When members of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light (AROPL) were raided by the Cheshire Police and arrested at Crewe for heresies and sex offences on Wednesday, April 29, 2026, a miscellany of reactions hovered around the story from Muslims and non-Muslims alike. For Muslims, many confused the group with Ahmadiyyah Muslim Jama‘at and hastily castigated the Jama‘at, presuming that they had only upgraded what the mainstream Muslims refer to as their heresies. For non-Muslims, many could not hide their general prejudice, bigotry and Islamophobia as they made deeply offensive allegations against Prophet Muhammad and described Islam in extremely derogatory terms. In their imaginations and presuppositions, therefore, the raided group was only caught embodying these same inflammatory claims made against the Prophet of Islam. Interestingly, it was not only the comments from non-Muslims that were immaterial to the news, but also the Muslims who confused the group with the Ahmadiyyah Muslim Jamaʻat.
If not for clarifications, it probably needs no elaborate expositions that Ahmadiyyah Muslim Jama‘at was a movement founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in 1889 after the founder had been a preacher and claimed to be the Mujaddid al-waqt (the revivalist of the time) and the promised Mahdi (messiah) whom Prophet Muhammad prophesied would appear when the world is in turmoil and gradually coming to an end. Even though this movement holds some creeds and beliefs that are contested by the mainstream Muslims, many Muslims still do not outrightly reject them as members of the global Muslim community. In other words, members of the movement affirm their adherence to the Islamic faith, even with their heterodox principles, and many Muslims around the world take them for Muslims even when criticising them for their odd ideologies.
But notwithstanding the contested position of Ahmadiyyah Muslim Jama‘at, the movement is completely different from the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light, whose members were recently raided at Crewe and charged for forced marriages, modern slavery and sexual offences. Though also somehow associated with the Mahdi prophecy, it is a new religion founded in 2015 by Abdullah Hashem Aba Al-Sadiq, based on Twelver Shia belief. This founder was an Egyptian American born in 1983 and one of the followers of Ahmed al-Hassan from Basra in Iraq to whom the ultimate origin of the religion has been traced.
As a short background, it was in 1999 that Ahmed al-Hassan claimed he met the twelfth Imam (whom majority Shia believe is in occultation) in person and was ordained to go on a religious mission of unifying and preparing people for his return. Later, al-Hassan declared the Shia Islam in Iran and Iraq to be corrupt and rejected them before going into hiding. After some time, his followers fractured into different factions. AROPL which is also regarded as the Black Banners of the East, therefore emerged as the largest group of all these factions and its members now regard themselves as adherents of an independent religion. AROPL members are different from the main Shia because they believe the Twelfth Imam has returned and that the world is close to an end. They believe their new religion is the ultimate religion which the world must practise. They have their own scripture, called “Goal of the Wise: The Gospel of the Riser of the Family of Mohammed”. This contains the group’s core teachings and revelations as presented by Abdullah Hashem. The group is rumoured to now have presence in about forty countries with an estimated population of 7,000 people reported to have had contact with it. It has satellite channels and multifarious media outlets by which its ideas are communicated and propagated.
AROPL initially had their headquarters in Sweden sine about 2018, but following their faceoffs with Sweden authorities, they relocated to United Kingdom in 2021. While the British authorities had been investigating some of the members for a while, a lead from a former member reportedly triggered their recent raid and subsequent arrest by the Cheshire Police at Crewe.
Although AROPL attaches their religion and founder to prophesies regarding the end of the world from Prophet Muhammad, it appears clear that it never claimed to be an Islamic sect. What it claims is a general attachment to the Abrahamic faiths. It particularly claims that there are only seven covenants with the first six given to Adam, Nuh, Ibrahim, Musa, Isa and Muhammad while the last and current one was given to Ahmed al-Hassan, the alleged pioneer of the new religion. Other specific principles of the AROPL include the belief that hijrah months and Gregorian months are identical, celebration of Ramadan in December, the actual Ka’abah not being in Makkah but Petra in Jordan, the non-compulsory status of Jum’ah, the act of reincarnation, the optional and non-obligatory status of hijab, the permissibility of moderate consumption of alcohol and tolerance of members of the LGBTQ2IA+ community.
While this exploration is not an academic engagement of the fundamental principles of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light (AROPL), it is a clarification of their status as a non-Muslim sect. This is indeed not just an opinion of an outsider, but the established position of the group itself.
*The views expressed in this content are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of İdrakpost.
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