Mauritius
Hafiz Ghulam Muhammad Sahib [ra] is our first missionary to Mauritius. Before he was sent to that country in 1915, he worked for some years as a teacher of Arabic and theology at the Talim-ul-Islam High School, Qadian. He is, moreover, the second regular missionary of the Ahmadiyya Community to foreign lands, the first being Chaudhry Fateh Muhammad Sayal [ra] MA, who came to England in 1913. To him, however, goes the credit of being the first foreign missionary in the time of Hazrat Mirza Bashir-ud-Din Mahmud Ahmad [ra], second successor of the Promised Messiah (as) and the present head of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.
On reaching Mauritius in 1915, Hafiz Ghulam Muhammad [ra] met with strong opposition from the orthodox Muhammadans, but through constant prayer and unremitting efforts, in a short time, he succeeded in winning many converts to Islam Ahmadiyyat.
So ready, indeed, was the acceptance of the claims of Hazrat Ahmad (as) by the Mauritians and so steady and rapid was the progress of the cause of truth, that shortly afterwards, Maulvi Obaidullah (ra), died in Mauritius in 1923, was sent to assist him and we have at the present time in Mauritius a community numerically and financially strong.
Now [in 1926], after 11 years’ strenuous and successful work, Hafiz Ghulam Muhammad Sahib [ra] is going back to Qadian.
We would add that Hafiz Ghulam Muhammad Sahib [ra] is a good scholar of Islamic theology; he knows the whole Quran by heart and is a graduate of Punjab University. We wish him a long life devoted to the cause of Islam.
Prophet Adam (as) was not the first human
In the 30 May 1908 issue of Al Hakam (Urdu), the Promised Messiah (sa) is reported to have said:
“We do not believe that the world, as stated in the Bible, began with the creation of Adam about six or seven thousand years ago, that there was nothing before this and that God was then only inactive.
“Neither do we believe that the whole human race now inhabiting the various parts of the globe has descended from the same last Adam. We believe that man existed even before Adam. The Holy Quran refers to this fact in these words: ‘I am about to place a vicegerent in the earth.’ Adam has been called a khalifa in this verse, which means ‘one who succeeds, so that God’s creation did not begin with him.’
“We cannot say, therefore, whether the Aborigines of America and Australia are the descendants of this last Adam, or have as their progenitor some other Adam.”
Islam and ‘The Coming Religious Revival’
In an article under the heading “The Coming Religious Revival”, Miss Sheila Kaye-Smith, the distinguished novelist, describes in The Sunday Express the signs of a new spirit of religion in England, maintaining that the English people stand in need of an international religion.
“We specially need today”, she writes, “a reaction from the insular ideas which dominated the last century, when the English regarded themselves as the Lord’s Chosen and took for granted that English ways and English ideas were always the best, as possibly they were for English people.”
“Industrialism is entering a new phase. It has long broken its national bonds and become an international society.
“Indeed, there is a tendency for all art and thought likewise to become international and if English religion does not follow suit, it will miss the opportunity it was brave enough to take at the beginning of the last century.
“The world grows smaller every day, as railways, motorcars, aeroplanes, telephones, newspapers and wireless bring people and countries nearer and nearer together.
“It will be a terrible thing if the only human spirit uniting these nations, being brought so physically and mechanically close to each other, is the spirit of temporal advantage and material prosperity.”
It is Islam alone that can satisfy this need.
Divine assistance is necessary
The Times says, “In the depths of human nature there is something which gives man the power to know God, to respond to Him, to live in Him. Man is made out of the dust of the ground, but he lives by the breath of divine life. There is in him an inward light, a divine law in his heart, or, to use the language of the older Quakers, a divine seed capable of growth, enabling him to come to an ever-truer communion with God whose spirit dwells within him. It may be unrecognized, stunted by neglect or weakened by perversity, but it is there and when once it is allowed its full liberty, it goes out to God as its true centre and perfect satisfaction.”
This must not, however, be taken to mean that all our higher divine knowledge springs from within. The most direct means of knowing God is not only to apprehend the significance of human conscience and reason as insisted by the Neo-Platonists [but also to attain the knowledge of God’s existence through divine revelation].
Mere human devices can never reveal to us the shining face of the living and supporting God. Human nature no doubt “responds” to Him, but the truth of Divine existence can only be realised through divine assistance [as witnessed by Hazrat Ahmad (as) and his followers in this age].
A question for modernists
Mr W Maurice Pryke BD, Rector of Risby, Bury St Edmunds, in his recently published book, “Modernism as a Working Faith”, says that a Modernist “believes wholeheartedly in the doctrine of progressive revelation; his God is a living God, who speaks to the men of today no less directly and authoritatively than He spoke to those of an earlier age.”
Will any modernist kindly let us know the name and address of any living person who claims that God speaks to him just as He spoke to the Prophets of yore?
We read in the Bible, “And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying: Speak unto the children of Israel and say unto them, I am the Lord your God” and it teems with verses in which God is alleged to say, “I am the Lord, I am the Lord.”
Is there anyone who receives such messages now? If not, why?
The Moslem World and the prophecies of Hazrat Ahmad (as)
A certain contributor to “The Moslem World” says that “the Great War was a gigantic course of education to the Orient.”
He further alleges that “the success of the Moslem arms has opened the eyes of the whole Islamic world… It has made them dream and caused them to follow their dreams.”
“So”, he continues, “today the Orthodox Mohammadans are eagerly expecting the coming of the Messiah and the dawn of the Millennium, Imamites are looking forward to the glorious return of their last Imam, the followers of the New Islam are awaiting the revival of the departed glory of the Moslem nations and the Ahmadis are already making use of the prophecies of their Founder, ‘the days are approaching and are very near when the religion preached by me will be the only religion that will be regarded with honor upon the face of the earth and Kings will seek blessings from thy (Ghulam Ahmad’s) clothes.’”
The above prophecies, it should be remarked, were made and published by Hazrat Ahmad (as) in 1903 and 1902, i.e., twelve years before the Great War, when the shrewdest statesmen of the world could not even dream of such a catastrophe, yet this “blind guide” seems to suggest that they owe their inspiration to the Great War. To get “picked volunteers” for a crusade against Islam, Christian missionaries should not throw sinister reflections upon a law-abiding country which is endeavouring to establish perfect peace throughout the world.
(Transcribed and edited by Al Hakam from the original English, published in the May 1926 issue of The Review of Religions)