The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement Blog

‘My fellow Americans’ website

I have received the following e-mail.

As I’m sure you are aware, America has always been a melting pot, but in the post-9/11 world the environment can be downright hostile. Recent mosque protests and congressional hearings on American Muslims are all unfortunate examples of a rising tide of fear towards our fellow Americans. To address this, we’ve put together a video response which I believe you and the readers of The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement Blog will be interested in sharing, watching, and discussing:

http://youtu.be/cjm0uk2JO58

I would love it if you could post or tweet about this and share the video. If you can, please let me know. I am here if you have any questions. Thank you so much.

Elizabeth
—
Elizabeth Potter,
Unity Productions Foundation
www.myfellowamerican.us

Mullah Mullah everywhere!

Submitted by Ikram.

Mullahism in any shape, form, creed, status or stage is another name for the same idiocy. Decree to kill and the historical favorites of stoning to death or burning of humans and now animals is an impulse they cannot suppress. Enjoy the following example. Sorry dogs!
——————–

Shocking Sentence: Jewish Court Condemns Dog To Death by Stoning

Thought to be a reincarnation of a secular lawyer, the ultra-Orthodox judges are calling for the dog to be put to death.

Weeks ago, the large hound reportedly wandered into a courtroom in the very religious Jerusalem neighborhood of Mea Shearim. Allegedly wreaking havoc on the proceedings and scaring visitors, the dog refused to leave the court. Now it appears the judges of this rabbinical court are out for retribution.

One judge recalled the tale of a lawyer in decades past who was cursed by the court for his anti-religious tendencies. The judges hoped that the lawyer’s secular spirit would be reincarnated as a dog, considered an impure animal in some Jewish traditions. When the pooch wandered into the court a few weeks ago, several years after the lawyer’s death, they feared it was his reincarnation coming to cause chaos.

So in what was surely an unfair trial, the judges called for local children to stone the dog to death. Fortunately, the hound escaped before the horrific punishment could be delivered.

Regardless, the verdict is in. Can animal rights activists step in to defend the defenseless dog?

Qadiani Khalifa V Friday, June 10, 2011 sermon on subject of Mujaddid.

Submitted by Rashid Jahangiri.

Qadiani Khalifa 2 Mirza Mahmud Ahmad has written in his books that thousands of prophets WILL COME after Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad sahib, till the Day of Judgment.

In his Friday, June 10, 2011 sermon Qadiani Khalifa 5 Mirza Masroor Ahmad said that current millennium is the last millennium; and HMGA was sent as Mujjaddid for the whole millennium. QK 5 builds the case that after HMGA revival of Islam will ONLY be done by Qadiani Khalifas. He further says that Qadiani Khalifa status is superior to status of Mujjaddid.

Opponents of HMGA in order to nullify HMGA claim (that Mujjaddid which is ‘mamur-min-Allah’ (appointee of Allah) has to himself make claim of appointment) say Mujjaddid does not make claim in his life, rather people after his death give him the status of Mujjaddid.

QK 5 uses this argument of anti-HMGA people to support his point that Qadiani Khalifas could also be a Mujjaddid whether he claims or does not claim to be a Mujjaddid in future centuries.

QK 5 gave this sermon after some Qadiani student of Tajdeed-e-Nau asked him question about next/ future Mujjaddid based on Hadith of Holy Prophet Muhammad SAWS. From his sermon it was clear that QK 5 did not like the question and equated such query as form of weakness in faith and sign of conspiracy against Qadiani Khilafat system. He blamed elders in such homes who talk about new Mujjaddid or as a mischief when they intentionally ask question like these through the young pupil in disguise of seeking knowledge. Of course QK 5 conveniently ignored to mention that young Qadianis get these questions on Internet and most probably on websites of Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement.

I hope some other pupil can ask QK 5 that when he says in future only Qadiani Khalifas will revive Islam, then by such statements does he mean that QK 2 was WRONG when he asserted that thousands of Prophets can come in future centuries?

It will be nice if head of Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement Dr. Pasha sahib can also give a Friday Khutaba in near future so that young Qadianis can hear/ read both sides arguments, and make an informed decision to whom to believe. It is quite clear young Qadianis in Europe and North America do surf and read LAM literature on internet.

Link to QK 5 sermon:
http://www.alislam.org/friday-sermon/2011-06-10.html

Incitement to kill Ahmadis in Pakistan

Submitted by Muhammad Ali

A pamphlet identifying the members of Ahmadiyyah community in Faisalabad has been distributed. People have been provoked to kill those people listed or any Ahmadi to achieve the status of martyrdom. Further details can be read in the following article on BBC (Urdu) website.

www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/pakistan/2011/06/110609_antiahmadi_pamphalet_si.shtml

“Rewards” in life after death

An esteemed friend and contributor, whom we had missed very much for a while, has submitted the following post.

