Al Fazl, 31 July 1922
Spirit of opponents
A friend said, “Nowadays, there is a great deal of opposition from all sides.”
Hazrat Khalifatul Masih II[ra] said:
“It is a sign of progress. If the opponents stop objecting, the Jamaat apparently becomes less active. By the noise of opposition, the negligence of the Jamaat will be removed and it will help spread the message of Islam.”
Those who took bai‘at in the time of plague
Hazrat Khalifatul Masih II[ra] said:
“During the time of the Promised Messiahas, many people had converted to Ahmadiyyat in the days of plague. However, they were not given any attention, so they were lost. If they had been attended to, the number of the Jamaat would have been much higher than today.”
Hafiz Muhammad Ibrahim Sahib submitted that the Promised Messiahas said that the names of those who pledged allegiance during the days of the plague should be written with red ink so that it could be observed how many of them remained after the plague and how many left.
Revelation and reason
A friend asked that, “Brahmins raise this question that when a person believes in a prophet thorough reason, then why is it compulsory to believe in his revelation [which cannot be comprehended by reason] and how can a person be obliged for it?”
Hazrat Khalifatul Masih II[ra] said:
“We do not believe that reason has no value. However, we claim that Allah’s will cannot be comprehended without revelation. How can the opponents object to it? If they themselves invent a notion and attribute it to us, we cannot be held responsible for it.”
Huzoor[ra] said:
“It is wrong to think that a person is not obliged to believe in the things proven by reason. Is the effect of arsenic [poison] not recognised by reason and is not man obliged to believe in it?
“The point is that some things are beyond reason and the evidence for them should also be beyond reason. We never say that reason is of no value, because it is mentioned more than once in the Holy Quran that تعقلون [’You should exercise reason’]. However, if someone is hiding behind a wall, we have no rational proof that he is there or not. Except that he tells us himself or he who has seen him tells us about him. In this case, reason is of no use. If we sit in front of a person and ask him to tell us through reason as to what is in our heart, he will not be able to do so. Thus, when a person cannot even find out the will of another person with his reason, how can God’s will be comprehended through it?
“Reason has two functions. One is to establish some cases without observation and draw some conclusions from them. The second is to reach conclusions through observations. A person believes in a prophet through observation and it depends on reason. A prophet shows signs after signs and reason draws conclusions from them. However, some things are subject to natural instincts. There is no rational proof for them. For example, if you extend a finger to poke a person’s belly, he knows very well that you will not hit him, but he still tries to save himself. Now it is not the reason that tells him to move away, but in fact, it is a natural instinct that causes him to move away. Similarly, if you extend your hand towards someone’s eye, he will blink. This will also be due to a natural instinct. Hence, reason is just one of the primary pieces of evidence.
“The point is that there are different ranks [of things]. Some are ranked high and some are low. The lower ones require trivial evidence and superior proofs are required for the higher ones. Moreover, some things are done by natural instinct and others depend on observations. It is not that all things are comprehended by observation. For example, if a person is sleeping and an ant starts to crawl on his body, he hits it with his hand. Does he come to know about it through observation? No, he removes it due to his natural instinct. However, everything cannot be comprehended through natural instinct either and reason which is based on observation is also required.
“For example, if there is no such thing as reason, a person cannot save himself from poison. Thus, reason leads to the source of guidance. However, it is not the last resort. Its example is like a person who comes and wants to meet a king. A passer-by cannot directly arrange a meeting with the king, but he will be able to guide that person to a certain extent. He will tell him about the location of the king’s palace. Next, there will be a guard [outside the palace], he will also not be able to arrange a meeting with the king, but he will request the vizier. Then the vizier will arrange that person’s meeting with the king. Hence, one cannot meet the vizier first unless he comes to the guard and one cannot meet the guard unless someone leads him to the royal palace. These three means lead to the meeting of the king, in the same way, on a lower level there is natural instinct, reason, and then observation, but the best and the greatest evidence of Divine connection is revelation.”
Those who justify their faults and consider them good deeds
Regarding a person, Chaudhry Fateh Muhammad Sahib MA said that, “I met him when he went abroad and become a preacher of Islam. He used to show great interest in dancing, etc., and justified such things for himself by saying that he was a sufi and everything was permissible for sufis.”
On this, Hazrat Khalifatul Masih said:
“Such people want to conceal their faults under different guises, but in this way that fault does not become a good deed. If a thief steals and says that he belongs to a sect whose profession is theft, then his crime will not be justified.”
Malamati [self-blame] sect
Meanwhile, the malamati [self-blame] sect was mentioned that some people after doing actions against the shariah [divine law] say that they belong to the malamati sect. On this, Hafiz Muhammad Ibrahim Sahib Qadiani expressed that the Promised Messiahas had once said, “Why is it necessary for these people to become malamati through bad actions? If they start preaching Islam, the public will automatically start blaming them.”
Hazrat Khalifatul Masih said:
“As a matter of fact, the people who engage in the service of guiding the creation of God and try to lead them to the right path, they are blamed by the common people, and it is such an obvious thing that God Almighty says:
مَا یَاۡتِیۡہِمۡ مِّنۡ رَّسُوۡلٍ اِلَّا کَانُوۡا بِہٖ یَسۡتَہۡزِءُوۡنَ
[‘There comes not a Messenger to them but they mock at him.’ (Surah Ya Sin, Ch.36: V.31)]
“There is no Messenger who was not laughed at and mocked by the people, so if someone wants to become a malamati, why should they do absurd, vain and shameful acts, and not serve the religion?”
Pitiable state of Indians
On the mention of Hajj, Chaudhry Fateh Muhammad Sahib MA said that the ship’s crew, etc., treated the Indians in such a harsh way that they did not even consider them as human beings but as sheep because they locked them in small and dark cells, and also abuse them.
Hazrat Khalifatul Masih II[ra] said:
“In my opinion, the treatment of the Indians to each other would not be harsher than the treatment of the ship’s crew and the way sheep are treated is much milder than that.
“The year I went to perform Hajj I saw a strange sight that surprised me. When we started to board the ship, a man was coming behind us carrying a very heavy set of bedding. The ship’s crew stopped him and asked him to open it and show them what was in it. He refused to open it on the grounds that it would ruin his belongings. But the crew insisted and when it was opened, a man came out of it. A sheep would never like to be wrapped inside it in that way, and even if it was covered by force, it would make so much noise that eventually it would have to be set free. However, that man was quietly wrapped in it in such a way that he could not even get air from any side. I was surprised to see this sight, but he was such a shameless person that he started laughing in front of the people when he got out of it, and this incident happened when he was returning from Hajj and when he considered himself completely free from sins due to performing Hajj. Now tell me, if the people who treat themselves like this are locked up in small cells by the ship’s crew, how can it be considered harsh?” […]
(Translated by Al Hakam from the original Urdu in the 31 July 1922 issue of Al Fazl)