The Ahmadiyya movement, founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in Qadian, Punjab, in 1889, accepts the wording of Quran 33:40 but reads khatam al-nabiyyin as a seal in the sense of a stamp of authentication and excellence rather than a temporal closure, comparing it to a king's seal that certifies rather than terminates. On this reading Muhammad remains the greatest and most perfect of prophets, but the door to prophecy is conditioned rather than physically shut: any later prophet must come strictly within Muhammad's law, bring no new scripture or commandment, and remain subordinate to him, a category Ahmadi theology calls a non law bearing prophet. Ghulam Ahmad claimed exactly this status for himself, along with the roles of the promised Messiah and the Mahdi awaited across the Muslim world.
Sunni and Shia religious authorities have rejected this reading as a distinction without the difference it claims to be, arguing that any claim to receive ongoing revelation through a prophet, subordinate or not, empties finality of its content. That rejection has had concrete legal consequences: Pakistan's constitution was amended in 1974 to define Ahmadis as non Muslims for legal purposes, and the position has since been echoed by fatwa bodies including Al-Azhar in Cairo and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Ahmadi communities continue to identify as Muslim and to observe the five pillars, while most of the rest of the Muslim world does not recognize that self identification, a live and unresolved dispute rather than a settled one.