Antichrist

====Ahmadiyya====
{{Ahmadiyya|Distinct views}}

Prophecies concerning the emergence of the Antichrist (''Al-Masīḥ ad-Dajjāl'') are interpreted in [[Ahmadiyya]] teachings as designating a specific group of nations centred upon a false theology (or Christology) instead of an individual, with the reference to the Antichrist as an individual indicating its unity as a class or system rather than its personal individuality. As such, Ahmadis identify the Antichrist collectively with the missionary expansion and colonial dominance of [[European Christianity]] throughout the world that was propelled by the [[Industrial Revolution]].<ref>{{cite book|last1=Glassé|first1=Cyril|last2=Smith|first2=Huston|title=The New Encyclopedia of Islam|year=2003|publisher=Altamira Press|isbn=0-7591-0190-6|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=focLrox-frUC|page=33}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Valentine|first=Simon|title=Islam and the Ahmadiyya jamaʻat: history, belief, practice|year=2008|publisher=Columbia University Press|isbn=978-0-231-70094-8|page=148}}</ref><ref name="aaiil.org">Muhammad Ali. (1992) [http://aaiil.org/text/books/mali/gog/antichristgogmagog.pdf ''The Antichrist and Gog and Magog''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180701133728/http://aaiil.org/text/books/mali/gog/antichristgogmagog.pdf |date=2018-07-01 }}, Ohio: Ahmadiyya Anjuman-i Ishāʿat-i Islām</ref> [[Mirza Ghulam Ahmad]] wrote extensively on this topic, identifying the Antichrist principally with [[Christianity and colonialism|colonial missionaries]] who, according to him, were to be countered through argumentation rather than by physical warfare and whose power and influence was to gradually disintegrate, ultimately allowing for the recognition and worship of God along Islamic ideals to prevail throughout the world in a period similar to the period of time it took for nascent Christianity to rise through the Roman Empire.<ref>{{cite book|last=Valentine|first=Simon|title=Islam and the Ahmadiyya jamaʻat: history, belief, practice|year=2008|publisher=Columbia University Press|isbn=978-0-231-70094-8|pages=148–149}}</ref> The teaching that Jesus was a mortal man who survived crucifixion and [[Jesus in Ahmadiyya Islam|died a natural death]], as propounded by Ghulam Ahmad, has been seen by some scholars in this regard as a move to neutralise Christian soteriologies of Jesus and to project the superior rationality of Islam.<ref>Francis Robinson.[https://books.google.com/books?id=XLvL4zh8KK4C 'The British Empire and the Muslim World' in Judith Brown, Wm Roger Louis (ed) ''The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume IV: The Twentieth Century''.] Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 411. "At their most extreme religious strategies for dealing with the Christian presence might involve attacking Christian revelation at its heart, as did the Punjabi Muslim, Ghulam Ahmad (d. 1908), who founded the Ahmadiyya missionary sect. He claimed that he was the messiah of the Jewish and Muslim tradition; the figure known as Jesus of Nazareth had not died on the cross but survived to die in Kashmir."</ref><ref>Yohanan Friedmann. [https://books.google.com/books?id=rv8EAAAACAAJ&q=Prophecy+Continuous ''Prophecy Continuous: Aspects of Ahmadi Religious Thought and its Medieval Background''] Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 114. "He [Ghulam Ahmad] realized the centrality of the crucifixion and of the doctrine of vicarious atonement in the Christian dogma, and understood that his attack on these two was an attack on the innermost core of Christianity "</ref><ref>[[Kambiz GhaneaBassiri]]. [https://books.google.com/books?id=xKsLCx2VmcwC ''A History of Islam in America: From the New World to the New World Order''] Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 208. "Ghulam Ahmad denied the historicity of Jesus' crucifixion and claimed that Jesus had fled to India where he died a natural death in Kashmir. In this way, he sought to neutralize Christian soteriologies of Christ and to demonstrate the superior rationality of Islam."</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Valentine|first=Simon|title=Islam and the Ahmadiyya jamaʻat: history, belief, practice|year=2008|publisher=Columbia University Press|isbn=978-0-231-70094-8|page=21}} "Proclaiming himself as reformer of Islam, and wanting to undermine the validity of Christianity, Ahmad went for the theological jugular, the foundational teachings of the Christian faith. 'The death of Jesus Christ' explained one of Ahmad's biographers 'was to be the death-knell of the Christian onslaught against Islam'. As Ahmad argued, the idea of Jesus dying in old age, rather than death on a cross, as taught by the gospel writers, 'invalidates the divinity of Jesus and the doctrine of Atonement'."</ref>