press, who provided numerous suggestions for improvement and saw this project through to its completion.

The imam of London’s Fazl mosque, Maulana Ataul Mujeeb Rashid, patiently dealt with and responded to endless questions on the subtleties of Ahmadi theology, especially during my first two years of research. Maulana Abdul Mannan Tahir and family were kind enough to extend their hospitality to me on a number of occasions; they also put me in touch with many notable Ahmadis in Britain, India, and Pakistan. The extended family members of Abdul Mannan Tahir guided me through Rabwah and Qadian upon my arrival and helped me make the most of my visits, which would have otherwise been far less productive had I been on my own. Maulana Sayyid Mir Mahmud Ahmad Nasir, principal of the Ahmadi seminary in Rabwah, was exceptionally kind and provided access to seminary resources in addition to granting me permission to speak freely with faculty members in Rabwah. The late Maulana Dost Muhammad Shahid graciously answered several questions both in person and through correspondence and pointed me in the appropriate direction regarding historical aspects of my research, even when our trajectories differed. I am also very grateful for the help of Dr. Navidul Haq Khan and family, whose faithful devotion to Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya left a lasting impression in my mind. Siraj and Sabah were particularly helpful and always eager to offer assistance by enthusiastically sifting through Ahmadi literature with me.

I must also thank Sabahussalaam Smith, Pasha Dougela, Tariq Sami, Syed Tayyeb Ahmad Shah, Waqar Jamil, and Ray Mynatt for their long conversations, which often challenged my developing ideas and enabled me to pursue new avenues of research, especially at the beginning of this project. The family of Jamshed and Sharaf Tirmizi warmly welcomed me into their home in Lahore, which allowed me to explore the Punjab without worry and at times provided a much-needed escape from religious controversy.

Funding from the Additional Award for Fieldwork from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and the University of London Central Research Fund made possible trips to India and Pakistan during the spring of 2006. The Bobet Fellowship at Loyola University New Orleans helped bring this project to a close. Loyola’s specialist librarian, Brian Sullivan, provided tremendous help on numerous occasions.

Chapter 4 is a revised version of my article The Kashmir Crisis as a Political Platform for Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya’s Entrance into South Asian Politics, which appeared in Modern Asian Studies 46:5 (September 2012). The material is included with permission from Cambridge University Press, for which I am grateful.

Lastly, but certainly not least, none of this would have been possible without the immeasurable love, support, and assistance of my family: Hina, Esa, Sana, Dean, Ameena, Musa, and Yusuf; my wife, Nasima; and most of all my parents, Khalid and Nusrat, whose prayers alone have brought me this far. Any good that may come of this is because of them.

Despite the greatly appreciated advice and efforts of many people, any errors, mistakes, or shortcomings in this book are my own.

A Note on Transliteration and Translation

THE TRANSLITERATIONS IN this book largely follow a simplified version of the system adopted by the International Journal of Middle East Studies. There are a number of drawbacks to adhering to this scheme strictly, however, for reasons discussed in the text. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad frequently switched from one language to another within the same work, which complicates the act of transliteration, since there are different conventions associated with each language. A given word may be spelled or pronounced differently in each language, leading to different transliterations of the same word, such as the Qur᾽anic concept of khātam al-nubuwwa and the Pakistani organization known as Khatm-i Nubuwwat. In this book, I have transliterated words based on their original context so that they may be identified as easily as possible by readers familiar with the language in question, even though this creates apparent inconsistencies in usage from one passage to another. I have also used anglicized plurals in most cases, such as khalīfas instead of khulafā.

In rendering proper nouns that have been widely used in English, such as names or titles of individuals who regularly wrote their own names in English, I have used the preferred or most recognized spellings. In cases where names were not commonly written in English with consistent spellings, I have provided the full transliteration at the word’s first appearance and used a simplified spelling thereafter. In cases where English words were rendered into Urdu script, I have used conventional English spellings instead of providing reverse transliterations.

The definitions of technical terms throughout the book reflect the context of the original passage in which they appeared, since religious terminology takes on different connotations in each language. These distinctions might not be as clear in the glossary, where most terms may be traced back to Arabic roots. I hope that this will convey a more accurate account of original passages despite apparent inconsistencies, especially for those who are not familiar with the religious undertones of each language. All translations, unless otherwise noted, are my own.

