Ahmadiyya movement

What it is: The Ahmadiyya movement began in Punjab in the late nineteenth century as a reform and renewal current in Islam. Its founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, was born on 13 February 1835 at Qadian in Gurdaspur district and died at Lahore on 26 May 1908 (Wikipedia). The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says he came from the chief land-owning family of Qadian and saw Christian missions and the Arya Samaj as threats. Wikipedia records the community as formally established on 23 March 1889 at Ludhiana, when he took a pledge of allegiance from his companions. Qadian was his home; the first annual gathering was held there in 1891.

Beliefs and leaders, in order: In 1891 he claimed to be the Promised Messiah and the Mahdi, which drew opposition from Sunni and Shia leaders (Encyclopaedia of Sikhism). After his death Mahmood Ahmad was elected second Caliph in 1914, and a faction led by Muhammad Ali and Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din rejected the succession and formed the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement. Mahmood Ahmad moved to Lahore in 1947 and founded Rabwah, in Pakistan, on 20 September 1948. Mirza Tahir Ahmad moved the caliphate to London in 1984 (Wikipedia).

Its link with the Panth: In 1895, after reading Swami Dayanand's Satyarth Prakash, which attacked other religions including Sikhism, he wrote in Urdu on the life of Guru Nanak, arguing that the Guru had been a Muslim, in order to win Sikhs to Islam and to his own claim to be the Messiah. Sikh scholars refuted his arguments (Encyclopaedia of Sikhism).

Key moments

• 1947: after Partition the main seat moved to Rabwah, and Qadian, now in India, kept a small staff to care for the original shrines and buildings (Encyclopaedia of Sikhism). The Tribune reports that Qadian, a municipal town in Gurdaspur, still holds an annual convention attended by Ahmadis from over 160 countries.
• 7 September 1974: after a clash at Rabwah on 29 May between Ahmadi youths and students of the Islami Jamiat-i-Talaba, and a protest movement that followed, Pakistan's National Assembly declared Ahmadis a non-Muslim minority. Dawn says dozens of Ahmadis were killed, mostly in Gujranwala and Sargodha.
• 1984: Ordinance XX, under Zia-ul-Haq, made it illegal for Ahmadis to "pose" as Muslims, barred them from calling their places of worship mosques or their call to prayer azaan, and set three-year jail terms (Al Jazeera).
• 28 May 2010: attacks on two Ahmadi places of worship in Lahore killed nearly 100 people (Scroll).

Where it stands: Wikipedia says independent sources estimate 10 to 20 million Ahmadis worldwide, while the community itself says tens of millions. Al Jazeera estimated 600,000 to 700,000 in Pakistan in 2014 and reported the community's own count of 245 Ahmadis killed in attacks since 1984.