In time, the religious scholars turned against him, and he was often branded as a heretic. His opponents accused him of working for the British Government due to the termination of armed Jihad, since his claims of being the Mahdi were made around the same time as the Mahdi of Sudan (Muhammad Ahmad). Many years after his death he was again accused of working for the British to curb the Jihadi ideology of Muslims.
Following his claim to be the Promised Messiah and Mahdi, one of his adversaries prepared a Fatwa (decree) of disbelief against Ahmad, declaring him a Kafir (disbeliever), a deceiver, a liar, and him and his followers to be permissible of being killed. This decree was taken all around India and was signed by some two hundred religious scholars.[30]
Some years later a prominent Muslim leader and founder of the Barelwi sect, Ahmed Raza Khan was to travel to the Hejaz to collect the opinions of the religious scholars of Mecca and Medina. He compiled these opinions in his work Hussam ul Harmain (The sword of two sanctuaries on the slaughter-point of blasphemy and falsehood),[31] in it Ghulam Ahmad was again labeled an apostate. The unanimous consensus of about thirty-four religious scholars was that Ghulam Ahmad’s Beliefs were blasphemous, tantamount to apostasy, and that he must be punished by imprisonment and if necessary by execution.