FROM SUFISM TO AHMADIYYA

Introduction

JAMĀ῾AT-I AHMADIYYA, OR the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, is one of the most controversial movements in contemporary South Asian Islam, whose members have been legally declared non-Muslim in countries such as Pakistan. This controversy over whether Ahmadis are in fact Muslims stems largely from the spiritual claims of the movement’s founder, who is believed by Ahmadis to have taken on a messianic role which infringes upon mainstream conceptions of prophethood in Islam. In short, Ahmadis claim that their community was founded by the second coming of Jesus Christ, who was sent to the world by God to reform society in advance of the final judgment. This belief has shaped the development of the Ahmadiyya movement and has framed questions of legitimacy surrounding its interpretations of Islam as it continues to spread throughout the world. The transnational scope of the movement today has enabled this controversy to have lasting repercussions for conceptions of Muslim identity worldwide by helping many Muslims delineate what contemporary Islam is not. This is also true in Western European countries, such as Britain, France, and Germany, as well as in Canada and the United States, where the Ahmadiyya movement has increasingly taken root since the 1980s through the establishment of South Asian immigrant communities and converts to Islam. The impact of the Ahmadi controversy has been most evident, however, in the development of South Asian politics after India’s partition in 1947, which was determined largely by religion.

Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya originated as an Islamic reform movement in nineteenth-century Punjab, when the Indian subcontinent was under British colonial rule. At the time, many Muslim thinkers were preoccupied with internal religious debates ranging from the ritual practices of Sufis to the role of hadith in the broader Islamic tradition. Close encounters with non-Muslims fueled interreligious rivalries with Hindus, Sikhs, and Christians, whose growing influence in the region had been facilitated by increased missionary activity under the British. These dynamics were especially important in the Punjab, where the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community was centered. The response of some Muslim intellectuals was to turn to religious reform as a means of addressing the religious and political turmoil of the colonial experience.

For Ahmadis, conditions in British India resembled those that were to herald the awaited messiah whose return had been prophesized by the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century. The founder of Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiani (1835–1908), rallied support by combining a reformist program with insights obtained from private religious experiences in order to establish a community based on his divinely guided response to changing conditions. This community sought to unite the Muslim mainstream—as well as adherents of other world faiths—under the banner of the one true religion, which is believed by Ahmadis to have been conveyed directly to Mirza Ghulam Ahmad by God himself ahead of the day of judgment. The parallels of this seemingly Islamic version of a rapture, coupled with the apocalyptic tone of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s mystical visions, presented his role in a messianic light. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad thus launched his Islamic revival as the primary figure sent to redeem humanity from its moral deficiencies through the reformation of society along Islamic ideals. His interpretation of this scenario created a sense of controversy around his followers and skepticism about the authenticity of his claims in a way that has impacted the subsequent development of Islam well beyond nineteenth-century South Asia. Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya in this respect is a messianic movement at the margins of the mainstream revival that has gripped Islamic thought since the height of the modern era.

Since its emergence, Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya has reinvigorated the debate on Islamic orthodoxy among the Muslim mainstream. The Ahmadi controversy today converges on the question of whether Ahmadis are Muslims, which revolves around the authenticity of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s messianic claims. Ahmadis maintain that these claims disclose Ghulam Ahmad’s elevated spiritual status, which incorporates a strand of prophethood believed to be subservient to—and less in stature than—the prophethood of Muhammad. The Muslim mainstream contends that this belief presents a challenge to Islamic orthodoxy by infringing upon the finality of Muhammad’s prophethood. Ghulam Ahmad’s prophetic status in particular, among other Ahmadi beliefs, such as the belief in Jesus’s natural death in Kashmir following his survival of crucifixion and the rejection of violent jihad, has perhaps stimulated the greatest uproar for its divergence from mainstream opinion. This has made assessing Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s career difficult, due to sharply polarized views of his legacy, as messianic savior or antichrist, where one represents pristine orthodoxy and the other represents a perverse infidelity beyond the pale of Islam.

The Ahmadi controversy has entered the public consciousness, which has enabled it to become a familiar feature of political discourse in contemporary Muslim South Asia by virtue of continued opposition to the movement over the last century. To this day, provocative headlines about Ahmadi involvement in sectarian rivalries, or in Pakistani political scandals, regularly appear in the Urdu press. The evolution of the Ahmadi controversy is typically contextualized with key events in Pakistan’s political history, including the Punjab disturbances of 1953, which led to the first-ever implementation of martial law in the country;¹ Pakistan’s constitutional changes of 1974, which officially categorized Ahmadis as a non-Muslim minority;² and the introduction of the blasphemy ordinance of 1984, which effectively made integral aspects of Ahmadi religious life in Pakistan illegal.³ Since 1984, a person’s religious convictions found to be in violation of the penal code have been regarded as criminal, making the expression of belief in Ahmadi Islam a punishable offense, subject to fines or imprisonment.