Following video may be of interest to the blog readers who want to know more about the “rewards” of the afterlife as explained by a Mullah; in particular the “hoors”. Due to the graphic language used viewer discretion is advised.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ocn1eTDxXkQ&feature=player_detailpage

(Admin: The video can take some time loading after the above page opens.)

1974 Pakistan N.A. Proceedings that Declared Ahmadis as Non-Muslims is to be made public

Submitted by Rashid Jahangiri.

According to Jamaat-I-Islami Urdu newspaper ‘Daily Ummat’ May 28, 2011, current speaker of Pakistan National Assembly Dr. Fahmida Mirza has ordered 1974 Pakistan National Assembly proceedings that resulted in 2nd amendment to 1973 constitution of Pakistan and declared Ahmadis (both Qadiani-Ahmadis and Lahori-Ahmadis) as non-Muslim is to be made public.

http://ummat.com.pk/2011/05/28/news.php?p=news-84.gif

I hope this news turns out to be true and transcriptions of statements of Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement representatives are accurate. I hope booklet produced by LAM and given to every member of National Assembly is also made available.

I also hope that Justice Samdani Commission Inquiry is also made public.

Is Islamic extremism tied to poverty?

Submitted by Rashid Jahangiri.

Since 9/11 in my conversations in person and some times on different blogs, I have argued the terrorism in Muslim countries is not breeding due to poverty. Rather it is lack of their understanding of Islamic teachings, in its spirit. My point has been that educated and wealthy Muslims tacitly support terrorism perpetuated by Muslims against Europeans and Americans. These educated and financially well off Muslims hold belief that since they cannot convince Europeans and Americans to stop practicing their double standards when it comes to Muslim countries, so it is justified to at least tacitly support those who do acts of terrorism against these countries.

In my opinion these educated and wealthy Muslims are not convinced that Islam has that capability to convince Europeans and Americans and win their hearts and minds, and invite them to accept Islam intellectually. I am of the convinced that if sizable populations of these countries embrace Islam, then they will become Muslim brothers and sisters. And they will stop practicing themselves and letting their politicians and governments to practice double standards in their dealings with Muslim countries. I being some one who is fortunate to have read some of literature on Islam produced by Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement disagree with wrong notion prevalent among educated and financially well off Muslims.

My father in-law Professor Chaudhary Ghulam Rasool sahib has told me that in many gathering of educated, professionals, educationalists, politicians and other successful Pakistanis he has repeatedly told them on their faces that: you all support Al-Qaeda in your hearts and you feel good when they attack on Europeans and Americans. In reply they all invariably acknowledge with smile and chuckle.

A recent study by Georgetown University Professor Christine supports my point, that poverty is not the reason of extremism in Muslim societies.

Georgetown University’s Christine Fair talks with CNN about her studies that link poverty and Islamic extremism.
http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2011/05/26/lklv.mann.yugoslavia.explainer.cnn?hpt=C2

Question about a revelation and answer

Mr Arshad Khan has submitted the following question:

I have a simple question…what is the Lahori interpretation on this revelation of HMGA (as):

Arabic] O Adam, O Maryam [Mary],101 O Ahmad dwell you and your companion in the jannat—that is, into attaining the means of true salvation. I have breathed into you the spirit of righteousness from Myself.

Our principle of interpretation of any revelation of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad is based on the fact that his revelation is wahy wilayat, not wahy nubuwwat. As he wrote in 1897 in reply to Maulvi Ghulam Dastgir about his revelation:

“And it is not wahy nubuwwat but wahy wilayat received by the saints (auliya) through the Prophethood of the Holy Prophet Muhammad due to their perfect following of him, which is what we believe in. If anyone accuses us of going beyond this, he departs from honesty and fear of God.”

The interpretation of any wahy wilayat is subject to the authority of Quranic revelation and the teachings of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (s). Moreover, there should also be support for that interpretation by earlier saints of Islam. Wahy wilayat cannot set any new standard in its own right, rather it is subject to the standard set by the Quran and the Holy Prophet.

