Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad and the Establishment of the Aḥmadiyya Jamāʿat from a Market Theory Perspective

Abstract

In Terrains of Exchange: Religious Economies of Global Islam (2014), historian Nile Green suggests a theoretical framework that could be employed to analyse Muslim responses to colonialism. Especially he analyses how individual Muslims as well as Islamic organisations transformed themselves or developed as they struggled with each other in order to stake claims on an increasingly connected world. One such development was the ideology of Pan-Islamism, which strives to unite Muslims of all creeds in an effort to meet the challenges posed by colonialism and modernity. The Pan-Islamic current was, however, merely one of many Islamic ideologies that developed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and rather than being a time of Muslim unity, the period in question witnessed the emergence of a multitude of Islamic factions. One of these was the Aḥmadiyya Jamāʿat which will be in focus in the current article. In his study, Green turns the spotlight on such processes and attempts to “look beyond the discursive surface similarities of Muslim ‘beliefs’ to probe instead the multifarious – and indeed competing – social producers of religion.”11 Nile Green, Terrains of Exchange: Religious Economies of Global Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014): 2. A further objective of his study is to suggest a terminology that will, in contrast to using emic vocabulary, better allow us to analyse Islam as an “internally competitive field of social actors and organizations.”22 Green, Terrains of Exchange, 10. The aim of this article is to make use of Green’s conceptualisations and terminology in order to analyse the evolution of the Aḥmadiyya Jamāʿat as it transformed from being a Sunnī reform movement into the world’s largest Islamic new religious organisation. The Aḥmadiyya Jamāʿat is to be understood here as an Islamic new religious movement based upon the fact that it was founded by a charismatic leader, Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad (1835-1908), who emerged as a preacher connected to Islamic reformist currents in nineteenth-century India but who later increasingly developed a theology rejected by other Muslims.33 For a discussion of the concept of new religious movements, see David, G. Bromley, “The Sociology of New Religious Movements”, in Hammer, Olav & Rothstein, Mikael (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to New Religious Movements. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012): 13-28. For a discussion of the Aḥmadiyya Jamāʿat as an Islamic new religious movement, see Brian Arly Jacobsen; Göran Larsson & Simon Sorgenfrei, “The Ahmadiyya Mission to the Nordic Countries”, in James R. Lewis & Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen (ed.), Handbook of Nordic New Religions, (Brill: Leiden, 2015): 359-373. In his framework, Green directs our attention to what he labels “firms” and “entrepreneurs” as “producers” of religious goods through “adaptations” and “innovations” used to attract “consumers” on a developing religious “market”. “Adaption,” in Green’s usage, is employed to signify how such Muslim entrepreneurs might use and modify the techniques of their competitors in order to suit their own purposes while “innovation” refers to forms of religious strategies that go beyond adaptation so that new (often hybridised) religious forms may be generated.44 Green, Terrains of Exchange, 9-10. A subordinate aim of Green’s book is to develop an analytical terminology and we must therefore not confuse the analytical term “innovation” with the emic use of the term, i.e., as a translation of the Arabic bidʿa. As in other economies, religious entrepreneurs and firms are dependent upon consumers for their success and therefore might need to adapt their products so that they become more attractive and desirable than the goods offered by their competitors. This might be done by making use of new forms of technology; novel and more effective organisational structures; or various interpretations of religious sources or practices, some of which may be more creative than others. In regard to such new markets, Muslim entrepreneurs having educational backgrounds other than the traditional madrasah education became more common, and they also increasingly disseminated their teachings through novel forms.55 Francis Robinson, “Technology and Religious Change: Islam and the Impact of Print”, in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1, (1993): 229-251; Göran Larsson, Muslims and the New Media: Historical and Contemporary Debates, (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011). The growing popularity of such preachers gradually undermined the authority of the ʿulamāʾ in regard to a market where “any Ahmad, Mahmud or Muhammad could claim to speak for Islam.”66 Francis Robinson, “Technology and