The Sahaba's Unanimous Belief: Isa (AS) Is Alive and Will Return

One of the load-bearing walls of the Ahmadiyya case is the claim that the Companions of the Prophet ﷺ reached a binding consensus (ijma) that Isa (AS) had died — and that the widespread belief in his physical, bodily return was a later misunderstanding born of “poor comprehension.” Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (MGA) needed this to be true. If the Sahaba unanimously held that Isa (AS) was alive in the heavens and would physically return, then MGA’s central claim — that he himself was the “Promised Messiah” who came instead of a returning Isa — collapses at the first generation of Islam.

The problem is that MGA could not keep his story straight. Across his own writings he:

1. Disparaged the Companions who believed in Isa’s return (singling out Abu Hurairah as a narrator of “poor comprehension”);
2. Quoted Umar (RA) invoking Isa’s bodily ascension as an established fact — thereby proving that a senior Companion held the very belief MGA called a mistake;
3. Declared the belief in Isa’s return to be the unbroken consensus of the entire Ummah from the beginning, “ingrained in the veins” of every Muslim — and then claimed this consensus was a “hidden secret” reserved for him alone to unveil;
4. Contradicted himself on whether there was any consensus at all — sometimes “all” Companions, sometimes only “most,” and elsewhere admitting the matter had been “disputed from the very beginning.”

This article documents each move from MGA’s primary sources and shows why the structure cannot stand. Every Urdu quotation below has been checked against the Ruhani Khazain corpus for textual authenticity; references are given by the standard Ruhani Khazain (RK) volume and page.

The Islamic Position: A Consensus the Sahaba Carried From Day One

The mainstream Islamic belief is straightforward and ancient: Isa ibn Maryam (AS) was not killed and not crucified, but raised alive by Allah (Quran 4:157-158), and he will return before the Day of Judgement. This is established by the explicit verse:

“And there is none from the People of the Scripture but that he will surely believe in him before his death.” — Quran 4:159

and by the mutawatir (mass-transmitted) prophetic reports of the descent of Isa (AS), recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, among them the narrations of Abu Hurairah (RA) himself:

“By Him in Whose Hand is my soul, the son of Maryam will soon descend among you as a just judge…” — Sahih al-Bukhari & Sahih Muslim

This was not a fringe view. It was the settled understanding the Companions carried, the scholars of every century affirmed, and — as we will see — one that MGA himself openly admitted had been the consensus of all Muslims “from the beginning.”

Move 1: Insulting the Companions Who Held the Belief

To explain away the inconvenient fact that Companions believed in Isa’s return, MGA attacked their competence. In Haqiqatul Wahi he wrote that the belief was a blunder of the “less-reflective” Companions, naming Abu Hurairah explicitly:

“Some Companions of poor reflection, whose comprehension (diraayat) was not good — such as Abu Hurairah — looked at the prophecy of the coming of the Promised Messiah and, out of their misunderstanding, supposed that Isa himself would return.”

— Haqiqatul Wahi, Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 22, p. 36

He repeated the slur in Ijaz-e-Ahmadi:

“It appears that a couple of Companions of little understanding, whose comprehension was not sound, hearing the sayings of the Christians… had at first the idea that Isa is alive in heaven — as did Abu Hurairah, who was a Bedouin and did not possess good comprehension.”

— Ijaz-e-Ahmadi, Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 19, p. 126

And in Al-Haqq Mubahatha Dehli he dismissed Abu Hurairah’s understanding outright:

“…and the comprehension of Abu Hurairah is not worthy of being a proof.”

— Al-Haqq Mubahatha Dehli, Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 4, p. 169

So the position is established: anyone among the Sahaba who believed Isa (AS) would physically return simply misunderstood, and Abu Hurairah in particular is not a reliable gauge of the truth. Hold that thought.

Move 2: The Self-Refutation — MGA Quotes Umar (RA) on Isa’s Ascension

Here the case turns on MGA himself. In Tohfa Ghaznawiyya, to argue a completely different point, MGA reached for the well-known report of Umar ibn al-Khattab (RA) at the moment of the Prophet’s ﷺ death — and in doing so, recorded Umar (RA) affirming Isa’s bodily ascension as an accepted fact:

“Umar al-Khattab used to say: ‘Whoever says that the Holy Prophet ﷺ has died, I will kill him with this very sword of mine; rather he has been raised to the heavens just as Isa ibn Maryam was raised.’”

— Tohfa Ghaznawiyya, Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 15, p. 581

“When the Holy Prophet ﷺ passed away, the thought arose in the heart of Hazrat Farooq (RA): if the Messiah went up to heaven alive, then our Prophet is more deserving and worthier to go up to heaven alive.”

