The Ahmadiyya Position

On Sunday 23 November 2025, His Holiness Mirza Masroor Ahmad, the Caliph of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, a worldwide sect of Islam some twenty million strong, opened its first purpose-built mosque in Wales, at a ceremony to which I had the honour of being invited, in connection with my research into the Shroud. I also had the privilege of an audience with His Holiness, who recognised me from previous encounters with a wry smile. As he knows well, authenticist views of the Shroud are a bone of contention between Christians and the Ahmadiyya, whereas medieval views are no challenge to either.

Nevertheless, during the meal which followed the key-note address by His Holiness I found myself in conversation with a group of Imams and other Roman Catholics, attempting to understand and communicate the reasons why the Ahmadiyya generally accept the authenticity of the Shroud, but not that it illustrates the body of a dead man. In keeping with their understanding of historical events, they think the Shroud demonstrates that Jesus recovered from his apparent death on the cross, so that after being restored to strength, he could make his way on foot to Kashmir, where he preached, died of old age, and was buried beneath a temple in Srinagar, which can be visited today.

Recently there has been some social media discussion regarding ‘historical’ and ‘scientific’ consensus with respect to the facts of Jesus’s life and death, and various lists of scholars drawn up and counted in order to demonstrate that this or that fact is generally considered true, and so can be taken as an axiom on which to base further discussion. Overwhelmingly, and not unreasonably, these lists consist of anglophone scholars, with a few other European languages thrown in, but it must be remembered that the Bible plays an important role in Islam, and has been the subject of almost as much study in Arabic as it has been in English. The compiled views of the Islamic scholars sometimes make serious dents in claims of ‘overwhelming consensus’ for one Christian view or another. For hundreds of years, these Islamic scholars have been ‘conventional’ Muslims, as the Ahmadiyya Community was only founded in 1889, but much of their exegesis is equally relevant to both. Where it differs is in the circumstances of the end of Jesus’s life. Conventional Islam sees him ascending into heaven before the crucifixion, so that discussion about his deposition, burial and resurrection is irrelevant. For this, only the Ahmadiyya scholarship can be considered significant for Christians.

Just as Christian authenticist belief is evidenced using a variety of themes, so too the Ahmadiyya, which I shall attempt to enumerate below.

1). The Old Testament and prophesy.
Christian views regarding the prophesying of, and even the necessity for, a literal Resurrection from irreversible death, based on their interpretation of passages in the bible, are not upheld by the Ahmadiyya, even when they are both studying the same passage. One such passage is in the Book of Jonah, a passage referred to by Jesus himself in the gospels, relating how Jonah spent three days in the belly of a whale. For both Christians and the Ahmadiyya, this is seen as prefiguring the events surrounding the burial of Jesus, but crucially, the latter point out that Jonah didn’t die. In telling the scribes and pharisees that the only sign of his authority he would give them was the ‘sign of Jonah,’ Jesus was not indicating death, just revival after a traumatic burial. Similarly, the metaphor of the grain of wheat ‘dying’ before regrowing and bearing great fruit does not necessarily refer to the same state of irrecoverability normally implied by the word ‘death.’ Even the word ‘killed’ (ἀποκτείνω and derivatives) can be used in a metaphorical sense, and need not imply irreversibility, especially if it leads to rebirth. Other alleged Old Testament prophesies include Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22, which emphasise suffering and burial but minimise actual death.

2). The New Testament and events.
The gospel accounts of the passion, death, burial and resurrection are conflicting and inconclusive, and their interpretation can take different paths. The Ahmadiyya highlight Pontius Pilate’s part in the events, first doing his (albeit rather feeble) best to save Jesus from the Jews, then being surprised to discover he was dead so soon, permitting his body’s removal and burial, and posting a guard at the tomb. This speaks of care for the living, not unconcern for the dead. According to the evangelist John, before being permitted to release Jesus from the cross, a soldier ‘pierced’ (ἔνυξεν) his side, a word which to most Christians conveys a savage stab, but which can also mean ‘prick’ in a more precise sense. Some see, in the blood and water, evidence that Jesus was alive, and others even that the carefully placed release of water from a cardiac tamponade actually saved Jesus’s life.

Next, Joseph of Arimathea, unknown except in this single context, and Nicodemus, known only to John, brought pounds and pounds of ointment, far more than could ever be sensibly used in a burial, of plant extracts never used in Jewish burial traditions. However its disinfectant and anti-inflammatory effects were well-known, and it seems to the Ahmadiyya that there was a plot among some associates of Christ of whom the simple apostles were scarcely aware, to keep Jesus alive and restore him to health. Among them were, no doubt, the young men in white who informed the other apostles that Jesus had ‘arisen,’ and it is not impossible that Pilate himself was party to this enterprise.

Crucifixion in itself was rarely fatal, and was not designed to kill anybody by asphyxiation or blood loss, the two principle ways by which most Christians think Jesus died. People did die, in their thousands, but only after hours, sometimes days, of thirst or heat-stroke or other environmental factors, not, apparently, from their crucifixion wounds. Being rescued promptly, and in the absence of broken bones or badly damaged internal organs, there is no reason why Jesus could not have been back on his feet in a day or so, and on his way out of Israel after a month, perhaps meeting the apostle Paul on the road to Damascus as he left.

3). The Shroud.
The Ahmadiyya believe that the Shroud more accurately illustrates a live body than a dead one. The cloth was laid over the body for a short time, coated with the unguent popularly called the ‘ointment of the apostles’ (Christian) or ‘marham-i-Isa’ (Ahmadiyya), a dodecapharmacum of twelve ingredients, of which, at least in Jesus’s case, myrrh and aloes were the principle. This sensitised the cloth to vapours arising from the traumatic sweat on the body and provided a snap-shot of its condition. Chemical interactions with the cellulose of the cloth occurred which remained even after, much later, all traces of both the unguent and the sweat were washed or eroded away. When Jesus showed signs of recovery, the cloth was removed, and further treatment commenced. The blood on the Shroud derives from that which leaked from the body as the nails and crown of thorns were removed, although the very shallow pulse ensured that it was minimal. Contrary to some Christian conclusions, the Ahmadiyya see no sign of rigor mortis, and of course they find no necessity to invoke any supernatural manifestations such as UV-radiation or cloth collapse.

4). Subsequent events.
In Jewish tradition, the twelve sons of Israel gave rise to twelve tribes, which after the ninth century BC were divided into two kingdoms, ten tribes in the Kingdom of Israel and two in the Kingdom of Judah. When the Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrians in about 720 BC, its tribes were dispersed, never to return. They may have wandered eastwards, and set up new territories of their own. The Ahmadiyya identify the names of some tribes of Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan with the names of these Jewish tribes, and suggest that Jesus, who after all had announced to his disciples that he had principally been sent to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel,” spent more of his life among these peoples than he did among the Jews of Judea.

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Not enough people know about the Aymadiyya. Devout adherents of the teaching of Muhammad as expressed in the Quran, they are nevertheless repudiated by mainstream Islam, so much so that under severe persecution they were forced to abandon their homeland in Pakistan and establish their headquarters in England in 1984. Nevertheless, they remain steadfastly peaceful and law-abiding, and determined to integrate as closely as possible with the charitable requirements of their neighbourhoods. Their motto, which they take very seriously and by which all their activities are governed, is ‘Love for All, Hatred for None,’ or ‘Cariad at Bawb, Casineb at Neb,’ as proclaimed on the outer walls of the new mosque. The Shroud is the least of their considerations, but their interest in it and continued research should be taken seriously by everybody trying to understand it, and its meaning, better.