Throughout Islamic history, there are examples of Muslim saints receiving revelation in which they are called by names of prophets. It means they display certain qualities of those prophets and conduct their missions in accordance with those qualities. As Anne Marie Schimmel writes in her book Mystical Dimensions of Islam:

“According to some sufi orders, on the higher levels of his path the mystic ascends through the stations of the Islamic prophets, from Adam to Jesus; many Sufis remain in one of these stages, but the perfect shaikh is he who has become annihilated in the Prophet Muhammad. United with the haqiqa Muhammadiyya, he becomes the Perfect Man and thus leads his disciples with a guidance granted directly by God.” (p. 237)

“The Sufis particularly loved Mary. … She is often taken as the symbol of the spirit that receives divine inspiration and thus becomes pregnant with the divine light.” (p. 429)

Regarding the “means of true salvation” mentioned above in the quote from Hazrat Mirza sahib, Muslims had come to believe that merely acting in a mechanical and ritualistic manner on the commands of Islam leads to salvation. Hazrat Mirza sahib gave them the message that salvation lies in acting on these commands from the heart, with suppression of one’s lower desires. That is how he showed the true means of salvation to people, by unveiling again the true spirit of the teachings of Islam. True means of salvation is not to become a follower of Mirza sahib in a formal sense. In his booklet Kishti-i Nuh you can read about the high Islamic moral standard to be followed to attain salvation.

Regarding the breathing into him of the spirit of righeousness, you can find his own explanation in Barahin Ahmadiyya, Part 4, where he first published this revelation:

“This breathing of spirit in the real sense is confined to the prophets, and then certain special persons from among the Umma of the Holy Prophet Muhammad are granted this blessing due to their obedience and as inheritance.” (Ruhani Khaza’in, v. 1, p. 591)

These persons who, while not being prophets, inherit from prophets due to being their followers, include Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad.

A Letter to Dr. Stephen Hawking

by Ikram.

Dear Dr. Hawking:

As a citizen I want to thank you for your life long research and the knowledge you continue to impart to humanity.

I came across two articles about you in recent press that I refer to below. I added my comments from Quran and Islam to some of the thoughts that were attributed to you. Please take a look. Purpose of doing so is not to preach or draw you into a discussion for which I am sure you do not have time, but only to inform.
———
Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/may/15/stephen-hawking-interview-there-is-no-heaven]

“We should seek the greatest value of our action.”

28:88. … Every thing is liable to perish but those (righteous deeds) by means of which you seek His attention…[i.e. at the end of the day, it is the actions that define a man and survive him, that includes scientific discoveries]

“In answering another, he wrote of the beauty of science, such as the exquisite double helix of DNA in biology, or the fundamental equations of physics.”

67:3. It is He Who has created seven heavens [i.e. numerous universes], one upon another in conformity (with each other). You can see no flaw, no incongruity and no imperfection in the creation of the Most Gracious (God). Then look up once more (to heaven). Do you see any flaw?

67:4. Look again and yet again (to find out any confusion in Divine law). (The result will only be that) your eye will return to you dazzled while it is weary (and you will be unable to find any discordance).

“Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing…

2:117. (God is) the Wonderful Originator without depending upon any matter or pattern of the heavens and the earth; and when He issues a decree He does but say to it, `Be’ and it comes to be [conforming to laws of physics including the dimension of time].

…(continuing from above sentence) It is a matter of chance which we are in,”

40:57. Of course, the creation of the heavens and the earth is (a) greater (performance) than the creation of mankind but most people do not know (it).

…to create something out of nothing is also His work. Just as you see it in in a scene in a dream He creates a whole world without any matter, and shows nonexistent things to be existent. Thus such are all the wonders of His power…[On the concept of God and the status of the Holy Prophet Muhammad, by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, The Light – U.K. Edition, May 2008 Special Century Edition, page 19.]

“One possibility predicted by M-theory is supersymmetry, an idea that says fundamental particles have heavy – and as yet undiscovered – twins, with curious names such as selectrons and squarks.”

36:36. Glory be to Him Who has created pairs of all type of the things that the earth grows and of their own species and of the things yet unknown to them [that includes the fundamental concept of twins e.g. matter and antimatter].

“There is no heaven or afterlife”

57:21. (Mankind!) advance quickly, outstripping one another, towards the protection from your Lord and (towards) a Garden the extensiveness of which is (beyond measure) as the extensiveness of the heaven and the earth. It has been prepared for those who believe in Allâh and His Messengers; that (protection) is Allâh’s grace and bounty. He grants it to such of those who wish to attain it (and strive for it). Allâh is the Lord of immense grace and bounty.

…we have a reliable tradition on record that a messenger of Heracleus [Byzantine Emperor, born c. 575 – died February 11, 641] asked the Prophet [Muhammad], “If the paradise were as extensive as the heavens and the earth, where would be hell? “He replied, “Glory be to Allah, where is the night when the day comes?“ The verse and the incident recorded clearly show that heaven and hell are not the names of two places, but actually two conditions, because if paradise were the name of a particular place, hell could not exist, as paradise would then extend over the whole of the space. This conclusively gives us a rational view of “heaven”, and is confirmed fully by the trend of modern thought which rejects the conception of the “geographical heaven” as primitive and irrational. Is not Modernism then indebted to the Quran? [Excerpted from: Dean Inge’s Homage to Muhammad, by S. Hamid Raza B.A. (Alig), pg 322, Sept & Dec, The Muslim Revival, Ahmadiyya Buildings Lahore (India)]

——
Yahoo [http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110516/us_yblog_thelookout/stephen-hawking-says-afterlife-is-a-fairy-story]

I agree with you when you say “They made a human-like being with whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible.”

