Our friend Bashir has sent the following post:
Referring to my previous post:
There seems to be one thing that i left out. HMGA legally made the Sadr Anjuman his successor. The jamaat panicked upon the death of HMGA. They decided to choose Hazrat Maulvi Noorudin as their leader and gave him the title of khalifa.
This seems to be done as a precaution. There was one member of the sadr anjuman who didnt accept this. He never took bait at the hand of HMN. HMN did not ex-communicate him. In 1914 he joined the aaiil. This person later accepted bait at the hand of HMBMA in the 1940’s. I think his name was Maulvi Ghulam Hasan (not sure).
This was the proof that there was opposition to an autocratic system of khilafat. M. ali and others admired HMN so much that they considered him to be an exception to the rule. I agree with their admiration.
Even HMGA said about HMN, “If only everyone was Noorudin”.
Thats why m. ali and other afforded HMN with exceptionary privileges.
Blog Editor: Yes, Bashir, it was Maulvi Ghulam Hasan Khan of Peshawar. He was father-in-law of Mirza Bashir Ahmad (the middle son). Despite this, he joined the AAIIL in 1914 and was in it till about 1940. He died in 1943. I know several of the Maulvi sahib’s grand-children and great grand-children, as they are my wife’s cousins. See his photo here.
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Mirza Wali Ahmad Baig was a missionary sent by the Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha`at Islam Lahore to Java in 1924 to counteract Christian missionary activities against Muslims. He stayed there till 1937. As a result of his highly successful work, Muslims of that country rose out of their slump and despondency and were able to counter the attacks of the Christian missionaries. The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement expanded in large numbers, the Holy Quran and other essential literature of the Lahore Ahmadiyya Anjuman was translated into Dutch, and a strong, magnificent Jama‘at was established.
In this connection, Dr Hamid Rahman, a learned member of the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement in the USA, has recently sent me a brief account that Mirza Wali Ahmad Baig related to him in the 1960s, showing the high respect in which he was held by President Sukarno (d. 1970), the famous figure who became the first President of Indonesia in 1945, and was President till 1967.
I quote Dr Hamid Rahman below:
This incident was narrated to me by Mirza Wali Ahmad Baig sahib in 1969 or thereabouts when I was taking lessons from Mirza Wali Ahmad Baig sahib in German in Karachi.
Actually there were two incidents.
1. Mirza Wali Ahmad Baig sahib had come to know Sukarno well during the time he was our missionary in Indonesia. Sukarno was at the time leading the fight for independence in Indonesia against the Dutch, and Sukarno had received some lessons from Mirza Baig sahib in Islam. He therefore looked upon him as his teacher.
Immediately after partition, Mirza Wali Ahmad Baig sahib got stranded in India. He wanted to come to Pakistan but it was impossible to get a visa to Pakistan because of all the bad blood between India and Pakistan. The Pakistan High Commission had turned his visa application down several times. Just when all of Mirza Wali Ahmad Baig’s attempts at getting the visa had been frustrated, Sukarno, now as the President of Indonesia and a close friend of Nehru in the nonaligned movement, came for a visit to India. Mirza Wali Ahmad Baig sahib learnt that Sukarno was going to say his Friday prayer in Jamia Masjid Delhi. So he went and waited for him on the steps of the Jamia Masjid. When Sukarno arrived with his entourage, Mirza Wali Ahmad Baig was able to catch his attention; no doubt a voice from the onlooking crowd beckoning to him in Indonesian must have been the reason. But Sukarno recognized him immediately and came over to talk to him. Mirza Wali Ahmad Baig asked for his help to get him a visa to go to Pakistan. Sukarno immediately issued instructions to his embassy staff to take up the matter immediately with the Pakistan High Commission and to see to it that his teacher got a visa. The visa was given to Mirza Wali Ahmad Baig sahib and he came to Pakistan.
2. Much later during the administration of Ayub Khan and I think it may have been soon after the 1965 war when Indonesia sent its submarines to guard the coast of Pakistan to prevent a surprise attack by India from the sea, Sukarno came to visit Pakistan. He sent a message to the Pakistan Government that during his visit to Pakistan, he would like to meet his teacher Mirza Wali Ahmad Baig. The Pakistan Government, of course, was totally oblivious to the existence of a Mirza Wali Ahmad Baig and the matter was entrusted to the Intelligence Branch to find him, which they did.
On the day that Sukarno was to arrive, Mirza Wali Ahmad Baig was taken in an Intelligence Branch jeep to the airport and put in the line up of the dignataries on the tarmac with whom Sukarno would shake hands. As President Ayub led Sukarno to the dignataries, he had a formal handshake for everyone but when he came to Mirza Wali Ahmad Baig, he shook his hands and then bent down to touch his knees, apparently a mark of respect in Indonesia for one’s teacher.
