The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement Blog

Archive for August, 2008

The Ramadan message for this year by Hazrat Ameer Dr A.K. Saeed can be read at this link (opens in new window).

You may be interested in an article by an Indian Muslim researcher entitled Medieval Persian References to the Putative Israelite Origin of Afridi Pashtuns/Pathans.

He briefly mentions Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in it as well.

Read it at this link (opens new window).

I have introduced this new feature with comments which displays each comment (under a post) collapsed down to its first two lines. You can easily expand any of the comments and re-collapse them. I hope this is useful when the number of comments is large. If you prefer not to have this, please let me know.

Our esteemed friend Abdul Momin submitted a comment which I am presenting as a new post. By a strange coincidence, I was mentioning exactly this reference to someone yesterday while thousands of miles away from him. His post is below.

In his book, “The Indian Musalmans”, W.W. Hunter frequently refers to Sayyid Ahmad Shaheed Barelvi as “the Apostle” or “the Prophet”. This book was first written in 1871. So he could not have been influenced by the writings of HMGA. After several references to Syed Ahmad Shaheed as “the Apostle” or “the Prophet” (which literally mean Rasul and Nabi respectively), WW Hunter explains in a footnote:

By the ‘Prophet’, I invariably mean Sayyid Ahmad. Technically he was an Imam (leader) from the political point of view, and a Wali (favourite of God) from the theological one. Strictly speaking the line of the true Prophets ended with Christ and Muhammad. (The Indian Musalmans page 12, Second Impression 2004 Publisher Rupa Co.)

There are examples given in “The Ahmadiyya Case” book about the South Africa case of followers of Muslim religious leaders refering to the leaders as Nabi. (Links to: Section 7, Section 8)

Now the question arises: how did WW Hunter, an Englishman and non-Muslim, associate the words “Prophet” and “Apostle” with Sayyid Shaheed? He also explains that he was, technically speaking, only an Imam and Wali (Coincidentally HMGA is also referred to as an Imam and Wali in his writings.)

Could it be that at the time of HMGA it was fairly routine for followers to refer to their spiritual leaders as Nabi or Rasul? This seems to be the most likely explanation. Mr Hunter must have learnt about this from Sayyid Shaheed’s followers. Perhaps this tradition is at the root of all this confusion about why some of HMGA’s followers referred to him as “Nabi” and “Rasul” in several of their writings, when in fact they did not consider him as a real prophet as Lahoris believe.

Also every quote I have read attributed to HMGA’s followers in which they have used the word Nabi or Rasul for him are from 1900 or afterwards. This would give us the misleading impression that since HMGA was alleged to have changed his claim from non-prophet to prophet around 1901, therefore his followes referred to him as Nabi or Rasul after this change in claim. But it would not surprise me in the least if they referred to him as Nabi even before the so-called change in his claims took place. In one of his pre-1901 writings, he advises his followers that these terms should not be used in their everyday talk concerning him. Perhaps there was a reason why he said this; maybe these words were used by his followers about him, even though they regarded him as only a Saint.

Our friend Bashir has sent a submission under the above title. Due to its length I am posting it as a comment here. The writer has asked any enquirers to contact him for further information, as he has called this submission an abridged version.

In copying and pasting his submission, I could not carry through his use of italics and bold font for certain text. So my apologies to him for that.

I won’t comment on this except to say that the reports of who said what to whom, and when, and who reported it, don’t provide a sound way of drawing valid conclusions.

Zahid Aziz