Although these events may characterize the general resistance towards Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya in Pakistan since India’s partition, they do not provide an adequate explanation for how the religious worldview of Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya became intertwined with the mainstream political discourse of modern South Asia. Mainstream politicians certainly could have allowed debates about Ghulam Ahmad’s inner spiritual experiences and his hypothetical abstractions of prophecy to remain within the confines of theology, and thus limited to the realm of the ῾ulamā (religious scholars). Instead, it is clear that by the time of the Punjab disturbances of 1953, Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya had already become a firmly established feature of mainstream political discourse in Muslim South Asia, which to some extent made such widespread disturbances possible. This suggests that Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya’s initial thrust into the mainstream political arena must have taken place prior to 1953 and likely prior to the formation of Pakistan in 1947.

Scholars have generally paid more attention to the repercussions of the Ahmadi controversy than to its development. This approach fails to appreciate the role of Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya’s rise from obscure origins through its expansion into a globalized movement at the heart of one of contemporary Islam’s great doctrinal debates. To fully understand the scope of this controversy, it is necessary to consider the development of the movement’s theological worldview and its politicized background within the appropriate historical context. This book traces the progression of the movement from a small Sufi-style brotherhood in nineteenth-century British India to the heavily politicized movement of today and demonstrates how sociopolitical concerns during a specific era of Muslim history in South Asia facilitated the emergence of a distinct Ahmadi religious identity. It also provides an explanation for why the Ahmadi controversy played a key role in the development of mainstream Muslim identity during the formation of Pakistan, when prospects of creating an Islamic state prompted fundamental questions about what it means to be Muslim. This line of inquiry will illustrate how the Ahmadi controversy has helped shape the discourse on orthodoxy in contemporary Islam more broadly.

Evaluating the life and claims of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad is an important part of contextualizing the religious development of Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya and its distinctive worldview. The Ahmadi interpretation of Islam is typically assumed to be the natural by-product of Ghulam Ahmad’s spirituality. The development of Ahmadi Islam was not solely a religious phenomenon, however, nor was it the inevitable outcome of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s theological claims. Rather, it was influenced in some instances by circumstances independent of religious factors. Ahmadi identity was affected by the advent of modernity and the politics of colonial subjugation as it evolved in an increasingly globalized world over the course of the twentieth century. Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya’s origins in the colonial period shaped the development of its theological framework in the postcolonial period.

British rule in India initiated a reassessment of Muslim institutions and a reevaluation of Muslim political autonomy leading up to India’s partition. Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya’s involvement in major political crises, such as the conflict in Kashmir since the 1930s, partition in 1947, and the Punjab disturbances of 1953, gradually led to the politicization of Ahmadi Islam. As the notion of Ahmadiyyat as a distinct expression of Islam became increasingly politicized, the formation of an Ahmadi identity took shape. Meanwhile, the dichotomy between Ahmadiyyat and Islam continued to widen. This was possible because the emergence of Ahmadi identity was influenced as much by modern South Asian politics as by modernist South Asian Islam. The interplay between religion and politics is perhaps the most striking aspect of Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya’s transformation, since Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya has made meaningful contributions to both South Asian religion and South Asian politics, despite having been alienated from both in the process. This presents a challenge to previous conceptions of Ahmadi Islam, which assert that the egregiousness of Ahmadi religious interpretations somehow justified the political response against them and that religion itself dragged the movement into the mainstream political arena. We shall see in this book that Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya was not simply a religious movement in the way that it has thus far been conceived, but that it was heavily involved in political controversies alongside religious ones.

Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya’s South Asian Background

In many ways, Ahmadi ideology represents a combination of medieval mysticism with modernist individualism which developed under the sphere of British colonial rule. For example, the preeminence of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad over his disciples, the esoteric ambiguity of his spiritual claims, the emphasis he placed on internal and external reform, and the exclusivity of his early community of followers are characteristics that might be associated with a medieval Sufi order. A Sufi coincidence, however, is generally emblematic of the South Asian experience of Islam, since the spread of Islam in South Asia has been intimately connected to the influence of Sufism among the mainstream. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s mission was not unique in this respect, since numerous Sufi-style movements throughout Islamic history have been founded by charismatic leaders whose extravagant spiritual claims have been based on ecstatic experiences, esoteric insights, or mystical illuminations.

