Muhammad Ali (writer)

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Muhammad Ali (1874–1951) (Arabic: محمد على‎) was a Pakistani writer, scholar, and leading figure of the Ahmadiyya Movement.

[edit] Biography

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 dedicated his life to the service of the movement as part of a restored and pristine Islamic faith, majority of Muslim scholars and jurists have considered the Ahmadiyya to be outside of mainstream Islam or even heretical.^[1]

In 1902 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 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 Ahmad's death in 1908, he was succeeded by Maulana Hakim Noor-ud-Din, Khalifatul Masih I., who became its next leader.

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 Ali and other senior members of the movement relocating from Qadian to Lahore. They became known as Ahmadiyya Anjuman Ishaat-i-Islam (Ahmadiyya Association for the Propagation of Islam) or the Lahori Party.

Ali led this movement after its foundation in 1914, organising its worldwide 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.