Religious Change: Islam and the Impact of Print”, in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1, (1993): 245. Mattias Dahlqvist, The Politics of Islam, Non-Violence, and Peace: the Thought of Maulana Wahiduddin Khan in Context. Diss. (Umeå: Umeå University, 2019): 54. Let us now take a closer look at the market context in which Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad emerged. By 1834, when the American Presbyterian Mission was established in Ludhiana near Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad’s hometown of Qāḍiān, British missionary churches had already been active in India for some twenty years, and they were then bustling with activity.77 Spencer Lavan, The Ahmadiyyah Movement: A History and Perspective. (Delhi: Manohar Book Service, 1974): 44. Missionary stations were built, and through them new forms of religious organisations were introduced alongside novelties such as the printing press. Missionaries published apologetic Christian tracts and refutations of local religions as well as grammars and dictionaries of Punjabi, Urdu, Persian, Hindi, and Kashmiri. Shortly afterwards came translations of Hindu, Sikh, and Islamic religious texts. Through such new and often belligerent methods of evangelism, Christian missionaries quickly expanded their activities throughout the Punjab and the so-called North-West Frontier.88 Simon Ross Valentine, Islam and the Ahmadiyya Jama'at: history, belief, practice, (London: Hurst & Co, 2008): 44. This antagonism could not go unanswered for long and demanded therefore responses from local religious leaders. The new situation both provoked and intrigued them, and efforts were subsequently made to learn about the competing religions and the methods of the European missionaries. It also forced them to engage creatively with their own traditions. This situation resulted in a wide range of Sikh, Hindu, and Muslim reform and fundamentalist movements.99 Valentine, Islam and the Ahmadiyya Jama'at, 44. Historical developments were, however, also great sources of inspiration when developing such new responses. In regard to Islamic developments, which is the main focus of this article, Islam in India had been negotiated by a growing number of competing preachers and groups at least since the time of Shāh Walī Allāh al-Dihlawī (1703-1762), who argued for the need of ijtihād – active interpretations of the Islamic sources rather than taqlīd, conformity to institutionalised earlier interpretations – and who developed a means of Islamic reform that combined elements from both historical Sufi and modern Wahhabi currents stemming from the Arabian peninsula.1010 For a thorough discussion of ijtihād and taqlīd, see Rudolph Peters, “Ijtihad and Taqlid in 18th and 19th Century Islam” in Die Welt des Islams, vol. 20, no. 3–4, (1980): 131–145. The Barelwī movement could be described maybe as a of and the movement is a Sufi while the were to the Wahhabi Islamic in British Oxford University Press, The emergence of religious reform therefore be understood both as a to and as by the and by the British and the of modern for and the of on the of the in in & and the of University of the Press, with and Global Religious in of the American of vol. no. The about by also resulted in the development of a new and the of this often had a more or European education that became dependent upon British to their in Modern Islam in A 2. New also a in time as a to this a growing number of religious subsequently a need to their religious and them in a to and with the modern then In his study Modern Islam in analyses the development of reformist Islam in India in the development of Aḥmad by European educational founded Muslim University in This was to be a modern educational based upon a European to the new than being Islam to similarities and Islam, and developed a to Islam as being with European and Modern Islam, The in is who was active during a period when the was developing a of in regard to the British and was also a new of that resulted in European and a in Islamic than Aḥmad Islam, to was not with but the of therefore argued that was as a to Islam, and through such of he was to attract or of the new than the that were to Aḥmad Modern Islam, The development is by the was in and was a when Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad while at the local was to become a and in as well as in and from to his to he developed from the Islamic since Aḥmad In his book The of Religious Thought in Islam for for a but Islam, one that take into both the and of Islam while being to modern developments in and other of Modern Islam, also Muhammad The in Contemporary of Press, were also other currents and active that must be in such as the or Wahhabi current with a themselves that had in with Arabian in of their of or sources for Islam other than the and the of the was the which could be as an made by ʿulamāʾ to develop a that of the of Aḥmad and the of Lavan, The Ahmadiyyah For