Contrast this with today’s situation.
1. Please see here a report in the world-renowned Economist magazine of London on the Indonesia situation. (Link opens new window)
2. Here are the comments of a blog called The American Muslim. (Link opens new window)
3. This statement on the “World Muslim Congress” blog is well worth reading. It is linked in the above sources but you may miss it there. (Link opens new window)
Our friend ‘Bashir’ has submitted the following post.
Article: The Ahmadiyya Movement and Ahmads place among the prophets, Number 2, By m. ataur rahman (member of Qadiani Jamaat)
“The philosophy of baruz has been clearly expounded in a long letter pregnant with truth and wisdom which in 1892 Ahmad addressed to Nawab Muhammad Ali Khan of Malerkota in order to resolve some of his doubts.”
Then in the very next installment of this series (Review of Religions, December 1914), he writes:
“Thus convinced, Ahmad set forth his philosophy of baruz in some of his later writings, and avowedly laid claim to the prophetic office”
M. ataur rahman contradicts himself in the span of one month. First he writes that HMGA explained the philosophy of baruz in 1892, then all of sudden, he claims that the true theory of baruz was explained by HMGA later in his ministry. What a contradiction!
This is the same time that Kwaja Kamaluddin had returned from England and wrote his book “Adruni Ikhtilaf…..” and after some weeks appeared Al-Qaul-ul-Fasl by Mirza Mahmud Ahmad.
It seems that m. ataur rahman didn’t know of the change in belief of HMGA in terms of prophethood. I don’t think he got the memo, because the memo was Al-Qaul-ul-Fasl.
It seems that Mirza Bashuddin Mahmud Ahmad was the only soul who knew that HMGA changed his theory of prophethood in 1900–1902.
At this link is a news report in the International Herald Tribune from Asspciated Press.
I quote below the text as well for your convenience. It is a development to be greatly deplored, whoever it may be against.
JAKARTA, Indonesia: A government team has recommended that Indonesia outlaw a Muslim sect that has come under attack from hard-liners as heretical, angering human rights activists who accuse authorities of cowing to pressure from extremists.
The Ahmadi movement has faced bans and persecution in Muslim countries around the world for its belief in another prophet after Muhammad. The group insists it should be considered part of Islam.
A government team of prosecutors, religious scholars and home affairs department officials concluded that the sect “had deviated from Islamic principles” and recommended Wednesday that the government ban it.
“Their activities are causing unrest among Muslims,” team leader Wishnu Subroto said Thursday.
The government was to meet Thursday to discuss the recommendation, media reports said. The team recommended Ahmadi followers be charged with “insulting a religion” — a charge that carries a five-year jail term.
A prominent human rights activist said any ban “cannot be justified and should be regarded as a serious violation of the constitution,” referring to clauses guaranteeing freedom of religion.
“This recommendation shows that board’s members do not understand the real function of the state,” said Hendardi, who goes by a single name.
Hard-liners have led an increasingly vocal campaign against Ahmadi in recent years, often vandalizing its mosques and the homes of its followers. In many cases, police made no attempt to stop the attackers.
“We are the victims here, yet we are being banned,” Yan Hussein Lamardi, a lawyer for the group, told Koran Tempo newspaper.
The Ahmadi sect is believed to have around 200,000 followers in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation. It was founded at the end of the 19th century in Pakistan where it is banned.
Indonesia is a secular country, with a long history of religious tolerance. But in recent years, a hard-line fringe has grown louder and the government — which relies on the support of Islamic parties in parliament — has been accused of cowing to it.
Due to the hard work of the Webmaster of www.aaiil.org the Judgment in what we informally call the “second” Cape Town court case, dated February 1990, is now online. It is the scanned image of the typed Judgment. Please access it from this link.
As the learned Lady Judge says on page 2:
“A marathon trial followed, the major portion of which dealt with the issue whether Mirza Ghulam Ahmad who died in India in 1908 was a Muslim or an apostate, and whether one of the two branches of his followers referred to herein as the Ahmedis … consist of Muslims or apostates.”
At this link is an overall summary of the court case, taken from the obituary of Hafiz Sher Muhammad that I wrote following his death in October 1990.
There was an appeal by the anti-Ahmadiyya parties against this judgment, whose result came out in September 1995. You can read my coverage of the appeal and the false representation of it by the anti-Ahmadiyya parties at this link.
Last weekend I watched the western film “The Magnificent Seven” on a TV channel. This weekend the same channel is showing “The Return of the Magnificent Seven”, which isn’t so good.