It is noteworthy that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s modernist outlook fit comfortably within the intellectual trends of nineteenth-century Islam. This is visible through Ghulam Ahmad’s rejection of traditional methodologies of Islamic scholarship in favor of individualist interpretations, including his personal experiences of the Divine. This means that Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya corresponds with modernist movements throughout the Muslim world in its rejection of the legal tradition and its disregard for the four Sunni schools of thought. Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya’s unique combination of influences and its timely appearance in a particular historical context have helped determine its controversial path. These factors collectively have been incorporated in the formation of various aspects of Ahmadi religious thought and Ahmadi religious identity, which many regard as being separate from Islam.

Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya’s emergence has been multifaceted. Despite its similarities to mainstream Islam, reconciling its differences presents a challenge for contemporary Muslims, even though the challenges to Islamic orthodoxy extend back beyond current formulations of the debate. It is important to recall that Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya has not always been exclusively in a state of conflict with traditional Islam, but rather Ahmadi interpretations of religion have been considered equally antagonistic towards Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, and Muslims alike. Nineteenth-century Punjab provided a setting well suited for such interreligious contestation, since a rich diversity of cultures and religious communities coexisted in close proximity. This period was conducive to religious reform for several reasons. The introduction of British colonial rule disrupted the preceding balance of power by divesting religious leaders of authority, which initiated a search for a new equilibrium between religious rivals. The realization of British dominance in the subcontinent invigorated age-old disputes among proponents of vying religious communities of Sikhs, Hindus, evangelical Christians, and Muslims. As rivalries unfolded, the establishment of British political rule presented an opportunity to restore religious authority with a renewed sense of urgency before the balance of power could be resettled. For Muslim leaders, the ensuing struggle for religious authority resulted in a scramble, as creative intellectuals and aspiring reformers sought in haste to reestablish interpretive ideologies of Islam during the period following the Mutiny of 1857.

By the end of the nineteenth century, these efforts were having a profound impact on the face of South Asian Islam, with lasting consequences throughout the twentieth century. This period saw the opening of some of the most recognizable educational institutions in contemporary South Asian Islam, including the Dār al-῾Ulūm at Deoband, Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh, and the Nadwat al-῾Ulamā in Lucknow. This period also fostered the growth of a number of popular movements whose influential presence is felt to this day, including those inspired by the Ahl-i Hadith and Ahmad Riza Khan’s Barelwi vision of Islam. In this atmosphere, Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya proceeded to add yet another interpretation of Islam to a growing list of revivalist ideologies. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad represented an exception to the developing trend in that his mission depended on divine charisma, unlike most reform movements of the time. Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya’s affinity with premodern Sufism sets it apart from other revivalist movements of the time, even though other aspects suggest a more modernist disposition, including an emphasis on personal changes that lead to social reform. While Ghulam Ahmad’s notion of internal reform remained centered on purification of the heart and soul in classical Sufi style, Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya’s notion of external reform provided an opportune reaction to the ongoing political challenges of the day, especially prior to partition. With this in mind, it was no coincidence that Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya consistently aligned itself with its imperial British rulers while setting out to spread the True teachings of Islam all over the world.

Contextualizing Mirza Ghulam Ahmad within a Sufi Framework

Mirza Ghulam Ahmad began his spiritual notoriety by claiming to be a mujaddid (renewer) of Islam, as well as two apocalyptic figures known as the mahdī (guided one) and the masīh (messiah). The messianic claim in particular was used to imply that his spiritual status had arrived at some level of prophethood, inferior in rank to the prophethood of Muhammad, but nonetheless commissioned by God himself for the benefit of humanity. These claims led to voluminous justifications against countless religious rivals in the form of sectarian polemics. Ghulam Ahmad’s earliest publications were primarily intended to rally Indian Muslims against the rising threat of Hindu revivalist groups such as the Arya Samaj and Brahmo Samaj but were later expanded to address the threat of other rivals, such as Christian missionaries intent on offering colonized Indians salvation through Christ. In these works, Ghulam Ahmad attempted to establish Islam’s superiority as a religion through the use of rationalism, logic, and argumentation. During the brief period prior to 1891, when he advanced his spiritual claims, several notable Muslims rallied around Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in support of his literary efforts against non-Muslim evangelists. By 1891, however, three years after the formation of Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya, Ghulam Ahmad began proclaiming his true spiritual status to the world. The implications of prophethood stemming from his messianic claims were denounced by mainstream scholars, and Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya fell into disrepute. Over the next fifteen years, Ghulam Ahmad focused his attention on expounding the extraordinary nature of his prophetic status and disclosing his spiritual heights to the Muslim mainstream.

