Introduction

Introduction The cover of The Great Reformer, the momentous biography of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian (1837–1908), ‘Promised Messiah’ of the Ahmadiyya move- ment, shows an artist’s rendering of a lighthouse rising from a map of the world.1 The base displays the reformer’s central message of the return of Jesus. The tower carries the titles of the 88 books he wrote. The lamp on top is fash- ioned like an open book emanating powerful rays. The map they illuminate is the world as his missionaries perceived it. This is the Ahmadiyya mission map depicting the colonial world in the interwar period. It forms the starting point for the narrative that is told in this book (Fig. 1). A closer look reveals that the lighthouse towers above the Asian colonies of the British Empire, almost entirely covering them with its foundation. Marked in Arabic script, the reader perceives Asia and China to the right, Hindustan (British India), Siam (the Malay Peninsula) below, and Arabia, Syria, Iraq and Turkey to the left of the foundation. Further to the south are the mission fields of the Dutch Indies, Australia and Africa respectively. Further to the left stretches the mission field of Urup (Europe), with the capitals Berlin and London and the countries Germany, Alliant (the Netherlands), Frans (France) and Spen (Spain) marked in bold letters over the continent. By contrast, the Americas are hardly allowed a space on the map and almost disappear from view. Doing missionary work is an expression of the determination to preach one’s own religion to people who do not share it with a view to changing their beliefs. The concept of a mission is rooted in the Christian and not the Islamic tradition.2 Accordingly, around 1900, which is the point of departure of this study, Christian missionaries were roaming around the colonial world trying ‘to conquer the world for Christianity.’3 Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s vision that the colonized people should beat the Christian missionaries at their own game, so to speak, was in fact a response to that objective. He urged them to embrace religious progress, copy the Christian missionary structures and go out into the 1 The map was first published in the Mujaddid Azam (1939), the Urdu original of the biography of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, and reprinted in Basharat Ahmad, The Great Reformer: Biography of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian. Mujaddid (Reformer) of the Fourteenth century Hijri, Promised Messiah and Mahdi (Dublin, usa: Ahmadiyya Anjuman Ishaat Islam Lahore Inc., 2008) inside front and back cover and p. 911. 2 Hartmann Tyrell, ‘Weltgesellschaft, Weltmission und religiöse Organisationen,’ in Weltmission und religiöse Organisationen, ed. Artur Bogner et al. (Wuerzburg: Ergon, 2004), 29–30. 3 Tyrell, ‘Weltgesellschaft,’ 30. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��6 | doi �0.��63/9789004305380_00� <UN> 2 introduction Figure 1 Map of the world from the Ahmadiyya mission perspective (1939) Basharat Ahmad, The Great Reformer: Biography of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, Dublin: Ohio: aaii (Lahore) usa inc. (2008) inside cover and p. 911. Courtesy aaii (Lahore), usa Inc. world to spread their own message.4 The drawing symbolizes that vision. Taking up a central symbol of Islamic eschatology, it depicts the Minnaratul Masih, the Messiah’s heavenly minaret that is thought to receive Christ when he returns at the end of time. In the present, it is also a stone tower built in 1918 to commemorate the founder of the Ahmadiyya.5 Its position on the map marks the village of Qadian, a rural place in the Punjab where Mirza Ghulam Ahmad lived and where, between 1889 and 1908, he assembled the first Ahmadiyya community. The map is a summary of the scope and width of the mission his followers envisioned after his death. During his lifetime, Ahmad’s ideas caused much controversy in the Muslim world, but he also attracted followers who were eager to realize his vision. When he died in 1908, two organizations emerged, one in Qadian, the other in 4 John C. B. Webster, ‘Mission Sources of Nineteenth-Century Punjab History.’ In: Sources on Punjab History. Edited by W. Eric Gustafson et al., New Delhi: Manohar Book Service (1975), 171–212. 5 Ahmad, The Great Reformer, 906–915; Zeki Saritoprak. ‘The Eschatological Descent of Jesus: Muslim Views.’ The Fountain 29 (2000). http://www.fountainmagazine.com/Issue/detail/ The-Eschatological-Descent-of-Jesus-Muslim-Views. <UN>.

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