The House where No One Owns Anything

In recent months, questions have been raised about the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light and its growing community at Webb House. Why do members live together? What is happening there? And why are so many people choosing to join the religion? These questions have been amplified by recent media coverage in the UK, including a so-called investigation by The Guardian and other outlets, which set out to prove that something unusual or concerning might be taking place here, yet they found nothing because there is nothing unusual or concerning going on at Webb House.  

What is actually happening is that the community at Webb house is the seed and prototype for the Divine Just State, the Kingdom of God on Earth, that believers were promised.

The Divine Just State

In order to have a Kingdom of God we need to have a King who is appointed by God. The Goal of the Wise states: 

“The entire foundation of religion is set upon obedience to the divinely appointed King and all of religion is about enabling this divinely appointed ruler in order that the faithful, the poor, the weak and oppressed people inherit the Earth. It is only this ruler or King that will be able to establish justice, equality, peace, and prosperity on the Earth.This divinely appointed King ruling equates to God ruling the Earth, for God places His will in the heart of this King and the King is the representative of God, he is the tongue of God, and the hand of God in Creation.”

In every day and age God has appointed a ruler for humanity and tells us this in the Quran when he says “Verily I am appointing a Caliph/Successor on the earth” (Qur'an 2:30). The Divine Just State is a state which is ruled by the caliph that God chose for us. 

All of the previous Prophets and Messengers were divinely appointed kings or leaders for humanity, and the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light is a continuation of the religion of all the Prophets and Messengers. While their mission was always the same—to establish the leadership of God on earth—it is a promise from God that the time of the Riser Aba Al-Sadiq is the time when that mission will finally be fulfilled.

When we follow the divinely appointed leader, we are in fact following God. He may look like a human being to us, but he is actually a human veil that God is speaking to us from behind. He is the one who is chosen by God, and he is infallible, meaning he is incapable of misguiding us.

So, we in the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light are people who decided that we would prefer to have an infallible person who was chosen by God leading us instead of following fallible people who have been chosen either by themselves or other fallible people. All other authority figures in the world are very capable of misguiding us. This is a fact reflected in the dysfunctional and very sad way the majority of people are living in the world today. We also believe that we are better off living under the leadership of God together than apart, in a community, sharing the workload and operating as one.

In the Divine Just State, wealth and resources are shared, and people are given what they need—there is no such thing as private wealth. Money will be initially replaced with Gold, then eventually abolished altogether and replaced with a system of bartering, making wealth hoarding impossible, where every citizen is motivated by duty and honour rather than greed.

The Prophets and Messengers always emphasised sharing and taught us to look after our fellow human beings and the communities of believers often lived together in a communal way. The Bible states that,

“All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions were their own, but they shared everything they had.” (Bible, Book of Acts, Chapter 4, Verse 32)

Leviticus states that,

“If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself, you shall support him.” (Bible, Book of Leviticus, Chapter 25, Verse 35)

And the Prophet Mohammed said,

“He is not a believer whose stomach is filled while his neighbour goes hungry.” (Musnad Aḥmad)

The Imams from the Ahlul Bayt taught us that other believers have rights over us. Imam Al-Baqir said: 

“To care for the family of Muslims — to satisfy their hunger, to clothe their nakedness, and to spare them the need to beg from people — is more beloved to me than performing the pilgrimage once, and again, and again.” He continued, counting until he reached ten pilgrimages, then continued until he reached seventy.” (Shaykh al-Kulaynī, al-Kāfī, vol. 2, p. 195, Hadith 11)

The Qaim and the successor of all of these past Prophets and Messengers, Aba Al-Sadiq, teaches us the exact same thing that they did: that we must live together and support each other.

“We are forming a better society. We are living in a way that we believe the prophets and the messengers taught to live. We are anti-selfishness. We hate selfishness. We believe that selfishness is the major problem with the world today. If mankind got rid of selfishness and instead of saying "me first, my country first", and they put their fellow men first to their fellow brother or sister first, we would resolve all problems on the planet.” (Aba Al-Sadiq, Abdullah Hashem)

To live together and share things is not only the best way to live, but it is the only acceptable way to live in the eyes of God. It is not possible for us to exist as singular entities if we wish to be obeying God.

