In the mid 1950s a British taxi driver named George King claimed that Budha Jesus and Lao
Tzu had been alien cosmic masters who had come to earth to teach mankind the right way to live.
Sun Myung Moon claimed that Korean people are descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. Joseph
Smith claimed that some lost tribes of Israel had moved to Americas hundreds of years ago. All
three people successfully founded new religious movements that have survived to this day. How
and why do some people come up with such seemingly strange and bizarre ideas and why do others
come to place their faith in these ideas? The first part of this book develops a
multidisciplinary theoretical framework drawn from cognitive science of religion and social
psychology to answer these critically important questions. The second part of the book
illustrates how this theoretical framework can be used to understand the origin and evolution
of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama at founded by an Indian Muslim in 1889. The book breaks new ground
by studying the influence that religious beliefs of 19th century reformist Indian Muslims in
particular founders of the Ahl-e-Hadith movement had on the beliefs of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
the founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama at. Using the theoretical framework developed in part
I the book also explains why many north Indian Sunni Muslims found Ahmad s ideas to be
irresistible and why the movement split into two a few years Ahmad s death. The book will
interest those who want to understand cults as well as those who want to understand reformist
Islamic movements.