Testimonials of exceptional religious experiences describing lofty spiritual heights, divinely inspired insights of unseen realms, and extravagant unveilings of hidden realities are familiar in Islamic history. Many Sufis have uttered questionable statements that have been deemed ecstatic or are understood to have taken place in a state of spiritual intoxication as an attempt to reconcile heterodox ideas with mainstream views. Abu Yazid Bistami is often credited as the founder of intoxicated Sufism,⁴ but he might not be the most popular figure among nonspecialists for extravagant claims, even though his legendary presence with the Divine continues to be celebrated within intellectual circles of Sufis. Other Sufis, such as Hallaj, are better known among lay Muslims for ecstatic claims. The statement "I am the Real (ānā al-haqq)" famously led to his execution because it affirmed his identity with the ultimate reality of the Divine.⁵ Classical memoirs such as Attar’s Tadhkirat al-Awliyā are full of astonishing tales of Muslim mystics and devout saints who attained fantastic heights through the highest levels of divine realization.⁶

As later Sufis expanded these ideas and ecstatic experiences became an acceptable encounter along the spiritual path, a different terminology was developed to describe the stages of the mystic traveler. The awliyā (saints) proceeded to lay out the perils of the path in a didactic tradition that was passed down from teacher to student. Those who perfected the path reached the most advanced stages of walāya (sainthood), which were often characterized by special distinctions. These awliyā were described by terms such as qutb (axis), ghawth (helper), and abdāl (substitutes). There were even cases where exceptional figures would claim to be the mahdī himself.⁷ Although this certainly was not the norm, it was not unusual either, especially among those treading the mystic path. An elitist tradition emerged in which the pinnacles of walāya at times began to blur with nubuwwa (prophethood). Since then, however, Sufis have regularly warned that the inner secrets of veiled realities may only be understood by the mystical elite who have experienced them. Although treatises were written in early Islamic history to define the boundaries of walāya and to safeguard those susceptible to theological deviance,⁸ alternative understandings continued to appear.

There are several examples of questionable claims which have been shunned by orthodox Muslims.⁹ Ruzbihan Baqli, like Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, characterized his unveilings with the term wahy, a type of revelation typically reserved for prophets.¹⁰ According to Sufism scholar Carl Ernst, Ruzbihan Baqli went on to obscure the distinction between nubuwwa and walāya in a way that even most Sufis would reject, following visions in which he was told that he himself was a prophet.¹¹ The most prominent thinker to expand such ideas was Muhyiddin ibn al-῾Arabi, who described the path of the saints as being on the footsteps of the prophets (῾alā aqdām al-anbiyā). Michel Chodkiewicz’s work, Seal of the Saints, offers western scholars insights into just how intricate these ideas may be,¹² even though Ibn al-῾Arabi might not be the best paradigm for Ghulam Ahmad’s thought. A better comparison may be found in the ideas of Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi, who shared the South Asian context with Ghulam Ahmad and proclaimed his own status as mujaddid alf-i thānī (the religious renewer for the second millennium) in addition to being the khātam al-awliyā (seal of the saints).¹³ It is not surprising in this regard that Ghulam Ahmad also took the title khātam al-awliyā and frequently referenced the works of both Ibn al-῾Arabi and Ahmad Sirhindi. These references were clearly intended to serve as justifications for his claims by providing a precedent for his thought within the Islamic tradition, and hence giving Ghulam Ahmad’s conceptualizations greater religious credibility. Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya has since developed a religious framework that is less intellectual and more political than either of these forerunners.

