"Son of a Harlot," Bastards, Pigs and Bitches: The Foul Tongue of a Man Who Claimed Prophethood

The Qur’an describes the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ in a single, towering phrase:

“Wa innaka la’ala khuluqin ‘azeem.”

“And indeed, you are of a great moral character.” — Qur’an 68:4

His own wife ‘A’isha (RA) said of him, “He was not one who was foul-mouthed (faahish), nor one who used obscene speech (mutafahhish), nor one who shouted in the markets” (Sahih al-Bukhari). The Prophet ﷺ himself said, “The believer is not a slanderer, nor a curser, nor coarse, nor obscene” (Tirmidhi). This is the universal standard. Foul language, sexual obscenity, and abuse of women are the marks of low character — and they are disqualifying for anyone claiming to speak for God.

Against that backdrop stands Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (MGA) of Qadian, who claimed to be a nabi (prophet), the Promised Messiah, and the Mahdi. The problem is that his collected works, Ruhani Khazain, are studded with exactly the kind of speech that the Prophet ﷺ forbade. This is not the occasional slip of an angry man — it is a recurring habit across many books and many years: the language of the gutter, dressed up as revelation.

This article documents that language, category by category, directly from his own books.

A Note Before We Begin

Some of what follows is genuinely vulgar. We reproduce it not to shock, but because Ahmadis are routinely told that their founder was a man of the highest spirituality and refinement — a “buruz” (reflection) of the Prophet ﷺ himself. The only way to test that claim is to read what he actually wrote. We have kept transliterations and translations faithful to the originals; the citations point to Ruhani Khazain so that any reader can verify them.

MGA also gave himself a blanket excuse: ilzami jawab — the idea that if an opponent insults you, you are allowed to return it. We will deal with that defence at the end. For now, simply note the pattern.

1. “Zurriyat-ul-Baghaya” — Calling Opponents the Offspring of Prostitutes

One of MGA’s favourite weapons was the accusation of illegitimate, prostitute birth. The Arabic term he reached for again and again was baghaya (prostitutes / harlots) and its relatives.

In his Arabic polemics he writes of an opponent:

“Atalta lisanaka kal-baghaya waqahatan…”

“You have stretched out your tongue shamelessly, like prostitutes…”

— Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 9 (Arabic works against his Muslim critics)

And in the same register, addressing an opponent directly:

“If I do not attack you, O son of a harlot (ya ibn al-baghiyy)…”

— Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 9

The case of Maulvi Sa’dullah of Ludhiana

The clearest example is MGA’s decades-long feud with Maulvi Sa’dullah Ludhianvi, a former Hindu who had converted to Islam and became one of MGA’s sharpest critics. Sa’dullah once sent MGA a poem. MGA’s response was not an argument — it was abuse aimed at the man’s ancestry and his convert background.

In Anjam-e-Atham (Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 11) MGA repeatedly brands Sa’dullah a badgo, khabith, mufsid — “foul-mouthed, filthy, a mischief-maker” — and throws his Hindu origin in his face by calling him “Hindu-zada” (son of a Hindu / Hindu-born). He then announces a “revelation” against him modelled on Surah al-Kawthar:

“Inna shani’aka huwal abtar.”

“Indeed it is your enemy who is cut off (sonless / without progeny).”

— Anjam-e-Atham, Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 11

In the very same campaign against Sa’dullah, MGA used the term that became infamous — zurriyat-ul-baghaya, “offspring of prostitutes.” This particular insult was so embarrassing that in later, sanitised editions of his works it was quietly edited out. The original, however, is preserved, and Ahmadi apologists have spent enormous energy trying to explain it away. There is nothing to explain: a man who claims to be a prophet called a critic the “son of a prostitute,” and prophesied that he would die without a son.

When Sa’dullah later did have offspring, this became one of MGA’s many failed prophecies — but that is a separate matter. The point here is the language: a holy man does not respond to a poem by attacking a convert’s mother.

2. “Haramzaday” — Bastards

The accusation of illegitimacy was not reserved for one man. MGA used haramzada (bastard) and its equivalents as a general-purpose insult, even in contexts that had nothing to do with anyone’s actual parentage.

In his Arabic writings (Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 6) he lays down the principle that:

“Wishing ill of one’s benefactor is the work of a bastard and a wicked man.”

— a line he deployed to shame Muslims who were not sufficiently loyal to the British government that he himself served so eagerly. Elsewhere (Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 9) he describes his opponents as people “willing to become a bastard” in their stubbornness, and in Izala-e-Auham (Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 3) he strings together lists of such insults against the scholars who rejected him.

The man who said the Prophet ﷺ had returned in his person could not, it seems, disagree with a Maulvi without questioning the circumstances of his birth.

