THE BOOK

George Thomas CBN NEWS World. Waiting for Islam’s Messiah

In 2008, it was reported that Iran’s then President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, believed Allah had chosen him to prepare the world for the coming of an Islamic ‘saviour’ called the Mahdi. Before that could happen he believed there had to be global chaos.

CBN travelled 95 miles from Tehran to the outskirts of Qom where stands the Jamkaran mosque. Behind it is a well and CBN reports that, according to many Shiite Muslims, out of this will emerge one day their version of an Islamic ‘Saviour’. They call him the Madhi or the 12^th Imam. Ron Cantrell, author of a book about the Mahdi explains that “The Mahdi is a personage that is expected to come on the scene, by Islam, as a messiah figure. He is slotted to come in the end of time, according to their writings...”(The Sunni belief.) Shiite Muslims believe the Mahdi, a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, vanished in the middle of the 9^th century. Cantrell says: “The 12^th Imam disappeared, around the age of 9, with a promise that he would return and he would bring Islam to its total fruition as the world’s last standing religion.”
(CBN Online News Service.)

Promised Messiah. (From Hebrew mashiah, “anointed”), in Judaism.

Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, 13^th Feb 1835 – 26^th May 1908, was an Indian religious leader and founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam. He claimed to have been divinely appointed as the promised Messiah and Madhi, in the likeness of Jesus, in fulfilment of Islam’s eschatological prophecies, as well as the Mujaddid (centennial reviver) of the 14^th Islamic century.

Ghulam Ahmad emerged as a writer and debater for Islam. Around 40 years of age he believed that God began to communicate with him. In 1889, he formed a community of followers – forty initially – upon what he claimed was divine instruction, stipulating ten conditions of initiation, which marks the establishment of the Ahmadiyya movement. The mission of his movement as he saw it was the reinstatement of the oneness of God, the revival of Islam through the moral reformation of society along Islamic ideals, and the global propagation of Islam in its pristine form. As opposed to the Christian view of Jesus being alive in heaven to return towards the end of time, Ghulam Ahmad asserted that he had in fact survived crucifixion and died a natural death. He travelled widely attracting a substantial supportive following during his lifetime, as well as considerable hostility particularly from the Muslim Ulema. He debated publicly with Christian missionaries, Muslim scholars and Hindu revivalists.

He was a prolific writer who had authored more than ninety books on various religions, theological and moral aspects between the publication of his first major work, Barahin-i-Ahmadiyya (The Proofs of Islam) in the early 1880’s up until his death in 1908. Many of his writings bear a polemical and apologetic tone in favour of Islam, seeking to establish its superiority as a religion through rational argumentation, often by articulating his own interpretations of Islamic teachings. He advocated a peaceful propagation of Islam and emphatically argued against the permissibility and necessity of military Jihad in the present age. By the time of his death he had gathered an estimated 400,000 follower’s primarily within the United Provinces of the Punjab and Sindh. After his death he was succeeded by his close companion Hakim Noor-ud-Din who assumed the title of Khalifatul Masih (successor of the Messiah).

Although Ghulam Ahmad is revered by Ahmadi Muslims as the Promised Messiah and Imam Madhi, Muhammad still remains the central figure in Ahmadiyya Islam; however his claim as a subordinate prophet within Islam has remained a central point of controversy between his followers and mainstream Muslims, who believe Muhammad to be the last prophet. (Online website.)