Superorganism

Life itself advanced not through isolation, but through cooperation. The human body contains tens of billions of cells today, but life began with single-celled organisms surviving on their own. Over time, these cells began to work together, forming groups that were better at finding energy, accessing food and avoiding predators. This shift led to multicellular life, in which cells communicate, specialise and share tasks. Some carry oxygen, others transmit signals or form tissue, and each depends on the others to survive.

The same pattern appears in larger scales. Biologists describe ant colonies, bee hives and termite societies as superorganisms: systems in which individuals function as parts of a coordinated whole. Labour is divided, information is shared and the survival of the group takes priority. These superorganisms can be seen less as collections of individuals and more as a singular integrated system. When animals co-ordinate and combine the same thing occurs as when cells do. They have more resources, better chances of survival and longer lives. So if life in general prospers better when beings are connected then apart- why should we assume that humanity is any different?

We believe that this is the next step for human life to advance too. In order for us to become more prosperous, live longer and better lives, work more efficiently and maximise our resources and most importantly - quality of life, living together as one body is the next step in human evolution.

This is not just a theory—the community of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light is a prototype for this next step. Unlike in the current way most of the world lives, where everyone must try to provide themselves with all of their needs and where many struggle to do so, in the Divine Just State everyone works for the organism as a whole, having a specialised task like the cells in a body, and all of their needs are provided for by the group. Working is more efficient and streamlined. We live better and have access to more resources when we share and distribute the workload. If we want to be the king of our own personal castle, this is actually a much more costly and high-effort, low-reward way of living, and at best we end up hoarding and pooling a bunch of resources in one place where they can only benefit us.

In the body when cells stop cooperating and doing what they are supposed to as part of the organism, then that is what is known as a cancerous cell and is dangerous to the organism as a whole. It is exactly the same way with human beings. When we do whatever we want at the expense of our fellow human beings this is harmful to humanity as a species.

Living as one makes caring for ourselves and for others far easier, and it is simply a better way to live. Outside of a community, people are largely left to fend for themselves — it becomes the individual against the world. That isolation not only makes life harder, but places us in an unnatural state. We feel the loneliness and uncertainty that come from being cut off from a shared support system. Many people live without any real safety net, which pushes them into fear-driven, survival-based thinking. This way of life is more difficult, less efficient, and far more unpleasant than living within a stable, supportive community. Scientific studies have shown that living as part of a community not only gives us a better quality of life, but actually makes human beings live longer. 

The Prophet Mohammed said the Muslim nation is one body.

“The believers, in their mutual love, mercy, and compassion, are like one body: if one part of it suffers, the whole body responds with sleeplessness and fever.”

The Bible also states that,

“Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” (Bible, Book of Corinthians, Chapter 12, Verse 27)

So, being separated from each other does us no good. When one part of the body is suffering, we all suffer. So what is the point of being separated and fending for our own selves out there? We will never be happy, even if we have everything we need, if our fellow human being is suffering. It is impossible, so what is the point in trying and hoarding for ourselves at the expense of other people? We believe that this is the right way to live: that no person ever goes hungry. No person is without a home. No child is abandoned, and no elderly person is lonely. We all thrive, and we do it together.

Ultimately, what this community is about, and what the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light believes in above anything, is to put humanity first. For human beings to live together and share together. It is a conscious rejection of a way of life that has left millions isolated, insecure, and struggling to survive on their own. The community exists because God did not create human beings to live atomised lives, competing endlessly for basic needs, but to live as one body, responsible for one another, and with God ruling over them through His appointed vicegerent—the way that human beings were always supposed to live.

A state ruled by God is about building something astronomically better than what currently exists. In a society where loneliness, poverty, and anxiety are treated as normal, the idea that no one should go hungry, homeless, or unsupported is treated as unrealistic—yet it is precisely this principle that sits at the heart of every prophetic tradition. Aba Al-Sadiq said in the sermon of the invitation to the 7th Covenant:

“And I say unto you my beloved brothers and sisters: If you follow me and obey me, I will make you the greatest of nations and the richest of them and the most prosperous. And you will go out to feed the poor but find none, and clothe the cold and find none, and go out to house the homeless and find none.”