End Times and the Modern World: The Ahmadiyya in Colonial Ghana

Abstract

The Ahmadiyya, a messianic Muslim missionary movement that expanded globally from South Asia, provided religious, social, and educational services and offered a compelling End Times message in colonial Ghana. An Ahmadi missionary arrived at the invitation of African Muslims, who learned about the movement from the Ahmadiyya’s English-language publications. Africans negotiated the terms of the mission’s founding and supported the residence of a South Asian missionary. Other West African Muslim movements navigated the colonial era with reformed religious practices and organizational changes, and the Ahmadiyya was distinctive with its English-language schools and an eschatology based on its founder’s claims to receive divine revelation as the Messiah and Mahdi. Ghanaian Ahmadi Muslims were a small minority within an overall Muslim minority in Ghana. Their initiatives created a dynamic regional center in an expanding Ahmadiyya network.