Did Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (as) abolish jihad?

Imagine a poor man who cannot put two meals a day on the table, and someone says to him, “Why aren’t you paying zakat? Zakat is obligatory!” We would smile. Zakat is indeed obligatory, but only once a person has the minimum wealth (nisab). In the same way Hajj is obligatory, but only for those who are able.

Every command of Islam comes with conditions. When the conditions are missing, the command is not cancelled; it simply does not apply at that moment. Jihad of the sword is no exception.

What is the allegation?

One allegation is that Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (as) abrogated the Quranic command of jihad, and that he did so to please the British government. Some of those who make this claim call the uprising of 1857 a jihad, and say this teaching was given to crush that spirit.

What he actually said

One of his statements reads: “Without doubt, the causes for jihad do not exist in this country in this age. Therefore, for the Muslims of this country it is today forbidden to fight in the name of religion and to kill those who reject the Islamic law. In a time of peace and security, Allah has clearly forbidden jihad of the sword.” (Tohfa-e-Golarhviyya, p. 82)

Notice the words: “in this country”, “in this age”, “in a time of peace and security”. This is not a declaration cancelling a command forever, but a ruling that the conditions were absent in a particular situation.

When did the Quran give permission to take up the sword? When war was being made on the Muslims, and they had been driven from their homes only for saying “Allah is our Lord”:

Before the British, under Sikh rule in the Punjab, it was hard for Muslims to practise their faith. The Promised Messiah (as) wrote that a Muslim was even killed for giving the adhan (announcement of 10 July 1900). Under British rule Muslims were free to give the adhan in their mosques, to pray and to preach Islam. Where no one is being attacked because of religion, this condition of the Quran is not met either.

In “Tohfa-e-Qaisariyya” he wrote that in the time of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (sa) the basis of Islamic jihad was that those who had unjustly raised the sword against the Muslims and had gone to the furthest limits of cruelty deserved punishment; but plotting rebellion against a government under which one can carry out religious duties freely and in full security is not jihad; it is a savage idea born of ignorance.

Questions people ask

“Wasn’t this said to please the British?”

Many say here that this teaching really served the colonial rulers. Let us see what other scholars of that age said, men who were bitter opponents of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (as).

The Ahl-e-Hadith leader Maulawi Muhammad Husain Batalvi wrote: “A government under which Muslims live in safety and can freely carry out their religious duties, whether that government is Jewish, Christian or of any other religion, it is not permissible for Muslims to fight against it or to help those who fight it with men and money. Therefore, for the Muslims of India, opposition or rebellion against the British government is haram.” (Isha‘atus Sunnah, vol. 6, no. 10). He also wrote that all the conditions of jihad were now absent, so no one from Calcutta to Peshawar could wage jihad against the British government (Isha‘atus Sunnah, vol. 9, no. 1).

Maulawi Syed Nazir Husain Dehlawi gave a fatwa that the conditions of jihad did not exist in this country, so waging jihad here would be ruin and sin (Fatawa-e-Naziriyya, vol. 4, p. 472). He, too, called the uprising of 1857 not a jihad of the Shariah but a breach of covenant and disorder (Isha‘atus Sunnah, vol. 6, no. 10).

When opposing scholars gave this very ruling themselves, it is not justice to call it a conspiracy only in the case of one man.

And he himself raised the question: if pleasing the government were the aim, why would he keep announcing that Jesus (as) was saved from the cross and died a natural death, and that he was neither God nor the son of God? That should have annoyed the Christian rulers. In his words, according to the Quran, war is forbidden against a government that does not interfere in any way with Islam or its practice (Kishti-e-Nuh, p. 68).

“So is jihad over for ever?”

No. The conditions for jihad of the sword are written in the Quran itself, and where those conditions are met, the permission for a war of self-defence is also in the Quran: “And fight in the cause of Allah against those who fight against you, but do not transgress” (Surah Al-Baqarah 2:191). The Promised Messiah (as) did not cancel any verse of the Quran; he showed that in his age and his land those conditions were not met.

“Then what jihad do Ahmadi Muslims carry out?”

The Quran itself calls jihad by means of the Quran a “great jihad”:

This verse is from the Makkan period, when there was no fighting. Jihad is of three kinds: against one’s own self, against Satan and his teaching, and against the enemies of religious freedom. In his Makkan life the Holy Prophet (sa) spent every moment in jihad without raising a sword. Through translating the Quran, building mosques and spreading the message of Islam, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community continues that same jihad of the pen and of the Quran.

Conclusion: he did not abolish jihad; because its conditions were absent, he declared jihad of the sword suspended in that age, and he called the Ummah to the great jihad of the Quran.