Hazrat Mufti Muhammad Sadiqra (1872-1957)
New converts
Since the last report in [The Moslem Sunrise] No. 3, the following gentlemen and ladies have accepted Islam in Ahmadia Movement. Their American names as well as their Moslem names are given below:
Mr Brossfield (Nasar-ud-Din), Chicago; Mrs Dirin (Naseera), Ili. State; Mr W Hill (Najm-ud-Din); Mr JH Thomas (Mohibullah); Mrs Eliza Dunn (Amina); Mr HC Crosley (Basharat), New York; Mr I McDonald (Habeeb); Mr George Farmer (Rafeeq); Mrs Lillie Burkett (Barkat); Mr Zack Merrimelker (Sawbit); Mr George Malowe (Amjad), Chicago; Mr John Wilson (Majid); Mr Edward Rupert Myert (Majeed); Mr Elipah Standard (Ishaq); Mr IS Wilberger (Ismaeel) St. Louis; Mr Isaac Robertson (Aaqil); Mr Samuel Riley (Basheer); Mr Samuel Marks (Rasheed); Mr Joseph Williams (Mamoon); Mr William D Harris (Mobashir); Mr Asa Hicks (Saeed); Mrs Virginia Powell (Habeeba); Mrs Joice Edwards (Ameena); Mrs Eliza Dinn (Amina); Mrs Jessie Bowman (Jannat), Detroit; Mr Arthur Jolius (Noor-ud-Din); Mrs Effie Smith (Afeefa); Mr Joseph Johnson (Habeeb-ur-Rahman); Miss Sadie Thompson (Saadee), Detroit; Mr John Anderson (Mobarik); Mr JH Thomas (Mohib-Bullah); Mr W Hill (Nejmud-Din); Mr Leondies McDonald (Yoosuf).
Ahmadia news from other countries
The annual gathering of the members of our [Ahmadiyya] Movement at Qadian in [1921] December last was a great success this year. Nearly 8000 delegates came from different parts of India and heard the lectures of great orators. His Hazrat, the Khaleefat-ul-Masih [IIra] spoke for 17 hours in three days on the very important subject of “The Existence of God”. In one of his recent epistles to me, His Holiness writes:
“Before the days of the annual meeting, I was severely suffering from coughing with no relief even for 15 minutes. Ordinary talking used to make me choke. I had intended not to deliver any lecture this time or to speak very little occasionally. My speech took more time this year than the past ones. I spoke for 17 hours in three continuous days. What a wonder that the cough which could not be cured by European and Indian medicines and vaccinations miraculously abated very much and within a week after the meeting was over, [it] quite stopped. This is the grace of God and one of His wondrous signs.”
List of the books to be lent and for sale
1. Holy Quran, Part I (Arabic text and English translation of the sacred book of Islam with original and exhaustive notes, commentary, etc., edited by a committee of Muslim scholars in India)
2. Mighty Signs of the Living God
3. Ahmad[as], the World Reformer
4. Confutation of Atheism (by a Muslim Saint)
5. Islam versus Civilization
6. Call to Truth
7. [The] Review of Religions (a monthly magazine)
8. Bismillah, Islam in Ahmadia Movement
9. Islamic Mode of Worship
Mr Omar Ali Bacon
An English convert to Islam, once called by the editor of Stain Parish magazine as “A man of exceptional ability,” has been in a monastery for 3 months and after investigating several other churches could find satisfaction nowhere but in Islam. This young brother is now helping our missionary in London and is zealous to give the message of truth to others.
[London]
Maulvi Mubarak Ali writes from London that three more English men Islam have accepted Islam. He has published an interesting syllabus of lectures delivered at the mosque, 63 Melrose Rd. SW 18, during the months of January to April 1922.
[Ceylon]
As reported by our dear brother, Mr Taha, the brotherhood in Ceylon is making good progress. Master Abdul Rahman BA of Qadian visited the Island and delivered a series of successful lectures which have been admirably reported in the local papers. “The Message” published in Slave Island Colombo, Ceylon, is the weekly paper of the Ahmadia Movement in English and Tamil languages and is doing very good work.
