From Sufism to Ahmadiyya

Studies of the Ahmadiyyah have not been numerous; since the outset this sect was of interest to Christian missionaries (Walter 1918) on account of its founder Ghulam Ahmad’s claim concerning Jesus’s removal from Palestine and eventual death in old age in Kashmir. One of the more recent accounts (Valentine, 2008) combines an historical overview with interviews and participant observation of contemporary Ahmadiyyah congregations in Lahore, Rabwah, and Northern England. The Italian-Canadian sociologist Antonio Gualtieri (2004) produced an even more intensive study, spending some months with the Rabwah community in the late 1990s. Abul A[la Mawdudi’s The Qadiani Problem (1951), needless to say, retains great significance for its statement of the mainstream Muslim view of the Ahmadiyyah.