a thorough see Islamic and the who argued for a Islam that to and charismatic Islamic the nineteenth a wide of Muslim themselves in to Islamic sources and through of all in to and and the of Christian missionary not by to the of Christian missionary firms religious by in and preachers to a traditional of The of religious to new by Christian missionary firms and later by both and Muslim missionary new as well as new Green, Terrains of Exchange, One of the in which Christian missionary churches new religious economies, a that be and developed by the of colonialism and missionary was to and which were by Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad was into a Punjab of historical for the but which at the time of his in and in to in the by the and later by the to A Muslim in University Press, 2015): an education for a of his with by when he was was by a Sunnī of who in the and the of he Arabic with a connected to the he Arabic and with a In to the he also with his who was a of and in to The of he had the of the Islamic of nineteenth-century India and also Ghulām Aḥmad’s later that the fact that Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad had madrasah education could be of for his later evolution as he was therefore to the of such an of Religious Thought and Oxford University Press, he not a or also in with other Islamic of the late nineteenth and early twentieth to In Aḥmadiyya this fact been used to develop an of Ghulām Aḥmad as i.e., in the as the to as Khan Ghulām Aḥmad’s education was which could some of the in his when to historical Sunnī the development of his later theology and Spencer and Khan that Ghulām Aḥmad had a or some other of Sufi as a number of his and of his terminology be to Sufi teachings that were in in Punjab and the India of the Lavan, The Ahmadiyyah Khan that is the it Ghulām Aḥmad in with earlier such as the Shāh Walī Allāh al-Dihlawī as it he indeed with and also Sufi Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad was employed as a in the of the of which also was a for Christian missionary in not Ghulām Aḥmad time to religious in and and in that other to As Khan also a of during the he in but what he was his had It is Khan these the which later came to of Ghulām Aḥmad’s to to Green’s concept of of this is an of how the methods and of their and them into of Ghulām Aḥmad was not the to and in he also the of Aḥmad and other currents of Islamic It however, that he was to a by the more of than by the of Aḥmad to It is also during these that we Ghulām Aḥmad’s Sufi as it was then that he the to In Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad was in and with his It as he his religious on his but is also to been in with local as well as with of the to his in Ghulām Aḥmad to a on both a and had by then for local but was a of that allow to the of he had to was forced to on his own and his in the world. By Ghulām Aḥmad in the reformist and the more fundamentalist as well as the Christian active in the to and develop into a and with his and of increasingly being by his and the he was about to the Aḥmadiyya The of Christian missionary churches in India to the of a of who also were in to Lavan, The Ahmadiyyah to It was these and as a to such challenges that Mīrzā Ghulām in the published his of the It was in and Christian and In a to he so by to the Islamic sources to new interpretations which he argued were more for his time and the challenges of his In the the of Ghulām Aḥmad’s described is creatively in a was now developing his own of what a of an modern Islam might look The book was well and was a by of the who Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad’s of and the religious Lavan, The Ahmadiyyah in the early Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad was a reformist Muslim and was for his apologetic who his in other he had a to attract consumers on the religious market of which he was now a One of the we that Ghulām Aḥmad with Christian missionaries in the is the of Christian missionaries in India used the about not being on the but instead being to to their that they then it must also be the that is to since and but as an Valentine, Islam and the Ahmadiyya Jama'at, to of Christian to to and the of his had a for many Khan and he was indeed the then was it who was in while Muhammad in to This also to Mīrzā Ghulām and he to develop his interpretations of the and Islamic on throughout his theology on the was published in a book in in and published translation of the book is The is a of how the competitive situation could and to their own as well as their religious and with the being creative new be the Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad to to the Islamic while a to the as the of that not from the and to which he was he argued Islamic that had in fact on the and was later and the of his as a in and where he of as other had done and as Mīrzā Ghulām in from the and to Islam Valentine, Islam and the Ahmadiyya Jama'at, to the