The Ahmadiyya "sect" has been so much in the news lately that I thought it high time that I found out a little more about it. The founder is Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian (Punjab, India) who lived from 1835 until 1908. He was certainly an interesting character but he managed to antagonise mainstream Islam by claiming he was a prophet. Most Moslems believe firmly in Khatme Nabuwwat meaning "finality of Prophethood". They accept that Muhammad was the last prophet and there are no more to come after him. In their eyes, Ahmad is a false prophet.
I don't want to fan the flames of that debate in this post but it would seem that Ahmad has also put the Christians off-side as well because he claims that Jesus Christ did not die on the cross at all. Instead, he went off to India, Afghanistan and Tibet looking for the lost tribes of Israel. He lived to the ripe old age of 120 and died in Kashmir. He actually wrote a book about this which can be found here. I downloaded it and turned it into a PDF file of 63 pages. I've still to read it but read it I shall.
It seems that Jesus made a clean break with Israel and didn't return again or have any communication with his followers. Meher Baba, my greatest spiritual influence, made a similar claim and actually visited a place called Harvan Hill in Kashmir, where he claimed there was a cave in which Jesus was buried. Given the paucity of detail about the life of Jesus both before and after his alleged Resurrection, I think the Kashmir story is quite plausible. Most Christians would be aghast at this idea of course and so Ahmad managed to antagonise Christians as well as Moslems.
I don't want to fan the flames of that debate in this post but it would seem that Ahmad has also put the Christians off-side as well because he claims that Jesus Christ did not die on the cross at all. Instead, he went off to India, Afghanistan and Tibet looking for the lost tribes of Israel. He lived to the ripe old age of 120 and died in Kashmir. He actually wrote a book about this which can be found here. I downloaded it and turned it into a PDF file of 63 pages. I've still to read it but read it I shall.
It seems that Jesus made a clean break with Israel and didn't return again or have any communication with his followers. Meher Baba, my greatest spiritual influence, made a similar claim and actually visited a place called Harvan Hill in Kashmir, where he claimed there was a cave in which Jesus was buried. Given the paucity of detail about the life of Jesus both before and after his alleged Resurrection, I think the Kashmir story is quite plausible. Most Christians would be aghast at this idea of course and so Ahmad managed to antagonise Christians as well as Moslems.
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