A word of tributes from Christian writers
“Incalculably great is the debt of the world to the early representatives of Mohammedanism. For it was they who transmitted the treasures of Greek literature from the Middle Age to the Renaissance, they who originated the graceful art – forms of which the Taj Mahal and the Alhambra are the most famous examples. It was they who contributed to the sciences of Algebra and Chemistry, Astronomy and Medicine; they who dotted the Saracen Empire with universities, and built at Baghdad and Cairo the most renowned libraries in the world. When London was a city of hovels and the stench in its streets such that no one could breathe its air with impunity, Cordova was noted for the cleanliness and beauty of its streets and squares. Arabic is the most widely spoken language, and though Chinese characters are used by more people, Arabic will carry out further around the world. And with the Arabic vocabulary has gone the Mohammedan religion. Today, we decorate our walls and floors with fabrics that Mohammedans taught us to weave, we regale our senses with perfumes that they taught us to make, [and] we teach our children the higher mathematics from textbooks of which they were the original creators.” (From “The World’s Great Religions,” by Alfred W Martin)
The treasures of Allah
Thought lines by Miss EB Kealing
i. Allah teaches the creation all good.
ii. Be pure and gentle as the new born.
iii. Consciousness of man is submerged in gentleness.
iv. Enter the gates of Paradise by obedience to love.
v. Faith in all forgiveness is well with thee.
vi. Go, deliver words of faith to the thirsty souls.
vii. Happy continuously in invisible goodness.
viii. Joy radiates from a virtuous life.
How European scholars praise our prophet
HM Khan, our missionary in Australia, is doing good work in publishing a little monthly leaflet inserting articles on Islam to various papers in the country. In his Moslem Sunshine No. 4, he has given a plan of the Tomb of Jesus Christ in Srinagar.
In order to show that the virulent attacks on Islam are made by bigoted, selfish and ignorant Christian missionaries and not by learned critics of the west, he has given a few quotations from some eminent Europeans who have studied the Quran as Oriental Scholars. We reproduce some here from his Moslem Sunshine No. 7:
1. “The Koran is but little read by Europeans; it is ignorantly supposed to contain many things that it does not.” (HG Wells)
2. “However often we turn to it (Koran) …, it soon attracts, astounds and, in the end, enforces our reverence. … Thus, this book will go on exercising through all eyes a most potent influence.” (Goethe)
3. “The Koran, the miracle to which Muhammad[sa] himself so often appealed as proof of his Divine Mission, and a miracle indeed it seems. For the prophet, though cultured was illiterate, and there is no reasonable room for doubt that a large part at any rate of the strange flood of eloquence so purely seen came to him in states of trance. The book is like no other book on earth. It remains a wonder of the world.” (Pickthall)
4. “By a fortune absolutely unique in history, Muhammed[sa] is the threefold founder of a nation, of an Empire and of a religion. Illiterate himself, scarcely able to read and write, he was yet the author of a book which is a poem, a code of laws, a book of common prayer, and the bible in one, and is reverenced to this day by a sixth of the whole human race as a miracle of purity, of style, of wisdom and of truth. It is the one miracle claimed by Muhammed[sa] – ‘his standing miracle,’ he called it – and a miracle indeed it is.” (Bosworth Smith)
(Muhammad[sa] was not the author of Quran. It is the word of God given to the world through him. – Ed. [The Moslem Sunrise])
5. “At a later period of his (the Prophet[sa]) career, no one would venture to doubt the Divine origin of his whole Book.” (Rodwell)
6. “The morals of the Quran have not been less unjustly attacked than its dogmas. … Among the many excellences of the Quran are two eminently conspicuous – one being the tone of awe and reverence which it always observes when speaking or referring to the Deity, to whom it never attributes either human frailties or passions; the other, the total absence, throughout it, of all impure, immoral and indecent ideas, expressions, narratives, etc., blemishes which, it is much to be regretted, are of frequent occurrence in what Christian style the ‘Old Testament.’ So exempt indeed is the Koran from these undeniable defects that it needs not the slightest castration, and may be read; from the beginning to [the] end, without causing a blush suffuse the cheek of modesty itself.” (J Devanport)
(Transcribed by Al Hakam from the original published in The Moslem Sunrise, April 1922)