From Polemical to Dialogical Encounter

In 1902, Ghulam Ahmad, the Indo-Pakistani founder of the Ahmadiyah Muslim Community—a revivalist, messianic movement within Sunni Islam—issued “an answer” to John Alexander Dowie’s, the Scottish-born non-denominationalist Christian preacher and forerunner of modern-day Pentecostalism’s, impassioned renunciation of the Islamic faith. In doing so, Ahmad invited Dowie to engage him in a mubahala, or a “prayer duel” to the death, to determine the truthfulness or fallacy of each other’s faith expression. With Dowie’s subsequent passing in 1907, Ahmad’s presumed “great victory” became one of the foundational narratives upon which Ahmadi Muslims constructed the validity of the Ahmadiyah and, consequently, structured their relationship with Christians. In this article, I explore the general contours of this mubahala invitation as well as Ahmadis differing responses to its historical and contemporaneous narrativization. Due to increased contact between Ahmadis and Christians living in the West, I contend that Ahmadi narratives surrounding this event, while historically polemical in nature, ultimately became the cornerstone upon which a positive and constructive Ahmadi Muslim-Christian engagement could be fostered, namely one built on shared collegiality and reciprocal, interfaith understanding garnered through deep, pluralistic encounter.