Maulana Muhammad Ali

Note : Do not confuse with Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar, Muhammad Ali (the Muslim boxer) or any other people named Muhammad Ali: see Muhammad Ali (disambiguation)

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Part of a series of articles on
Ahmadiyya Islam

Mirza Ghulam Ahmad

Prophecies · Claims · Writings

Views & Belief

Five Pillars of Islam · Qur'an · Sunnah · Hadith · Jesus · Prophethood · Jihad

Emirs and scholars
of the
Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement

Hakeem Noor-ud-Din · Maulana Muhammad Ali · Maulana Sadr-ud-Din · Saeed Ahmad Khan · Asghar Hameed · Abdul Karim Saeed Pasha · Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din · Basharat Ahmad · Naseer Ahmad Faruqui

Biography

Muhammad Ali was born in Punjab, British India, in 1874. He obtained an (M.A.) English and (Ll. B.) Law in 1899. He joined the Ahmadiyya Movement in 1897 and devoted his life to the service of this movement in 1900. Although he considered the movement to be part of Islam, others considered it outside the fold of Islam.

In 1902 Maulana Muhammad Ali became the editor of the Review of Religions, one of the first Islamic journals in English. When Mirza Ghulam Ahmad established the Sadr Anjuman Ahmadiyya, the first governing body of the Ahmadiyya Movement, in 1905, he appointed Maulana Muhammad Ali as the Secretary of its executive council. (The successor to this body was the Ahmadiyya Anjuman Ishaat-i-Islam of Lahore.) At the time of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad's death in 1908, he was succeeded by Maulana Hakim Noor-ud-Din, Khalifatul Masih I., who became Head of the Ahmadiyya Movement.

In March 1914, when Maulana Hakeem Noor-ud-Din died, there was a split in the movement, which led to a section of Sadr Anjuman Ahmadiyya including Maulana Muhammad Ali and other senior members of the Ahmadiyya Movement relocating from Qadian to Lahore. They became known as Ahmadiyya Anjuman Ishaat-i-Islam (Ahmadiyya Association for the Propagation of Islam) or in short as the Lahori Party.

Maulana Muhammad Ali led this movement after its foundation in 1914, organising its world-wide missionary activities, and produced a vast amount of literature in English and Urdu. He translated the Qur'an with a commentary in both English and Urdu. His writings in English include The Religion of Islam, Muhammad The Prophet, A Manual of Hadith, and The New World Order and Living Thoughts of the Prophet Muhammad. He died in 1951; he was succeeded by Maulana Sadr-ud-Din.