From Sufism to Ahmadiyya

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. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. Manufactured in the United States of America Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-0-253-01523-5 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-253-01529-7 (ebook) 1 2 3 4 5 20 19 18 17 16 15 For my parents Contents Acknowledgments ix A Note on Transliteration and Translation xi Introduction 1 1 Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiani before Prophethood 21 2 The Prophetic Claims of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad 42 3 Authority, Khilāfat, and the Lahori-Qadiani Split 64 4 Politics and the Ahmadiyya Movement under Mirza Bashir al-Din Mahmud Ahmad 91 5 Religion and Politics after Partition: The Ahmadi Jihad for Kashmir 111 6 Early Opposition and the Roots of Ahmadi Persecution 128 7 Persecution in Pakistan and Politicization of Ahmadi Identity 144 Conclusion 167 Appendix: Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s Family Tree 183 Glossary 185 Notes 189 Bibliography 221 Index 233 Acknowledgments MA ny 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, patient- ly dealt with and responded to endless questions on the subtleties of Ahmadi theology, especially during my first two years of research. Maulana Abdul Man- nan 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 gra- ciously 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 Ah- madiyya 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 av- enues of research, especially at the beginning of this project. The family of Jam- shed and Sharaf Tirmizi warmly welcomed me into their home in Lahore, which ix x | Acknowledgments 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 Ori- ental 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 includ- ed 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 er- rors, 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 un- dertones of each language. All translations, unless otherwise noted, are my own. xi FROM SUFISM TO AHMADIYYA Introduction Jam῾ ā At-iA AhM diyyA, 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 world- wide 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 nine- teenth-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.

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