My understanding is that you are alluding to Jesus (or other similar religious figures), a man made God. Whereas people of knowledge and understanding live within the framework pointed to in Quran, that I am sure that you will testify to:

18:109. Say, `If every ocean became ink for (recording) the words and creation of my Lord, surely, the oceans would be spent up before the words and creation of my Lord came to an end, even if we brought to add (therewith) as many more (oceans).

31:27. And if all the trees in the earth were pens, and the sea with seven more seas added to it (were ink), the words of Allah would not be exhausted. Surely Allah is Mighty, Wise.

As to Who made the above framework within which theories M-Theory, Relativity etc. survive. Take a look:

57:3. He is (from) the very First (there was nothing before Him), and (He will exist to) the Last (there will be nothing after Him), and when nothing remains He will remain (He being an eternal Being). He is the Supreme Being (subordinate to no one). And (whereas He comprehends everything) He is Incomprehensible. He has full knowledge of every thing.

As to how He (-the God) makes Newtons, Einsteins, Hawkings:

96:3. Read and thy Lord is most Generous,
96:4. Who taught by the pen,
96:5. Taught man what he knew not.
96:6. Nay, man is surely inordinate,
96:7. Because he looks upon himself as self-sufficient.

Dr. Hawkins, I leave you with a final thought from Khwaja Kamaluddin, who was a barrister at law and first Muslim missionary to England and worked out of the mosque at Woking (Surrey) in 1913:

Everything in the world appears to have been enchained by the Law. It follows it implicitly, Is it then other than Allah’s religion that they seek (to follow), and to Him submits whoever is in the heavens and the earth, willingly or unwillingly, and to Him shall they be returned? (3:82). Nature discloses regularity, precision, punctuality, knowledge, power, command, intellect, preordination, prearrangement, precaution, and several other features that are the possessions of the mind exclusively. In their presence the universe cannot be taken as the outcome of accident. It needs an intelligent Design to precede the process of its creation. The word design sometimes used to bore minds with sceptic tendencies, but it has become now widened in its connotation. It brings within it so many facts and figures recently discovered by Science that disbelief in God would amount to ignorance. [Note:“intelligent Design” referred here has no relation to contemporary evolution debate. Excerpted from: Introduction to Study of The Holy Quran, by Khwaja Kamaluudin, pg 21, Dar-ul-Ishahat-Kutub-Islamia, Fatamabi Court, 4th Floor, 17 M Azad Road, Jacob Circle, Bombay. 1939, 1950, 1991.]

Finally, as to what science is discovering, Prophet Solomon (son of Prophet David) summed it all: “There is nothing new under the sun.”

-Peace be on you, and happy discoveries.

-ikram.

P.S. I have posted the above at https://ahmadiyya.org/WordPress/

Meaning of ashidda’u against the disbelievers

“Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and those with him are firm of heart (ashidda’u) against the disbelievers, compassionate among themselves.” (48:29)

See here the Urdu text of a speech on this verse by Maulana Muhammad Ali in December 1924.

What Maulana Muhammad Ali has translated as “firm of heart” is variously translated as “hard”, “stern”, “harsh”. As the Maulana points out in his speech, classical commentaries of the Quran have given interpretations along the lines that this teaches that Muslims must degrade and crush non-Muslims, or that when they see a non-Muslim they should give him a very angry, frowned look “as a lion views its prey”. Some have gone as far as to say that a Muslim’s body must not touch that of a non-Muslim, nor his clothing touch the clothing worn by a non-Muslim.

I myself have read in a history book by a Pakistani scholar that the ulama of the Moghul emperors of India advised them that, according to Islam, when they see a non-Muslim they are required to turn their face away in displeasure.

The Maulana says that surely the true meaning of being ashidda’u against the disbelievers would have been illustrated in the practice of the Holy Prophet Muhammad towards the unbelievers. He then gives examples from his life of how he dealt with them, and says: Those meanings which are in the minds or are expressed by the commentators are totally wrong.

This speech seems very relevant to Muslims today, as in the modern world they have an increasing daily interacting with non-Muslims. I, for one, found this speech to be a remarkable illustration of how the Ahmadiyya Movement has corrected wrong and harmful conceptions of Islam held by Muslims themselves.