— Tohfa Ghaznawiyya, Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 15, p. 585

This is devastating to MGA’s own framework. Consider what he has just conceded:

• Umar (RA) — about whom the Prophet ﷺ said, “If there were to be a prophet after me, it would be Umar” — did not merely “misunderstand a prophecy.” He stated Isa’s bodily ascension as a premise so settled that he reasoned from it about the Prophet ﷺ.
• Umar was not corrected by anyone present on that premise. The Companions did not say “but Isa is dead, Umar.” They corrected only his grief-stricken denial of the Prophet’s ﷺ death — using Quran 3:144 — while the ascension of Isa stood unchallenged.
• This means the belief in Isa’s living ascension was common ground among the most senior Companions, not the private error of a “Bedouin of poor comprehension.”

MGA cannot have it both ways. Either the belief in Isa’s ascension was a careless mistake of weak narrators — in which case why is Umar (RA) stating it as established fact? — or it was the recognized belief of the Companions, in which case MGA’s entire thesis fails.

MGA even posed the question that destroys him

Astonishingly, MGA himself raised the exact objection that his Umar quotation answers. In Malfuzat he asked rhetorically:

“If some prophet, say the Messiah, had gone up to heaven alive and this was the belief of the Companions, then did not even one of the Companions have the courage to shut the mouth of Hazrat Abu Bakr and say: how can you say [all prophets have passed away] when the Messiah is also alive?”

— Malfuzat, Vol. 2, p. 206

His argument is: silence proves the Sahaba did not believe Isa was alive. But by his own hand in Tohfa Ghaznawiyya, Umar (RA) did voice exactly that belief — “raised to the heavens just as Isa ibn Maryam was raised.” MGA’s rhetorical “nobody objected” evaporates the moment we read his own citation of Umar.

And then he issued a fatwa against that very belief

Having quoted Umar (RA) affirming Isa’s ascension, MGA elsewhere branded the belief as a lie:

“The idea of the Messiah going up to heaven is absurd, false, and a fabrication.”

— Tiryaq-ul-Qulub, Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 15, p. 145

Read the two side by side: MGA quotes Umar (RA) — the Companion the Prophet ﷺ praised above all others — stating Isa’s ascension, and then declares that same belief “absurd, false, and a fabrication.” He has, in effect, issued a verdict of falsehood against the conviction of Umar al-Farooq (RA).

Move 3: The Impossible Double Consensus

MGA’s deepest problem is that he needed two opposite consensuses to be true at once.

Consensus (a): The Sahaba unanimously agreed Isa had died

This is the claim he builds his whole system on. When Abu Bakr (RA) recited “Muhammad is no more than a messenger; messengers have passed away before him” (Quran 3:144) upon the Prophet’s ﷺ death, MGA reads it as a binding consensus on the death of all prophets, including Isa (AS):

“Hazrat Abu Bakr (RA) removed this error by presenting the verse [3:144], and this was the first consensus (ijma) in Islam — that all the prophets have passed away.”

— Haqiqatul Wahi, Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 22, p. 35

“Upon this, the consensus of all the Companions (RA) was reached; not a single individual remained outside it. Because of this consensus, all the Companions affirmed the death of Isa (AS).”

— Tohfa Golarwiya, Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 17, p. 92

Consensus (b): The Ummah unanimously believed in Isa’s return from the beginning

Yet when arguing that he is the fulfilment of a universally awaited prophecy, MGA asserts the exact opposite — that belief in the coming of “Isa ibn Maryam” was the unbroken consensus of the whole Ummah, woven into the very fibres of every Muslim from the start:

“It should be clear that the prophecy concerning the Promised Messiah found in the hadith is not something that only the imams of hadith recorded on the basis of a few narrations. Rather, it is established that this prophecy entered the veins and arteries of the Muslims as a belief from the very beginning — as if every Muslim then on the face of the earth was a witness to its truth, because they had been remembering it as an article of faith from the outset.”

— Shahadat-ul-Quran, Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 6, p. 304

“There is the spiritual secret of the descent of Ibn Maryam, which remained hidden from the people of the world for ages and was entrusted especially for this age…”

— Haqiqatul Wahi, Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 22, p. 389

“Allah kept it hidden and reserved it for the Promised one to come; so when he came, he disclosed this secret.”

— “What is the difference between an Ahmadi and a non-Ahmadi?”, Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 20, p. 472

So which is it?

A belief cannot be both unanimously rejected by the Companions on day one and the unbroken article of faith of the entire Ummah from the beginning. If the return of Isa was “in the veins” of every Muslim from the outset, then there was no “first consensus” on his death — and the people MGA mocks as confused (Abu Hurairah, and by his own quotation, Umar) were simply holding the mainstream belief he admits existed.

Move 4: “No Scholar for 1,300 Years” vs. His Own Admissions

To insulate his novelty, MGA claimed nobody before him had taught Isa’s death:

“Then after that, for thirteen hundred years, no mujtahid and no accepted imam or leader of the people ever claimed that the Messiah is alive.”

