Can Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad be held responsible for killings of Christians?
Submitted by Rashid Jahangiri.
Can we hold Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad sahib responsible for killings of Christians in Pakistan?
During the British Raj in the lands that constitutes today’s Pakistan, there was a major Christian missionaries onslaught on Muslims. Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad sahib [HMGA] not only became a huge hindrance in efforts of Christian missionaries, but he also defeated them.
If HMGA had not embarked on his mission, today Pakistan would have been a Christian majority country, and there would be no blasphemy law and of course no killings of Christians. (May be Christian majority would have killed Muslim minority, just like Hindu majority kills Muslim minority in India).
So, my question is: Should we hold HMGA responsible for Christian killings in Pakistan?
From Zahid Aziz:
On this sort of a basis, Mr Jinnah could be held even more responsible for the killings of Christians in Pakistan because his efforts brought this country into existence, without which the Christians of Pakistan would have been living in secular, Hindu-majority India! Yet we know that Mr Jinnah would be absolutely horrified by such killings, or even any kind of religious discrimination against Christians or other minorities.
While Hazrat Mirza sahib defeated the religious onslaught of Christian missionaries by means of books and arguments, he strongly believed in various religions living in peace with each other, and condemned any kind of violence by Muslims against followers of other religions.
So while Hazrat Mirza sahib fought against Christians ideologically and in terms of religious doctrine, through his writings, he was entirely at peace with them physically and in terms of the law of the land and their human rights. On the other hand, the Muslim extremists don’t at all fight against the doctrines of Christianity but attack them physically! Thus they breach the teachings of Islam twice over!
When Dr Mirza Yaqub Baig qualified as a medical doctor in the 1890s, Hazrat Mirza sahib instructed him as follows: You are a doctor of people’s bodies, not their souls. It is not your concern what the religion of your patient is. You must treat everyone equally, whether he is a righteous Muslim praying five times a day, or an atheist who curses God every day.
From Mohammed Iqbal:
@Rashid,
You sound as if Muslims are getting killed in India like a clockwork. My ancestors have lived in this country for centuries and no one killed thought of killing them. Do you know that communal confrontations are not always one way streets. In a recent communal atrocity a Christian professor’s hand was chopped of because he allegedly blasphemed HP. This has happened in my home state, Kerala. So Muslims too are not above committing atrocities against others. Minorities are discriminated everywhere in the world. Kurds in Arabian lands, Bihari Muslims in Bangladesh are examples. But that should not let you make sweeping generalisations.
Muslims with talents can certainly come up in life in this country. Dont you know the 3 Indians who got awards at the 2009 Oscars were all Muslims? One of them a converted Muslim! Yet the Hindus never held him to be a ‘Wajib al Khatal’. They too are proud of his achievements.
From Rashid:
@Mohammed Iqbal,
I’m glad to read your post. I hope this is the case all over India. All Indian Muslims feel safe and are safe from Hindu majority. My comment was in background of Gujrat state violent incident.
From Ali:
I think your premise is false. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad probably had no effect what so ever on the growth, or indeed the lack thereof, of the Christian case as Muslims on the whole realised that he was a false prophet and disregarded his claims.
Maulana Nooruddin referred to the wife of MGA as folllows:
“mother of the faithful who is wife of Hazrat sahib”
The original reference can be found at the following link:
http://www.ahmadiyya.org/qadis/hmnd/june1912.htm
This implies that he too must have thought MGA was the prophet of Allah.
From Rashid:
@Ali,
History tells opposite of what you are saying. After HMGA and Abdullah Athem debate ‘The Holy War (Jang-e-Muqadas)’ Christian missionaries stopped any further discussions with him. And they diverted their attention towards Hindus lower class converstion to Christianity.
Unlike you, Javed Ahmad Ghamidi sahib is Islamic Scholar WITH A FACE, who reads and writes Urdu, Arabic, and persian. He was also head of Pakistan Government top Islamic law forming body i.e. Islamic Ideology Council.
He has EXONERATED HMGA from making any claim of prophethood after detail study of his books. Infact he challenges anyone to prove he is wrong. Please my another thread in this regard.
http://ahmadiyya.org/WordPress/2011/03/06/javed-ahmad-ghamidi-sahib-on-hazrat-mirza-ghulam-ahmad-sahib/#comments
So your assertion that HMGA made anyclaim of prophethood is FALSE, only to be expected from followers of Maulvi Maududi.
As far as Maulana Noor Ud Din’s use of word “mother of faithful” for widow of HMGA is concerned, it was NOT more than out of respect for his teacher’s wife. In other place he also used words in reply to message of wife of HMGA: “Tell her, i did ba’it of Mirza (HMGA) not his wife”.
From Zahid Aziz:
I thank Mr Ali for giving the link to my article because if I had given that link myself then our opponents would probably have not bothered to read it, calling it more Lahori propaganda. But now that Mr Ali, as an opponent himself, has referred to it, they will be keen to read what is in it!
I presume that Mr Ali regards the rest of the article, apart from the ten words he has quoted from it, as also being a correct representation of the beliefs of Maulana Nur-ud-Din! So my article has his endorsement for its accuracy!
Of course we could also say that because Maulana Nur-ud-Din in his published statements calls the Promised Messiah as just “Mirza sahib” or even as just “Mirza”, it means he didn’t believe him to be a prophet. In fact, it is reported in a Badr of May 1908, still in the lifetime of the Promised Messiah, that Maulana Nur-ud-Din is so devoted to the oneness of God that he hardly ever even mentions the name of Mirza sahib in his khutbas.
Mr Ali writes: “Muslims on the whole realised that he was a false prophet and disregarded his claims”. The discussion here is about Mirza sahib’s arguments against Christian missionaries. Read below what Dr Freeland Abbott wrote in his book Islam and Pakistan (Cornell University Press, U.S.A., 1968):
“In the course of time the Ahmadiyya arguments against other religions were wholeheartedly accepted by even their most vociferous critics . . . Through the vigour of their proselytising and their incessant and highly publicised attacks on Christianity, they instilled a stronger faith in many Muslims.” (p. 160)
If he was a false prophet then it is a great humiliation for Muslims that they had to accept the religious arguments and Islamic interpretations of a false prophet! More and more Muslim scholars accept the death of Jesus whereas in his time the vast majority believed in Jesus being alive in heaven. His view of jihad and living under non-Muslim rule is widely accepted today. Muslim leaders in Europe and USA are queuing up before the governments to declare that jihad is not armed fighting and that they are loyal to their countries. To start following a person’s religious interpretations (giving up your own original ones) and, at the same time, to regard that person as a false prophet, is quite incredible!