The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement Blog

Archive for the ‘Ahmadiyya issues’ Category

Here is a news item from The Jakarta Post dated 19th January 2008 (the time difference means it is already the 19th in Indonesia):

http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailnational.asp?fileid=20080118.H03&irec=2

(Note on 19 January: Unfortunately the above link shows a different item of news every day! However, yesterday I copied from the original news the extract given below.)

We may highlight from it the following:

Wisnu, who is the deputy attorney general of intelligence, said the board gave Ahmadiyah three months to prove it was committed to its new stance that recognized Muhammad as the last prophet of Islam. …

“We have given Ahmadiyah followers the opportunity to return to the right path, and their activities will be monitored and evaluated over the next three months,” Wisnu said.

Before this news (see next item), there was an earlier item of news from Indonesia actually quoted on the the Qadiani website www.thepersecution.org itself.

See: http://www.thepersecution.org/world/indonesia/08/01/jp04.html

This is quoted from The Jakarta Post, Jakarta, 4th January 2008. It is stated within it:

“Junior Attorney General for Intelligence Affairs Wisnu Subroto said the AGO would treat the letter from the forum [i.e. the anti-Ahmadiyya organisations] as a recommendation in the body’s meeting, along with the recommendation from the Indonesian Ulemas Council submitted previously.

The government needs to hear all the information from all parties, including from Ahmadiyah members. During the last meeting with the AGO, Ahmadiyah leaders explained they did not recognize Mirza Gulam Ahmad as a prophet, but merely as a pious leader.

“Many groups, including the forum’s members, believed the clarification was just a game being played by the Ahmadiyah leaders to escape being banned (at that time),” Wisnu told The Jakarta Post by phone.

This is a statement from a government official appearing in a newspaper in Indonesia, and then reproduced on a Qadiani website. If it is not correct, the Qadiani website could have added their own comment to clarify that they did not say that “they did not recognize Mirza Gulam Ahmad as a prophet, but merely as a pious leader”.

News is being received that the Qadiani Jamaat in Indonesia, when presenting their beliefs to government officials, have issued a statement omitting their belief that Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was a prophet. Their statement acknowledges that the Holy Prophet Muhammad was the last Prophet and that Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad is their teacher or murshad.

Please read the following link:

http://www.indonesiamatters.com/1539/ahmadiyya/

If this is fully confirmed then once again the founders of the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement have been vindicated. Perhaps in the 100th anniversary year of his death Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad has been exonerated and cleared of the stigma and false charge of claiming to be a prophet.

Since the Split occurred in 1914 the Qadiani Jamaat has been forced, over the years, to retract its following false beliefs:

• That the ‘Ahmad’ mentioned in the prophecy of Jesus, recorded in the Quran, is not the Holy Prophet Muhammad but Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad.
• That all other Muslims, except those who take the Pledge of the Promised Messiah, are kafir and excluded from Islam.
• That for Ahmadis to hold janaza prayers for any other Muslim, whomsoever it may be, is prohibited.
• And now, that Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was a prophet.

The Qadiani Jamaat has placed on its website the book Kalimat-ul-Fasal by Mirza Bashir Ahmad (younger brother of the second Khalifa Mirza Mahmud Ahmad). You can read it here:

http://www.alislam.org/urdu/pdf/Kalma-tul-Fasal.pdf

This is the book in which the Qadiani doctrine is presented most vigorously and emphatically that Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad is a prophet just like Moses, Jesus and the Holy Prophet Muhammad, and that any Muslim who does not believe in Hazrat Mirza sahib is (1) a kafir, (2) a full-fledged kafir, (3) excluded from the fold of Islam, and (4) that Ahmadis must treat other Muslims in the same way as if they belonged to a religion of the past like Christians, and that Ahmadis should only say assalamu alaikum to other Muslims in the same way as a Muslim can sometimes greet a non-Muslim with this greeting.

It is laid down in this book absolutely blatantly that Ahmadis must not have any religious or social dealings with other Muslims in the ways that a Muslim is meant to have dealings with his fellow Muslims.

If you want to know what caused the split in the movement in 1914, read this book written in 1915.

The Qadiani Jamaat has spent decades trying to distance itself from the views expressed in this book, so I don’t know if they have completely lost their senses by making it available online. It is the perfect gift to the opponents of the Ahmadiyya movement and gives them all the grounds for declaring Ahmadis as kafir.

A member of the Qadiani Jamaat in California has alleged that the Lahore Ahmadiyya Jamaat has falsely inserted the following statement into its English translation of the book Kitab-ul-Bariyya by Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad:

“I was born towards the last days of Sikh rule in 1839 or 1840.”

The reason for this accusation is that in their own Jamaat’s literature they read that the Promised Messiah was born in 1835 (of course we also accept that date). Qadiani Jamaat members appear to think that any statement in our publications which happens to conflict with something in their publications must be a deliberate falsehood. This gentleman claims that he has read through Kitab-ul-Bariyya and did not find any words like the above in it.

I have responded by simply making a sworn statement that I have read this book on the Qadiani Jamaat’s own website, and these words in Urdu are present in it. I have asked the accuser to make a similar sworn statement that he has read the book and that these words are not in it and that “Lahoris” or Zahid Aziz have falsely inserted them. I have asked that he can also try getting his accusation published in his Jamaat’s organs.

Perhaps his Jamaat would care to comment.

