In 2010 the BBC offered some background on the Ahmadi movement, aka the Ahmadiyya community.
[I]t is regarded by orthodox Muslims as heretical because it does not believe that Mohammed was the final prophet sent to guide mankind, as orthodox Muslims believe is laid out in the Koran.
Well there’s your problem right there: thinking “heretical” is a meaningful and useful word. Let’s face it, nobody knows whether Mohammed was the “final prophet” or not, or whether he was a “prophet” at all, or how they would know he wasn’t one. It’s all just claims all the way down. That, I suppose, why there’s so much venom about the claims.
The Ahmadiyya community takes its name from its founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who was born in 1835 and was regarded by his followers as the messiah and a prophet.
Ghulam Ahmad saw himself as a renewer of Islam and claimed to have been chosen by Allah.
It was ok for Mohammed to do that in the 8th 7th century but it’s not ok for Ahmad to do it in the 19th. Why’s that then?
In 1947, the community moved its religious headquarters from Qadian in India to Rabwah in Pakistan.
Then in 1953, orthodox Muslim groups in Pakistan came together to form what they called the “anti-Qadiani movement”.
Described by rights organisations as one of the most relentlessly persecuted communities in Pakistan, the Ahmadiyya have seen their personal and political rights erode steadily over the years under pressure from orthodox Muslim groups.
So six years into Pakistan’s existence as a country, they got started on persecuting the Ahmadiyya.
In 1974, under severe pressure from clerics, Pakistan’s first elected prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, introduced a constitutional amendment – known as the second amendment – which declared Ahmadiyya non-Muslims.
A decade later, a new law was brought in barring Ahmadis from calling their places of worship mosques or from propagating their faith in “any way, directly or indirectly”.
Anticipating the impact of the new law, the community moved its headquarters to the UK.
According to Islam and the Ahmadiyya Jamaat, by Simon Valentine, the movement stresses non-violence and tolerance of other faiths.
Well we can’t have that. No wonder the “orthodox Muslims” hate them and persecute them.