Maulana Wahiduddin Khan on finality of prophethood
In his recent speech at the annual gathering of the AAIIL in Lahore, the General Secretary dealt with a view expressed by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan of India on the finality of prophethood. A friend from Lahore has summarised it below for our blog readers.
Maulana Wahiddudin Khan of India, a noted Islamic Scholar, wrote the following in an article on “Khatm-e-Nubuwwat” in the October 2011 issue of Al-Risala Magazine. The translation is mine. For the original Urdu please see the last paragraph on page 12 continuing onto page 13 at http://www.alrisala.org/alrisalapdfs/October-2011.pdf.
“Similarly it is said that two individuals were born in the present age who claimed to be Prophets. Bahaullah Khan (died: 1892) and Mirza Ghulam Ahmed Qadiani (died: 1908); but this assertion is not correct according to historical records. Bahaullah merely stated that he is “Mazhar-e-Haq.” He never said that he is a Prophet of God. Similarly Mirza Ghluam Ahmed Qadiani never said from his own tongue that he is a Prophet of God. He merely stated that he is “Zill-e-Nabi”, meaning shadow of the Prophet. Such a statement may be called a type of madness, but it cannot be called a claim to Prophethood.”
It appears that when an objective study is done of historical records with an unbiased mind, the truth becomes clear!
From Dil Sooz:
Maulana Waheed Khan in his article states we may consider Mirza Sahib statement to be “Zilli Nabi” (The one who is under protection/shadow of Prophet– herein referring to Prophet Muhammad PBUH) as possible “madness” but he does not comment on most of Muslim Potentates of India who called themselves “Zill ay Subhani” or “shadow of God”. This is an easy way objective reviewers of such attributed claims that these personalities themselves declared themselves as “Nabi” in first sense are false but then to save themselves from wrath or even murder by zealots then try to discredit Mirza Sahib.
If you view the Youtube clip of talk show in which late Dr Israr Ahmad Sahib says about Mirza Sahib’s alleged claim of being Nabi — his attributed claim of being Nabi is also “ambiguous” (he used this English word) he used words from “here and there” and called himself as “maseeh mauhood” etc– after all he had to live for another day after that interview– so said in not so friendly way.
From Ali:
The link of original statement is not visible so it becomes hard to check and share original reference of maulana sb. Please share screen shot of original magazine if possible. Thanks
http://www.alrisala.org/alrisalapdfs/October-2011.pdf
From Zahid Aziz:
Dear Mr Ali: This is unfortunately what happens to external links. They work for sometime and then the page is removed, either because the website has been re-organised or updated to remove old material. I will look into this further, but it may take me a couple of weeks.
What I have often done wth external links is to save a local copy of the file, which probably I did not do in this case.
From Omar:
See: https://archive.org/web/
I browsed back to December, 2011, and see one saved entry on the 16th of Dec.
https://web.archive.org/web/20111216092122/http://alrisala.org/alrisalapdfs/October-2011.pdf
I hope this helps!
From Zahid Aziz:
I am most grateful to Omar for finding this. Now I have saved local copies as below:
Pages 12-13 of Al-risala, October 2011, with relevant extract amrked by red lines
Entire issue of October 2011