3. Pigs (Khanazir) and Bitches (Kutiyaan)

MGA’s bestiary of insults is extensive. His critics are not merely wrong — they are pigs and dogs.

In an extended passage of Arabic invective (Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 9, from his works against the Christians and his Muslim opponents) the imagery becomes lurid:

“…treachery increased and the bitch of immorality became pregnant… the harlot of evil… the pony of falsehood…”

Elsewhere he writes that his opponents have been “disfigured and joined with the swine” (Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 9), echoing the Qur’anic curse of transformation but turning it into a personal taunt. Against the Christians he writes that they “have preferred wickedness and the swine” (Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 8). And in Izala-e-Auham (Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 3) he mocks a particular Maulvi for being “long-nosed like a pig.”

The summary that anti-Ahmadiyya researchers have given is simply accurate: Mirza Ghulam Ahmad cursed at his critics, even calling them pigs and bitches. These are his words, in his books, under his name.

4. “Kanjari” — and the Sexual Slandering of Women

MGA reserved a special kind of obscenity for women — both as an insult-word and in the content of his attacks on rival religions.

Kanjari (a prostitute / dancing-girl) appears as a term of abuse, but more disturbing is the way he weaponised the sexuality of women — including the holy women of other faiths — to score polemical points. In attacking the Prophet Isa (Jesus, AS), MGA wrote of his lineage in the foulest possible terms:

“Teen dadiyan aur naniyan aap ki zinakaar aur kasbi auratein theen… aap ka kanjariyon se milan aur sohbat…”

“Three of his grandmothers were adulteresses and prostitutes… his mixing and keeping company with prostitutes…”

— from MGA’s polemics against Christianity (Ruhani Khazain)

He repeats the claim that “Rahab was a kasbi, that is, a kanjari (prostitute)” and builds an entire argument out of the alleged sexual history of the women in Jesus’s genealogy. Set aside the theology for a moment and notice the method: the way to win a religious debate, for MGA, was to talk about whose grandmother was a prostitute.

This is not the speech of a reformer of morals. It is the speech of a man comfortable with sexual mud-slinging.

5. Dirty Poems About Arya Women and the Practice of Niyog

MGA’s running war with the Arya Samaj (a Hindu reform movement) produced some of his most graphic writing. He fixated on niyog — a practice mentioned in some Hindu texts whereby a childless woman could conceive through a man other than her husband — and used it to paint Arya women, and Hinduism itself, in the most degrading sexual terms.

In Aaina-e-Kamalat-e-Islam (Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 5) and Nur-ul-Quran (Ruhani Khazain, Vols. 9-10) MGA describes niyog at length, alleging that the Vedas effectively “command wives to commit adultery for the sake of offspring,” and dwelling on the mechanics in a way that goes far beyond what any argument required. He extended this into Arabic verse, mocking the Aryas with imagery of raqs al-baghaya — “the dancing of prostitutes.”

The point, again, is not whether niyog is theologically defensible (Hindus themselves debate its scope). The point is that a man claiming prophetic dignity chose to make his case through extended, leering descriptions of women’s sexual conduct and “dirty poems” about Arya women. The Prophets of God called people to modesty; they did not compose verse about adultery to humiliate their opponents.

6. The Most Shocking of All: Comparing Khushu in Prayer to Ejaculation and Intercourse

If the insults above show a foul tongue, the following passage shows something more disturbing: a mind that could take the most sacred act in Islam — salah (prayer) — and the most spiritual state within it — khushu (humility, awe, the tearful softening of the heart before God) — and explain it through an extended analogy with semen, ejaculation, and sexual intercourse.

This is from Haqiqat-ul-Wahi (Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 22), where MGA builds a parallel between the six Qur’anic stages of physical creation (nutfa, ‘alaqa, mudgha…) and the stages of spiritual development. He makes the first spiritual stage — khushu — correspond to the first physical stage — nutfa (semen/sperm). So far this might be a strained metaphor. But MGA does not stop at the metaphor; he presses it into explicit detail:

“…nutfa kabhi haramkari ke taur par kisi randi ke andaam-nihani mein parta hai to is mein bhi wahi lazzat nutfa daalne wale ko haasil hoti hai jaisa apni biwi ke saath. Pas aisa hi but-paraston aur makhlooq-paraston ka khushu o khuzu aur haalat-e-zauq o shauq randi-baazon se mushabeh hai.”

“…just as semen is sometimes deposited, in the manner of fornication, into the vagina of a prostitute (randi), and the one depositing it obtains the very same pleasure as he would with his own wife — in exactly the same way, the khushu and khuzu (humility) and the state of spiritual ecstasy of idol-worshippers and creature-worshippers resembles that of men who frequent prostitutes.”