On the front page of Badr, 19 September 1912, there is an article by the editor Mufti Muhammad Sadiq (later a prominent missionary of the Qadiani Jama`at) entitled: What was the occupation of the Promised Messiah?

He writes:

On 18th January 1905 when I was headmaster in Qadian I wrote a note to the Promised Messiah which is reproduced below along with his reply. It is hoped it will be of interest to readers.

The Note

To the holy Hazrat, our leader and our Mahdi, the Promised Messiah.

Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah wa barakatuhu

The name of Mian Mahmud Ahmad will today be sent forward for the examinations. The form that has to be filled has a space asking, What is the occupation of the boy’s father? I have written in it the word nubuwwat [prophethood].

… [Rest of note omitted in this translation as it is about some medical advice, see image for full text]…

Your most humble servant, Muhammad Sadiq,

18th January 1905

The reply

Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah wa barakatuhu

Nubuwwat is not an occupation. Please write that he is the leader and Imam of the Ahmadiyya sect which numbers about 300,000. The occupation is the reform of the people.

Ghulam Ahmad.

So in that form I wrote in English as follows the occupation of the Hazrat:

National Reformation and Leadership of Ahmadiyya Sect (300,000 members)

Tahir Hussen writes to our blog: 

“(II) Question: A claim to prophethood has been made in Fath-i Islam?

Answer: I have not claimed prophethood. I have only claimed to be a muhaddath (one spoken to by God) and this, too, under the divine command. Muhaddathiyyah undoubtedly contains a strong element of prophethood. Now when true vision is admittedly forty-sixth part of prophethood, what is the harm if muhaddathiyyah, which has been spoken to in the Quran along with prophethood and messengership, and about which an authentic report exists in Sahih al-Bukhari, is styled metaphorical prophethood or an integral element of the excellences of prophethood. Does it amount to a claim to prophethood? After all a complete seal has never been set on the divine revelation after the perfection of the prophethood . . .. O ignorant people! Rivulets of revelation are to flow in this ummah till the day of Resurrection subject, of course, to one’s status.”

(Izalah Auham, September 1891, pp. 421, 422)

When the promised messiah wrote:

“I have not claimed prophethood. I have only claimed to be a muhaddath (one spoken to by God)”,

I wonder why the rabwah make of him a prophet. Are they blind lovers of Mirza Bashir-ud-din Mahmud Ahmad to the extent of accepting a fabrication that brings humiliation to the promised messiah ?!

Please see details of an Essay Competition being organised by the Central Anjuman of the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement in Lahore at this link. It is a pdf file.

In a speech at the December 1914 annual Jalsa, the first Jalsa after Mirza Mahmud Ahmad became khalifa, he declared:

The above extract carries the heading Has the khilafat become a hereditary seat?, and under it Mirza Mahmud Ahmad says:

“Foolish is he who says that a hereditary seat has been established. I say to such a one on sworn oath: I do not even consider it allowable that the son should succeed the father as khalifa. Of course, if God makes him His appointed one, then that is a different matter. Like Hazrat Umar, I also believe that the son should not be khalifa after the father.” (p. 171)

See the speech at this link. 

Everyone can see what happened subsequently in the history of this khilafat.

The Qadiani Jamaat has very recently published a new, revised English translation of Ayk Ghalati Ka Izala, ‘A Misunderstanding Removed’. Their previous translation had been in circulation for many years. The new translation is at this link on their website as a pdf file.

My translation of the same pamphlet, with introduction and notes, has existed on our website for about 5 years. Its formatting needed some improvement. So I have taken this opportunity to improve the formatting (although there is no change in the translation or notes), and have also expanded the introduction which can be read here. One addition to the introduction is to present the original Urdu quotations from Mirza Bashir-ud-Din Mahmud Ahmad’s discussion of this subject. Previously, only the English translation had been given.

In the new Qadiani Jamaat translation, it is written in the Publisher’s Note:

“Apart from resolving once and for all the extremely vital and contentious issue of Khatm-e-Nubuwwat, Eik Ghalati Ka Izala is also the last word in settling the dispute between those who believe the Promised Messiah to be a Prophet of God and those who do not.”

So it is “the last word” in settling this dispute, is it? Interestingly, Mirza Mahmud Ahmad wrote as follows:

“The first evidence of the change in this belief is found in the announcement Ayk Ghalati Ka Izala, which is the first written evidence.” (See my introduction for reference)

“Change in this belief” is, according to him, the change in the Promised Messiah’s belief from considering himself not to be a prophet to claiming to be a prophet. So this pamphlet, according to Mirza Mahmad Ahmad, is the first word on his claim to prophethood but today’s Qadiani Jamaat calls it the last word.

Can any Qadiani Jamaat member in the world explain how what they used to consider as the Promised Messiah’s first declaration of being a prophet can be his last word on the subject?

Mirza Mahmud Ahmad also writes in the same place:

“The issue of prophethood became clear to him in 1900 or 1901, and as Ayk Ghalati Ka Izala was published in 1901, in which he has proclaimed his prophethood most forcefully, it shows that he made a change in his belief in 1901″

There is, of course, no mention in their Publisher’s Note of the above Qadiani standpoint, namely, that in his writings before this pamphlet the Promised Messiah was making the mistake of denying being a prophet, and was now correcting his own misunderstanding. The most likely reason is that the writers of the note are ignorant of the whole background.