The Ahmadi religious model bears some resemblance to the early Fatimid (or early Isma῾ilis) and early Safavid dynasties, which at times have shared a sense of messianism underlying political interests, even though both comparisons are limited. There are also correlations between Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya and the Sufi orders of the late medieval period, such as the Nurbakhshiyya, whose founder, Muhammad Nurbakhsh, claimed to be the mahdī based on messianic visions.¹⁴ The closest comparison to Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya in recent years is perhaps the Baha᾽i faith, whose origins in messianic Islam eventually led to the formation of a new religion grounded in seemingly universal ideals.¹⁵ Unlike Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya, however, the Baha᾽i faith formalized its break with Islam, which to some extent ended questions about its orthodoxy. Both movements nonetheless have used notions of divine revelation within a messianic framework to formulate a theology emphasizing the universality of all faiths. It would be interesting to see this comparison explored further, especially if Ahmadis one day formalize their break with contemporary Islam.

It would be tempting to classify Ahmadis as religious pluralists in light of Ghulam Ahmad’s claim to be the promised messiah for all faiths, were it not for the patronizing attitude of Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya towards other religions. Perhaps the most striking difference between Ahmadi Islam and its various sectarian counterparts is Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya’s response to the messianic claims of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. Whereas most Muslim movements with messianic backgrounds have either suppressed the heterodox views of their founders, or at least adopted figurative understandings of their questionable claims, Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya celebrates Ghulam Ahmad’s prophethood and affirms a strictly literalist interpretation of his spiritual worldview.

Textual Sources: The Writings of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad

Most scholarly works on Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya have tended to focus on sociological aspects of Ahmadis as a persecuted Muslim minority, such as human rights issues or the growing number of refugees in Western Europe and North America. Not surprisingly, the most extensive accounts of Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya are found in the movement’s own literary sources, which are often characterized by aggressive proselytistic argumentation. The tendency to adopt this style of writing as the primary means of communicating the Ahmadi worldview may have contributed to the overall antagonism towards the movement. Nevertheless, a style of writing based on religious argumentation has been a salient feature in Ahmadi literature, which can be seen as early as Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s first major work, Barāhīn-i Ahmadiyya (The Proofs of Islam).¹⁶

The majority of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s works have been published in twenty-three volumes known as Rūhānī Khazā᾽in (Spiritual Treasures) with an additional three volumes of Majmū῾a-i Ishtihārāt (Collected Pamphlets) and ten volumes of Malfūzāt (Collected Sayings).¹⁷ Although these works tend to be organized chronologically, they do not reflect a thematic progression through Ghulam Ahmad’s career. Ghulam Ahmad’s writing style involved a multilingual delivery in which he frequently switched from Urdu prose, to Persian poetry, and then perhaps to Arabic revelations or Qur᾽anic commentaries, all within the span of a few pages. He would also receive revelations in English or Punjabi on occasion. His long-winded discourses revolve around abstruse theological notions which are difficult to penetrate. Altogether, the combination of the level of philosophical inquiry and the multiple languages in which many of his works were written made Ghulam Ahmad’s writing inaccessible to many readers by limiting his primary audience to an educated Muslim elite.

A great deal of Ghulam Ahmad’s works seem to have been written in a stream of consciousness, which corresponds to his confessional style of writing. Many of his published works could easily be mistaken for secret diaries, private notebooks, or unfinished drafts in preparation. This unedited mass of loosely structured religious argumentation was published by Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya posthumously as an anthology of the promised messiah’s writings, including several texts that appeared in print for the first time. Some of the longer works incorporated a number of discourses on unrelated themes, which appeared as unusually long footnotes extending throughout the body of the text. Some of these footnotes were later published by Jama῾at-i Ahmadiyya as independent monographs on subject matter more neatly focused on limited theological questions. In the original texts, however, the writing may simply appear as footnotes, with footnotes to the footnotes, and sometimes even footnotes to the footnotes of the footnotes, compressed onto a single page with each note telling a unique story that extends throughout the work in question.

Several smaller texts have been translated into English while many of the most important works remain untranslated. It is unfortunate that most English translations are difficult to read since they frequently misconstrue Ghulam Ahmad’s allusions or subtle religious inferences by divorcing them from the Sufi context that connects his ideas to perennial themes in the Islamic tradition. In their original form, however, the works clearly display Ghulam Ahmad’s literary mastery, which appealed to familiar motifs of Muslim sentiment interwoven with intense charismatic convictions. The available translated selections of Ghulam Ahmad’s works seem to lose their bombastic tone by editing away the frantic urgency with which he endeavored to deliver his message. The reverence accompanying the mythical mystique

Reviews for From Sufism to Ahmadiyya

[WadoodChaudhary · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It takes a scholarly approach to the subject. Of course, nothing is conclusive when you are trying to evaluate mystical nature of anything.