Ahl al-Hadith
Khan's theological views were very much a product of Shah Waliullah's reformist school in India. Coupled with the reformist ideas of Shaukani and Ibn Taymiyyah, Khan and his Ahl al-Hadith movement established similar iconoclastic ideas to the mainstream at the time. Not surprisingly given the fate of his ideological predecessors, much of Khan's philosophy was based as a reaction against the prevailing religious climate; Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the Deobandi and Barelvi movements and the Shi'ites from which Khan himself was descended were all targets of Khan's reformist criticism. Khan's religious views have been described as centering on a desire to return to the pristine values with which Islam originally came, and to rid the Muslim world of the ills of charlatans, frauds and Hindu influence on Muslim practice.