of in Valentine, Islam and the Ahmadiyya Jama'at, Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad’s teachings about as an early of what Green an “innovation” made to a Christian on Islam and of how might and in the of teachings and upon in University of Press, Christian missionaries to use Islamic teachings about in order to Islam, and as a Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad creatively developed an about the Christian A later of his it “The of was, by the of the Aḥmadiyya movement as the of Valentine, Islam and the Ahmadiyya Jama'at, In developing his own interpretations of the of however, Mīrzā Ghulām not Christian but also interpretations It is in to that Ghulām Aḥmad and the Ahmadiyya been as being in to Islamic Göran Larsson, of in & the of Muslims in in of In later he came to the or and the or of where was the and was the of the and was the of the Muslims instead to be the and to from a based upon the is not the of but he is the of and the of the and is of all by which was by of the was to Ghulām that had the of but rather that be a they are the of The of the he is that had he had who might be his of and were while came not with a new but instead came to the of also Valentine, Islam and the Ahmadiyya Jama'at, the which are the of of the and the In a and a of Muslim must in religious from also Valentine, Islam and the Ahmadiyya Jama'at, in to his Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad argued for his and through the he to which was in by in his he was in a to the of the which increasingly on from Sunnī charismatic see Olav & Mikael Rothstein, to New Religious Movements”, in Olav & Mikael The Cambridge Companion of New Religious (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012): Ghulām Aḥmad’s as a was, however, also his his and was one of the of the what become as the and the the regard Mīrzā to be a the the of i.e., that was the In Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad that had to a i.e., an that and the of Islam” and the of Islam all from Valentine, Islam and the Ahmadiyya Jama'at, also to As the the of the the was to the often in the of that was late nineteenth-century The in and in the the of the Aḥmadiyya Jamāʿat was Ghulām Aḥmad by then had as well as Valentine, Islam and the Ahmadiyya Jama'at, to Green, this of was not at a time when a number of such Muslim religious firms were founded by who had in the religious of their and he also how such in organisational more Christian than Green, Terrains of Exchange, In the of Ghulām Aḥmad’s a of was the the Jamāʿat developed as an to local religious in India and the teachings of Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad in a that the Christian but the and of the Jamāʿat were also connected to Islamic For the of Mīrzā through a in a to for Sufi or as the be to the in Islamic in of Islam, Ghulām Aḥmad’s to on a market was through a to Islamic as it was connected to a that not the from the of Muhammad Book was understood as a of in the and Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad was as being that that Islam to and it throughout the Muhammad The of the Ahmadiyya Ahmadiyya Through such an and the could be as missionary of at a time when that Ghulām Aḥmad was increasingly attention from other Muslims in This use of a that Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad and his Jamāʿat at a in time and also be as a with other new religious & Rothstein, to New Religious The organisational that had by then developed was to missionaries and by Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad and his the Jamāʿat was by a of who their to Ghulām but the of his he however, to the organisational framework of the In the of the Aḥmadiyya was to his his Valentine, Islam and the Ahmadiyya Jama'at, One of the of the was, and to a i.e., Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad’s Valentine, Islam and the Ahmadiyya Jama'at, we might to modern forms of and to early Islamic and the of the The organisational of the Jamāʿat developed further the and the and is by Simon Ross of Muslim reform Valentine, Islam and the Ahmadiyya Jama'at, As of this Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad also established educational to the further and of his In the was founded in as a for the education of the of the and to them the of Mīrzā Ahmad, Ahmad, Press, the was a modern connected to Islamic and in the Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad as the that Islamic as well as modern so that may to 2. In the education at the which by then had into a was into own – the The the developed into own the which was established in in Punjab as a missionaries to be into the in order to local Aḥmadiyya are established in in and in of Islam in the Vol. In developing the educational and missionary Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad and the Aḥmadiyya Jamāʿat were by traditional Islamic as well as by their Christian Islamic in the (New York: Oxford