Reaction of Religious Scholars
See also Rejection of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad.
In time, the religious scholars turned against him, and he was often branded as a heretic. His opponents accused him of working for the British Government due to the termination of armed Jihad, since his claims of being the Mahdi were made around the same time as the Mahdi of Sudan (Muhammad Ahmad). Many years after his death, he was again accused of working for the British to curb the Jihadi ideology of Muslims.
Following his claim to be the Promised Messiah and Mahdi, one of his adversaries prepared a Fatwa (decree) of disbelief against Ahmad, declaring him a Kafir (disbeliever), a deceiver, and a liar. The decree permitted killing him and his followers. It was taken all around India and was signed by some two hundred religious scholars.
Some years later, a prominent Muslim leader and scholar, Ahmed Raza Khan, was to travel to the Hejaz to collect the opinions of the religious scholars of Makkah and Madina. He compiled these opinions in his work Hussam ul Harmain (The sword of two sanctuaries on the slaughter-point of blasphemy and falsehood); in it, Ghulam Ahmad was again labelled an apostate. The unanimous consensus of about thirty-four religious scholars was that Ghulam Ahmad's beliefs were blasphemous and tantamount to apostasy and that he must be punished by imprisonment and, if necessary, by execution.
Read more about this topic: Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, Life
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