I am reminded of this since, you may like to know, we have the “Return of the Pleezing One”, and he has repeated his objections to the statements by the Promised Messiah that he would fulfill the prophecy of carrying out his mission for forty years. I told him earlier that in fact he did carry out his mission for forty years, although in Nishan-i Asmani he did not correctly identify the starting point of his mission. In his obituary which appeared upon his death in the Review of Religions in its issue for June 1908 it is written:
“The period of his revelations thus extended fully over forty years and this may be said to be the period of his ministry.”
But as I told the Pleezing One earlier, we need to finish our discussion on the debate that he chose to start when he objected to the Promised Messiah’s language in Arya Dharm. The point we had reached in the discussion, at which the Pleezing One disappeared, was when I referred him to the Masnavi of Rumi and some of its sexually explicit language.
Please see this link.
(I took the trouble of going to a library to borrow the book by Afzal Iqbal that I have quoted in the above link.)
After the Pleezing One’s departure at this point, I provided further evidence of the high repute of Rumi among Muslims. Please see this link.
Thus he cannot easily dismiss Rumi, as he did, by saying that Rumi is no authority that he is bound by.
He should therefore continue that discussion, and let us know whether he now admits that his allegations against the Promised Messiah relating to the book Arya Dharm were baseless and should be withdrawn.
I also have another suggestion. The next issue of U.K. edition of The Light will contain an article by me on how the mission and teachings of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in the service of Islam are as relevant now, if not more so, than they were when he died 100 years ago. (In fact, I am interrupting my writing of that article to post this.) I suggest that the Pleezing One studies that article, to be published in 3 or 4 weeks time, and lets us know where I am wrong in considering the Promised Messiah to have done great service for Islam.
If the Promised Messiah did not do any service for Islam, then even if 100% of his prophecies turned out to be exactly fulfilled, there would be no point in accepting him on that basis.
Readers will recall how the anti-Ahmadiyya writer using the name “Pleezing One” claimed that he was ready to reject the writings of Rumi, if we presented them in reply to his allegations against Hazrat Mirza sahib. For that discussion please see this link.
There was an article in the Urdu Daily Jang, in the London edition (28 February 2008, p. 4), in which the writer, Dr Safdar Mehmood, quoted an anecdote from Rumi’s Mathnawi. His first paragraph shows how highly Rumi is regarded. The point of the article is also of interest. Please read it here as a pdf file.
(Note: The first page of the pdf file shows columns 1 and 2 of the article, side by side. The second page shows columns 3 and 4, side by side. Please observe this order when reading.)
In the Press Release from the Qadiani Jama`at international centre as well as in the Khutba by Mirza Masroor Ahmad (see posts below in this blog) it is claimed that the Indonesian newspaper had issued a clarification of the original Qadiani Jama`at statement. Yet, it is quite bizarre that another official Qadiani Jama`at website, www.thepersecution.org, quotes later newsreports from the same newspaper to the same effect.
See this link to thepersecution.org.
It reproduces a report from The Jakarta Post, dated 5th February, which is as follows:
Govt to monitor Ahmadiyah sect
JAKARTA: The government has established a monitoring team to supervise the controversial Ahmadiyah sect.
“The team will gather information on to what extent Ahmadiyah has applied its ‘12 points of explanation,’ ” said Religious Affairs Minister M. Maftuh Basyuni during a hearing with the Regional Representatives Council here Monday.
Ahmadiyah was declared heretical by the influential Indonesian Ulema Council because the group recognized Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, its founder, as the last prophet, rather than Muhammad.
After a string of mob attacks on the group’s properties, Ahmadiyah’s leaders issued a statement containing “12 points of explanation”, including their acknowledgment of Muhammad as the final prophet.
The Religious Affairs Ministry on Jan. 24 issued a decree establishing the monitoring team. It includes officials from the Religious Affairs Ministry, Attorney General’s Office, Home Ministry and National Police.
“The team will report their findings to the religious affairs minister at least three months from the time the decree was issued,” said Maftuh. “At the moment, we still consider Ahmadiyah as heretical.” – JP
The newspaper is repeating the same report on 5th February, while the Qadiani Jama`at Press Release from London announces that the newspaper on 23rd January printed a clarification, i.e. that the earlier report of changing beliefs was not true.
There is also a Press Release on the Qadiani Jama`at website alislam.org dated 9th February, which near the end refers to the Indonesia events and says:
“Following the aforementioned newspaper article certain non Ahmadi Muslims and members of the Lahori sect celebrated what they perceived to be a change in the beliefs of the Community. However the content of the article was immediately rejected by the Jama’at and to its credit the said newspaper printed a statement clarifying the issue on 23 January 2008.”
I don’t think we celebrated. That 12-point statement was either based on ignorance of the beliefs of their own Jama`at or it was just a ploy to fool the Indonesian authorities. We would only celebrate if there was a true change of belief based on recognition of the past beliefs being wrong.
The Qadiani Jama`at should publish a copy of the newspaper’s statement of 23rd January which, they say, clarified the issue.