— Tohfa Golarwiya, Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 17, p. 92

He means the reverse — that for 1,300 years everyone believed Isa was alive and would return, and that he is the first to “discover” the death. But this detonates his own position from two directions:

1. He himself held the “alive and returning” belief for over a decade. By his own account he accepted the mainstream view until around 1891. If the belief was a baseless error, why did the “Promised Messiah” hold it for twelve years?
2. He admits it was the belief of the entire Ummah, including its revivers. As quoted above (RK 6:304), the awaited return of “Isa ibn Maryam” was, in his words, “in the veins” of every Muslim from the beginning. You cannot simultaneously claim that the belief in Isa’s return was (a) the universal, beginning-to-now consensus of the Ummah, and (b) a confusion of two weak-minded Companions that “no scholar” ever held.

Move 5: “All” the Companions? Or Only “Most”? Or “Disputed From the Start”?

For a binding ijma, MGA needs unanimity — “not a single individual remained outside it” (RK 17:92). But in Izala-e-Auham he downgraded the claim to a majority:

“Most of the Companions continued to believe in the death of the Messiah.”

— Izala-e-Auham, Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 3, p. 254

“Most” is not “all.” If only most believed in Isa’s death, then by definition a minority believed the opposite — which means there was no consensus, and the very foundation of his argument disappears.

And then, in Malfuzat, he concedes the matter was contested from the very beginning:

“The question of the life and death of the Messiah is a great issue… From the very beginning this question has been a matter of difference (mukhtalaf fih), and the death of the Messiah is the view of the majority of the leaders of the community.”

— Malfuzat, Vol. 5 (on the death of the Messiah)

A matter that has been “a subject of difference from the very beginning” is, by definition, not a matter of ijma. MGA has conceded the one thing his argument cannot survive.

Move 6: The Fabricated Supports

To hold the collapsing structure together, MGA introduced claims that have no basis in the Islamic record:

“Abu Bakr (RA) settled the death of Isa through a divine revelation.”

“May God shower thousands of mercies upon Hazrat Abu Bakr, who, receiving a pure revelation (ilham) from God, decided the matter that the Messiah has died.”

— Tiryaq-ul-Qulub, Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 15, p. 462

There is no report in any canonical source that Abu Bakr (RA) received a private revelation about Isa’s death. What Abu Bakr (RA) actually did was recite an existing verse of the Quran (3:144) to calm the Companions about the Prophet’s ﷺ death. Converting this into a personal ilham about Isa is an invention required only to manufacture a “consensus” that the texts do not provide.

Why the Whole Structure Collapses

Lay MGA’s statements next to one another and the case answers itself:

flowchart TD
    A["MGA's needed claim:<br/>Sahaba had IJMA that Isa DIED"] --> B{Tested against<br/>MGA's own writings}
    B --> C["He quotes Umar RA affirming<br/>Isa's bodily ascension<br/>(RK 15:581, 585)"]
    B --> D["He calls belief in Isa's return<br/>the Ummah's consensus 'from the<br/>beginning, in the veins' (RK 6:304)"]
    B --> E["He downgrades 'all' to<br/>'MOST' Companions (RK 3:254)"]
    B --> F["He admits the issue was<br/>'disputed from the beginning'<br/>(Malfuzat 5)"]
    C --> G["NO binding ijma on death"]
    D --> G
    E --> G
    F --> G
    G --> H["The foundation of the<br/>'Promised Messiah' claim fails"]

The logic is simple:

• If a senior Companion (Umar) stated Isa’s ascension as established fact and was not corrected on it, the belief was mainstream, not a misunderstanding.
• If the belief in Isa’s return was the Ummah’s consensus “from the beginning” (MGA’s own words), then there was no first-day consensus that Isa had died.
• If only “most” Companions held the death view, and the matter was “disputed from the beginning,” then there is no ijma at all — and ijma is precisely what MGA’s argument requires.

To escape this, MGA was forced to insult the very Companions whose consensus the Ummah relies on — calling Abu Hurairah (RA) a man of “poor comprehension” and pronouncing the belief of Umar al-Farooq (RA) “absurd, false, and a fabrication.” A claimant who must declare the foremost Companions confused or mistaken in order to make room for himself has not uncovered a hidden truth. He has set himself against the people through whom the religion itself was transmitted.

The Sahaba did not misunderstand. They carried, from the first day, the belief that Isa (AS) was raised alive and will return — and MGA, in his unguarded moments, admitted exactly that.

Primary-Source References

Note on references: all Urdu passages above were verified for textual authenticity against the Ruhani Khazain corpus. Page numbers follow the standard Ruhani Khazain edition cited in the scholarly literature.