Website: www.aaiil.uk

Opposition to Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad despite his services to the Quran

Friday Khutba by Dr Zahid Aziz, for Lahore Ahmadiyya UK, 29 December 2023

“Say (O Prophet to the people): I exhort you only to one thing, that you rise up for Allah’s sake by twos and singly; then ponder! There is no madness in your com­panion. He is only a warner to you before a severe chastisement. Say: What­ever reward I ask of you, that is only for yourselves. My reward is only with Allah, and He is a Wit­ness over all things.” — ch. 34, Al-Saba, v. 46–47

قُلۡ اِنَّمَاۤ اَعِظُکُمۡ بِوَاحِدَۃٍ ۚ اَنۡ تَقُوۡمُوۡا لِلّٰہِ مَثۡنٰی وَ فُرَادٰی ثُمَّ تَتَفَکَّرُوۡا ۟ مَا بِصَاحِبِکُمۡ مِّنۡ جِنَّۃٍ ؕ اِنۡ ہُوَ اِلَّا نَذِیۡرٌ لَّکُمۡ بَیۡنَ یَدَیۡ عَذَابٍ شَدِیۡدٍ ﴿۴۶﴾ قُلۡ مَا سَاَلۡتُکُمۡ مِّنۡ اَجۡرٍ فَہُوَ لَکُمۡ ؕ اِنۡ اَجۡرِیَ اِلَّا عَلَی اللّٰہِ ۚ وَ ہُوَ عَلٰی کُلِّ شَیۡءٍ شَہِیۡدٌ ﴿۴۷﴾

My khutba today is derived from a Khutba delivered by Maulana Muhammad Ali on 20 May 1938.  He delivered that Khutba against the background of an upsurge in the opposition to the Founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement by the Ulama of his own fellow Muslims. This opposition was raging severely in the Indian subcontinent at that time. The main point made by Maulana Muhammad Ali is that these opponents are entirely ignoring the great service to the Quran done by Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. Here I will read out parts of the Maulana’s Khutba, translated into English from his Urdu, which I have edited wherever necessary in order to make the mean­ing clear.

After quoting the verses that I have recited above, Maulana Muhammad Ali explains these as follows. When a man calls people around him to a message which is for their own good and betterment, instead of accepting his message or being grateful to him, people oppose him and wish to destroy him. This becomes a general trend, so that everyone’s opinion turns against him, and none is willing to listen to him. Such an ugly image of him settles in people’s minds that they are not able to ponder.

The above verses apply to this state of affairs. People are exhorted to stand up in twos or individually and, bearing in mind the pleasure of Allah, to ponder. The fact is that when there is an adverse wind blow­ing against something, people cannot ponder on it rationally by gathering together. The hostile atmo­sphere does not allow thought and deliberation to be applied in the midst of a gathering. In those circumstances, the very state of assembly casts a veil on the hearts and minds of those who are assembled.

To remove those veils, people are advised to ponder, not in a gathering, but in twos and individually, and ask: what is this man saying, what is the message he has come with? The Quran tells them that if they ponder in this way they will find that their com­panion is not mad; and actually he is warning you that your misdeeds are taking you to evil consequences, and he is asking you to refrain from them.

This is what Allah has said in the Holy Quran about the Holy Prophet Muhammad. Today the same kind of wind of hostility is blowing against the Mujaddid of the age, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. In this atmosphere it has become impossible for anyone in a gathering to say something good about him, or speak of him with approval. People’s thinking and mentality have become such that they are not prepared to tolerate any word of truth in this controversy.

In these circumstances the Quran teaches the method described in the first verse quoted above. The Quran had established the best principle, namely, that of judging by weighing both sides. This is a purely Islamic principle. Allah has said that on the day of Judgment the deeds of each person will be judged by this principle. Those whose good deeds outweigh their bad deeds will receive a good life, that is jannah, while those whose bad deeds exceed their good deeds will receive a bad life. If we too judge people using the same principle by which Allah judges, then the world would be saved from many errors and mistakes.

Unfortunately, there is one people, i.e. the Christians, who became indifferent to the value of good deeds and laid the foundation of their creed on the doctrine that if you believe in Jesus, your sins will be forgiven and washed away. They ignored the good deeds of the followers of other religions, and whenever they had to deal with someone from another religion they spent all their energy on picking faults in him. Islam claims that religion has been perfected and com­pleted in it, and that no one can produce any­thing like the Quran. Regarding the Holy Prophet Muhammad, it claims that he possessed the most excellent morals; and this is not merely a claim but today people are coming to accept that he elevated the moral qualities of his people to a height to which no one else can been able to take his people.

