Website: www.aaiil.uk
اَلَّذِیۡنَ اِنۡ مَّکَّنّٰہُمۡ فِی الۡاَرۡضِ اَقَامُوا الصَّلٰوۃَ وَ اٰتَوُا الزَّکٰوۃَ وَ اَمَرُوۡا بِالۡمَعۡرُوۡفِ وَ نَہَوۡا عَنِ الۡمُنۡکَرِ ؕ وَ لِلّٰہِ عَاقِبَۃُ الۡاُمُوۡرِ ﴿۴۱﴾
“Those who, if We establish them in the land, will keep up prayer and give the due charity and enjoin good and forbid evil. And Allah’s is the end of (all) affairs.” — ch. 22, Al-Ḥajj, v. 41
وَ تَعَاوَنُوۡا عَلَی الۡبِرِّ وَ التَّقۡوٰی ۪ وَ لَا تَعَاوَنُوۡا عَلَی الۡاِثۡمِ وَ الۡعُدۡوَانِ ۪…
“Allah has promised to those of you who believe and do good that He will surely make them rulers in the earth as He made those before them rulers …” —ch. 5, Al-Mā’idah, v. 2
The first verse that I read occurs just after Allah gives Muslims permission to fight against those who wage war upon them after persecuting them and driving them out from their homes, and He promises to help the Muslims. This permission allowed the Muslims to fight against the Quraish of Makkah to repel them when the Quraish attacked the Muslims by arms. This verse, coming immediately afterwards, shows what these oppressed people are to do when they achieve victory and rule in the land. They should act on the teachings of Islam of prayer, for their spiritual and moral improvement, and of giving charity, for the physical welfare of the deprived and destitute people. Moreover, they must propagate the teachings of Islam, which is indicated in enjoining good and forbidding evil. Some Muslims think that enjoining good and forbidding evil can only be done if they make Islamic laws in the country. But the truly effective way of encouraging good deeds and restraining bad deeds is through teaching and setting an example, and this was the real method used by our Holy Prophet Muhammad. This was the kind of country that the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement’s leaders had in mind when they supported the creation of Pakistan: where the rulers and the people turn to God for personal moral improvement, serve and help their fellow-beings and spread the teachings of Islam by words and by example.
I read the second passage above, “…And help one another in righteousness and piety, and do not help one another in sin and aggression…”, to show another reason why the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement supported the campaign to create Pakistan, which is that Muslims are instructed in the Quran to help each other in doing good works. However, in practice we see that if a Muslim group is carrying out some good work or service, then other Muslim groups start opposing them due to jealousy.
Maulana Muhammad Ali did not consider the campaign for the creation of Pakistan to be merely a political movement. For a political movement to succeed, all you need is to appeal to people to support you, you make speeches, hold rallies, and do political campaigning from door to door. But Maulana Muhammad Ali regarded it as a spiritual struggle which would lead to a better opportunity for Muslims to reform themselves and present a good model of Islam to the world. So he prayed to Allah for the success of the Pakistan Movement and urged others to do so as well. There was a headline in our magazine The Light in May 1946: Maulana Muhammad Ali Urges Special Prayers Every Friday, and the news in it began as follows:
“For the last three weeks Maulana Muhammad Ali, Head of the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement, has been offering special prayers at the Friday congregational prayer for the success of Mr. Jinnah’s talks with the Cabinet Mission.”
The Cabinet Mission mentioned here was a mission of the British cabinet sent to India to hold talks with Indian political parties on the independence of India. The news in The Light went on:
“Exhorting the congregation last Friday, May 3, to humbly beseech the Almighty to protect the Muslims of India at this critical juncture in the history of Islam in this country, the Maulana made it plain that Pakistan is a life and death issue, not only for the existence of Muslims but at the same time for the survival of Islam itself as a faith and culture. Of all the world of Islam, said the Maulana, the Indian Muslims were the only people who yet believed in the possibilities of Islam as a religion to play a role in the re-shaping of the world. In every other Muslim land, … the very idea of tabligh or the propagation of faith was extinct.”
In other words, Pakistan, consisting of the Muslim majority provinces of British India, would be the only Muslim country interested in the propagation of Islam to the broader world. That would be because it would be the home country of the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement, which had already done much work of the propagation of Islam in the world at large, including Western countries and in British India itself.