University in their educational activities and in their translation and of the and Ghulām Aḥmad’s in an growing number of their activities methods employed by Christian missionaries in and who and published the in local and also the for apologetic The of the Islamic of the movement the into the Aḥmadiyya to the European in India was to and One of Christian missionary activities in British India that Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad and other Muslim was the of on Islam and translations of the in and local done by British such as and which and Islam on The The Muslim or the in Vol. No. 1, In order to engage in the disseminated by both Aḥmad and had their published in in and with a in Modern Islam, As we Ghulām Aḥmad to the on a and the the Aḥmadiyya Jamāʿat in being founded was the that Green as the religious at that time and one of the in the missionary that was then – a printing Valentine, Islam and the Ahmadiyya Jama'at, the of the printing in Muslim see Larsson, Muslims and the New As Ghulām Aḥmad had and his own was he with to his own to his own tracts as well as other Islamic he their own printing them not to Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad’s but also and i.e., modern a The and were published in Urdu, but already in they published the of The of in a that is in as a In The of Religions, Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad’s teachings and the activities could be to the in India more to As European missionaries and also translations having and that many Muslims as A was long the translation of the into done by a Muslim was by an early of Mīrzā Ghulām In published his translation The with on the and the of the and been The that his translation a and Islam, from developments throughout as well as from by it rather than Muslims might on it is a European that he had in The he for his to a of the to the For a of Aḥmadiyya translations of the into see Sorgenfrei, of the into by Aḥmadiyya A in of Studies, and Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad however, a and it that already the that his translation was on a new translation was by of Mīrzā Ghulām Maulana who also Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad’s into Maulana translation of the was published in and is introduced by a long about Islam as a and the as Muhammad The the Arabic with and Islamic and translations – with their what they to be European at the time that they an Aḥmadiyya of Islam – might therefore be to be what in which the to or in of Studies, vol. no. the time that the of Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad to be as a period during which his developed into a but their in their own the of techniques and missionary methods such as the printing new and translations of the into Ghulām Aḥmad and the to develop as an Islamic new religious movement and into an increasingly As the market a market Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad was but one of many Muslim active in British India during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as he argued for the of ijtihād and therefore the of the ʿulamāʾ by that was a need for a Islam that could meet the challenges of Lavan, The Ahmadiyyah use of Green’s we regard as a religious making use of and and in a he be attractive on the religious market of his his and were well but his popularity in to the of his The he was was or to attract the the and from Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad developed his theology the and of the it further be argued that Mīrzā Ghulām his and the development of other new religious in such as the and the of Through an use of both Christian and Islamic he developed his own both as a religious and as an in an As Ghulām Aḥmad his from a Islam that could be attractive to the of Muslims to as a and his market in as the market Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad and the Aḥmadiyya Jamāʿat increasingly developed of such as translation and a of Green’s and theoretical framework as these were the new of that Muslims other of in the nineteenth Green, Terrains of Exchange, the the Aḥmadiyya Jamāʿat being established was a printing so that Ghulām Aḥmad’s could be in and then increasingly in Through the of his the of Ghulām Aḥmad and his and the Aḥmadiyya became increasingly as by a growing number of who Ghulām Aḥmad and the Aḥmadiyya in a later refutations of Ghulām and the Aḥmadiyya Jamāʿat as he had to the they were to be as or see also Larsson, of It was rejected and developed into an Islamic new religious movement the charismatic and later of Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad and his It could here be that this is not in to Ghulām Aḥmad and the Aḥmadiyya As we he was but one of many more or interpretations of sources to a market of consumers for religious to a social In to some of the other Muslim he was in his efforts to attract the Sunnī but in to he was charismatic or to a that on with of the world.