— Haqiqat-ul-Wahi, Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 22, pp. 167-170

He goes further. He says the pleasure and weeping of khushu in prayer is “exactly like” the discharge of semen:

“…just as semen, involuntarily, leaps out and takes the form of ejaculation — this is precisely the form that weeping takes at the moment of perfect khushu — the tears leap from the eyes [as semen does]. And just as the pleasure of ejaculation is sometimes lawful, when a man is intimate with his wife, and sometimes unlawful, when a man is intimate with a forbidden woman — so too is the state of khushu and weeping in prayer…”

— Haqiqat-ul-Wahi, Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 22

And he extends it into the hereafter, claiming that in Paradise a man’s union with his wife and his absorption in the love of God will become so alike that “he will not be able to tell the difference” between the two.

Read that again. The humility, the tears, the trembling of a worshipper standing before Allah — the thing the Prophet ﷺ experienced until his chest made a sound “like a boiling pot” — MGA explains by comparing it, in clinical detail, to ejaculation, to intercourse with a wife, and to the act of a man with a prostitute. He does not do this once in passing. He develops the comparison over several pages, returning to it again and again, comparing the khushu of polytheists to “semen deposited in the vagina of adulterous women.”

No Sufi, no muhaddith, no faqih in the history of Islam ever wrote anything remotely like this. It is not deep; it is not subtle. It is the imagination of a man who could not keep sexual imagery out of even the holiest subject.

”But It Was Ilzami Jawab!” — MGA’s Own Excuse, Examined

Ahmadi apologists have a standard defence for all of the above: ilzami jawab. They argue that MGA only used harsh language in response to those who abused him first, and that this is permitted — even citing the Qur’anic principle that one may answer an aggressor in kind (Qur’an 2:194, 16:126).

This defence fails on several counts:

1. The Qur’an’s own ceiling is restraint, not obscenity. Even where retaliation is permitted, Allah immediately adds: “…but if you are patient, it is better for those who are patient” (16:126). Nowhere does the principle of ilzami jawab license calling a man the “son of a prostitute,” writing about people as pigs and bitches, or comparing prayer to sex. There is a universe of difference between a firm rebuttal and sexual filth.

2. The Prophet ﷺ was abused far more, and never responded like this. He was called a madman, a sorcerer, a liar; his daughter was widowed by his enemies; filth was thrown on his back in prayer; he was driven from his city. His response at Ta’if is the measure of a prophet. If ilzami jawab truly licensed MGA’s language, the Prophet ﷺ — with infinitely more provocation — would have been its greatest user. He was its greatest opposite.

3. Much of MGA’s abuse was not retaliatory at all. His sexual descriptions of niyog, his slandering of the women in Jesus’s lineage, and his khushu-as-semen passage were not replies to insults — they were his own chosen arguments, composed in calm prose, in books he wrote and published on his own initiative.

4. A prophet sets the standard; he does not sink to it. The entire purpose of a nabi is to raise people’s morals. A man who reflects his enemy’s filth back at him has not reformed anything; he has simply joined the gutter and put a divine label on it.

In short, ilzami jawab is not a defence. It is an admission — that the language is exactly as bad as it appears, and that the best the apologist can do is say “he was provoked.”

Conclusion: This Is Not the Speech of a Prophet — or Even a Decent Man

Strip away the claim to prophethood for a moment and ask a simpler question: Would you trust your moral and spiritual guidance to a man who wrote like this? A man who calls his critics the offspring of prostitutes, bastards, pigs, and bitches; who slanders the dead grandmothers of another faith’s prophet as whores; who composes leering verse about women’s sexual conduct; and who can explain the tears of a worshipper only by reaching for the image of semen and intercourse?

The Qur’an’s testimony about the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ — “you are of a great moral character” — is not decoration. It is part of the proof of his prophethood. His enemies, who knew him best, could not point to a single foul word, a single act of obscenity, a single broken promise. That spotless character was itself a sign.

By that same standard, Ruhani Khazain is its own verdict. The language documented above is not becoming of a teacher, a scholar, or even an ordinary God-fearing man — let alone someone who asked the Muslim world to accept him as a prophet of Allah and the awaited Messiah. A tree is known by its fruit, and a claimant is known by his tongue.

“The believer is not a slanderer, nor a curser, nor coarse (faahish), nor obscene (badhi’).” — Sunan al-Tirmidhi

By the Prophet’s ﷺ own measure, the author of these pages condemned himself with every line.

All references are to Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s collected works, Ruhani Khazain, with the book title given so that readers can locate each passage in the original Urdu and Arabic. Where a passage was altered in later editions (as with the Sa’dullah material in Anjam-e-Atham), this has been noted.