When the prayers of Maulana Muhammad Ali and others were fulfilled and Pakistan came into being, the next day a special Pakistan number of The Light was issued on 15 August 1947. The front page carried a message of congratulations by Maulana Muhammad Ali. It has many lessons for us, so I am quoting from it below:
“I offer my felicitations, first of all, to Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, for whose trust in God, untiring efforts, unwavering resolution, far-sightedness, unbending power of resistance and breadth of vision, God Almighty has blessed the Muslims with a magnificent boon and has vouchsafed them rulership over a part of India. … I offer my felicitations to the whole of the Muslim nation, especially the masses of the Muslims whose sacrifices have won Pakistan, the greatest of these sacrifices being the united front which they displayed in the struggle. It is my humble prayer that God may sustain their hearts in unity, free from all kinds of mutual jealousies and ill-will. May God grant all Muslims the sense to realize that in this unity and solidarity lies the secret of their strength, especially to those of them who are yet outside this Islamic solidarity.”
The “united front” displayed by the Muslims, which Maulana Muhammad Ali is referring to here, was based on accepting the principle that all those who recite the Kalima of Islam are to be regarded as one’s Muslim brethren, and no such person can be declared as a kafir by another Muslims. The enlightened sections of the Muslims and the leaders of the Pakistan campaign agreed with this principle. But after Pakistan was created, within a few years the established Ulama and the leaders of various Islamic sects started their campaigns of declaring other Muslims as kafir, which was their familiar habit. Then Maulana Muhammad Ali writes in his message:
“I offer felicitations to those unknown Muslims whose nightly supplications before God to save the bark of Islam at this critical hour have been the cause of bringing us His blessings and mercy, and who keep the torch of this Heavenly light, which is the soul of Pakistan, aflame.”
Maulana Muhammad Ali, of course, doesn’t mention himself here, but he was one of those, those few, who supplicated every night before God in Tahajjud prayers to save Islam and the Muslims. About 15 months before the creation of Pakistan, its creation was thrown into great doubt. A relation of Maulana Muhammad Ali requested him to pray for the success of the Pakistan campaign. The Maulana wrote back as follows:
“I am always praying for the welfare and the religious and worldly success of the Muslims. But on receiving your letter I was praying specially during the night when I heard the voice: Pakistan Zindabad. Although there appears to be despondency everywhere, it seems that it has been decided in heaven that Pakistan will come into being. I will continue to pray to God in this matter.”
In his message of congratulations that I have been reading out from, the Maulana then says:
“In this hour, my fervent prayers also go out towards those saintly personages who sowed the seeds of tabligh in this land of ours, the fruit of which we are enjoying today in the shape of Pakistan. … May He bless their souls with His unbounded mercy and exalt their ranks in their heavenly abode! May He enable us of this age to follow in their footsteps and try in our own humble way to disseminate the light of the last message of God, the Holy Quran, not only in this subcontinent but over the length and breadth of the whole world; and, while departing from this world, may we leave behind to the coming generations the same heritage that these saintly souls left to us, so that just as we today are reaping the harvest of their sacrifices and labours in the form of Pakistan, our coming generations may be blessed with the reward of our efforts and sacrifices in the shape of converting the whole of India, nay, the whole of the world, into a Pakistan in which man may be reunited to man, in which fellow-feeling may bind man to man, irrespective of caste or creed, a Pakistan free from injustice, tyranny and oppression, in which the whole of mankind may dwell as a single family.”
In mentioning these saintly personages, Maulana Muhammad Ali no doubt had in mind the latest of these saints, the Founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who urged Muslims, in particular his own followers, to take the light of the Holy Quran to the entire world. From this prayer of the Maulana you can see that he had a very broad, world-wide vision. His concern was not merely for the creation of a geographical Pakistan in a part of British India. He thought of that Pakistan as the starting-point to spread the values of true Islam to the whole of the world. As he says, these are the values which unite and bind human beings, “irrespective of caste or creed”, they free the people from “injustice, tyranny and oppression”, and enable “the whole of mankind to dwell as a single family.”
We pray that may Allah bring all these prayers to fulfilment — Ameen.
Website: www.aaiil.uk