On the other hand, if you read books on Islam written by Christian authors it appears from them as if Islam, the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad possessed no good quality whatsoever, but are full of shortcomings and flaws. Whatever these critics considered as weaknesses and faults in Islam, only these have been mentioned by them. The tremendous benefits that were given to the world by Islam, the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad, are not even men­tioned in their books.

Muslims should have learnt a lesson from this. They should have resorted to the Islamic principle of weighing the pros and cons in order to judge if a person brought benefit to the world or caused harm. But alas, Muslims, adopted the same deceptive techniques as employed by the Christian critics of Islam, and made it their habit to indulge only in fault finding and searching out defects. Just as the bitter critics of Islam collect in their books everything they consider to be wrong and objection­able about Islam, the Quran and the Holy Prophet Muhammad, the same is done by anti-Ahmadiyya writers in case of Hazrat Mirza sahib and the Ahmadiyya Movement. They consider it a service to Islam to collect any­thing which they can present as a defect or weakness, or as an objection­able statement. This is their concept of serving Islam!

They never men­tion the enormous benefits that Hazrat Mirza sahib and the Ahmadiyya Move­ment brought to Islam and the Muslims. They have abandoned the Islamic principle of weighing both sides. When you form an opinion about a person, look first at the benefits of the work that he did and the services he rendered.

There is a Quran publishing company, the Taj publishing company, which has recently rendered a little service to the Holy Quran, for which it has been praised. It has printed the Holy Quran in a beautiful and attractive form. Certainly, this shows that they have love for the Quran. But if you think about it, what is attractive is the paper, the ink and the print quality. Any other book printed to the same standard, elegance and beauty, with the same attention, will look just as attractive. The true beauty of the Quran lies in the principles, the truths and the knowledge which it teaches. It was this beauty that Hazrat Mirza sahib recognised, and this beauty came to his mind when all these matters had become obs­cure to the Muslims. He said in a verse of poetry:

The splendour and beauty of the Quran is the light of the soul of every Muslim, The moon in the sky is the moon for others, our moon is the Quran.

He realised the beauty of the Quran when he read the Holy Quran and pondered over it, not hundreds of times but thou­sands of times. Hazrat Mirza sahib praised the Quran in words full of love and passion. His verse quoted above is used even by his opponents in their articles and lectures. If he had so wanted, he could have merely praised the beauty of the Quran in words, in poetry and prose. He was a powerful poet and writer with great mastery over poetic language, a fact which cannot be doubted. He could have spent all his life in praising the Quran by word only. But no, he was a practical man. Not only did he reveal the beauty of the Quran by writing poetry, he also lifted the veils which had been covering the Quran for a thousand years. He washed away all the blots put on the Quran by the opponents of Islam. He cleaned each and every smear, refuted each and every criticism. This is his first work, and a magni­ficent one.

It is to be regretted that today the thinking of the Muslims has turned away from the Quran. Material interests and love of worldly gain is becoming pre­dominant. Muslims no longer have that love for the Quran which they had in their earlier history. However, the extent to which the other Muslims have turned their attention to worldly matters, we must increase our efforts to spread Islam to the same extent. Hazrat Mirza sahib did not merely rest content with sitting and writing poems and articles in praise of the Quran. He went on to lay the foundations of the propaga­tion of Islam and the Quran, particularly in the West. He created a community which would spread the Quran as much as was possible within its resources.

Unfortunately, Muslims of today have fallen so low that, let alone serving and propagating the Quran themselves, if a person or a movement arises with such a mission, they rise up in opposition and become that person’s or that movement’s enemies. They cannot tolerate that Hazrat Mirza sahib claimed to be the Promised Messiah, whom Muslims were expecting to come to their rescue. If you ponder over this question, you will realise that this claim was essential in order to remove a stain on the religion of Islam. The stories which Muslims generally believe about the coming of this monstrous creature called Dajjal who would cause damage to the Muslims, and the coming of a violent Mahdi who would lead Muslims in war against their enemies and against this Dajjal, were a grave slur on the name of Islam. This false picture of Islam achieving victory by war was fixed in the minds of people. Hazrat Mirza sahib removed this stain and cleared this false con­cept by claiming that the Mahdi would be a man of peace who would fight by means of arguments and signs which show the truth of Islam. If he had not claimed to be that Messiah and Mahdi he could not have accomplished his miss­ion of removing these blots from the face of Islam.

To meet this storm of oppo­sition that is raging today, we need to do two things. First, we must present our heart-felt prayers to God, saying: “O God, people’s hearts are in your control. There was a time when the Ahmadiyya Movement was very popular. Bring back that time, so that, instead of opposing the Movement, people are proud to support and join it.” Second, we must try hard to repel and clear the environ­ment of hostility that is prevailing against us. This requires sacrifice, both collective and individual sacrifices. May Allah grant us to succeed in this, Ameen.

Website: www.aaiil.uk