Towards an Ahmadi ʿaqīda

Does Jamāʿat-i Aḥmadiyya actually have its own creed ( ʿaqīda )? If so, what is it? These simple questions implicitly underlie numerous debates about the relationship between Ahmadis and other Muslims. This paper is an attempt at exploring the relationship between ʿaqīda and Muslim identity by looking at the Ahmadi controversy of South Asian Islam. The basis for this analysis is a previously untranslated tract entitled Jamāʿat-i Aḥmadiyya ke ʿAqāʾid (Ahmadi Creedal Statements), which was written by the movement’s second and most influential khalīfat al-masīḥ , Mirzā Bashīr al-Dīn Maḥmūd Aḥmad (1889–1965). The tract is translated in its entirety below. We shall look at assumptions about the relationship between ʿaqīda and Muslim identity in the first part of this paper before the translation. Subsequently, we shall look more critically at the theoretical implications of this particular ʿaqīda tract within its historical context and see how it challenges these assumptions. This study attempts to show how assumptions about the relationships between ideas, such as ʿaqīda , orthodoxy, orthopraxy, and religious identity in Islamic traditions are far more complicated, if not wrong, as they pertain to the processes through which emerging religious identities may form.