The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement Blog

Contemporaries of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad

Submitted by Rashid.

On website http://www.mutazila.com/ short introduction and works of contemporaries of HMGA are made available. References to some of these gentlemen are available in HMGA writings and LAM literature. Such as:

Sir Syed (Sayyid) Ahmad Khan [1817-1898]
Cheragh Ali (Chiragh Ali) [1844-1895]
Abdullah Chakralawi (Chakralvi) [d.1930]
Akbar Shah Khan Najeebabadi [d.] (He was member of LAM and authored Maulana Noor Ud Din biography. He also authored famous Tarikh e Islam (History of Islam) in 3 volumes).

This website home page says:

” Who listen [closely] to all that is said, and follow the best of it: [for] it is they whom God has graced with His guidance, and it is they who are [truly] endowed with insight! Quran 39:18

With this in mind we provide here extensive resources so that one can go directly to the original source and verify for oneself matters and issues related to Islam rather than relying on second or third hand information or simply taking hearsay for the original as is common with most Muslims and even with some scholars. No one person, no matter how knowledgeable in Islam and no matter how popular among Muslims including past Imams, can be considered as the final authority on Islam The final authority on Islam must rest with the Quran and Quran alone.

This website does not promote one or the other view of Islam. It is purely meant for scholarly work. Whatever label (Modernist, Rationalist, Quran-only, Reformist, Anti-Hadith, Mutazila…) was attached in the past against one or the other group, it is important to study their writings and their sources and only then one should make independent judgment about them and about their work. Searching for resources sometimes becomes a hindrance in the search for truth. The resources provided here, it is hoped, will help ease that hindrance somewhat for those who are striving for the truth. ”

Despite this website’s great motivation described in above paragraphs, it has missed presenting works of Islamic scholars belonging to LAM, who were praised by Islamic Scholars this website promotes.

Anyways, website is good source to find books such as ‘Tafsir ul Quran’ by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan; and Musaddas by Khawaja Altaf Hussain Hali.
http://www.mutazila.com/ba/ba.htm

The Niqab Debate

Submitted by Rashid.

On ‘Pak Tea House’ blog a debate is going on topic of veil in Islam. This debate reflects current activities in Europe on the issue of ‘women veiling of face’. I did a quick research on this topic on Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement website (www.aaiil.org) , but I could not find any write-up. It will be nice if someone can contribute on this topic, or provide link to any article on subject of veil. Thanks.

See link.

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto anniversary

Submitted by Rashid.

31 years ago, on April 4, 1979 Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was hanged to death. Colonel Rafi-Uddin was eyewitness. I’m sad to hear, after his death ZAB body was desecrated. His private parts were photographed by Pakistani Intelligence agency to find out if he was circumcised or not.

Colonel Rafi-Uddin interview. Watch at 31 minutes:
Express News TV
Front Line April 4, 2010
http://pkpolitics.com/2010/04/04/front-line-4-april-2010/

What a debate should be about.

At present we have a nationwide election campaign in the U.K. When the rival candidates debate, although each one attacks the opposite one’s policies, yet each one presents what he or she believes is the best programme for the country. There is no candidate who does nothing but attack another.

Likewise, there can really be only one debate between us and our anti-Ahmadiyya opponents. That would be on the topic of “My (or Our) Programme for the future of Islam”. As far as we are concerned, our programme is to present the Holy Quran and the life of the Holy Prophet to the whole world in a way that refutes the widely prevailing misconceptions about Islam. Our “vision” (as they say these days) is to see non-Muslims appreciating and respecting Islam and the Holy Prophet, if they can’t yet bring themselves to accept this faith. We wish to achieve this by peaceful and polite persuasion, and not in a haughty way by claiming to be the chosen ones of God.

So let the other side put forward their programme for the future of Islam, and we can debate which is more in line with the teachings of Islam and the needs of the times.

1937: Opponents wreck Lahore Ahmadiyya meeting about Holy Prophet

In March 1937 the Lahore Ahmadiyya Jama`at organised a public meeting at Mochi Gate in Lahore, for the sole purpose of honouring the Holy Prophet Muhammad by drawing attention to the prophecies about him in earlier scriptures. The first edition of Mithaq-un-Nabiyyin (later known in English as Muhammad in World Scriptures) had just been published.

The anti-Ahmadiyya groups arrived and asked that their reciter of the Quran be allowed to open the meeting with a recitation. The organisers felt that if they refused, the opponents would say that Ahmadis don’t respect the Quran and a riot would start. So they let their reciter start reciting.

As was the opponents’ plan, having started reciting the reciter simply wouldn’t stop! It was intended by them that he would take up all the time of the meeting with his recitation, some 3 hours. Eventually when he was asked to stop, the anti-Ahmadiyya groups broke into a riot, claiming that Ahmadis were preventing recitation of the Quran. They smashed the lights, threw stones, jumped on the stage. Even in those pre-partition days, the police did nothing to stop this. The function was wrecked. The Muslim newspapers of Lahore expressed pride at this disruption.

It was actually the anti-Ahmadiyya groups who were abusing the Quran by using it as a ploy for their own ends. The same tactics can be seen now, when they use ‘love of Islam’ or ‘love of the Holy Prophet’ merely as a false cover for their hooliganism.

“Tourists flock to ‘Jesus’s tomb’ in Kashmir”

Submitted by Rashid Jahangiri.

Tourists flock to ‘Jesus’s tomb’ in Kashmir
By Sam Miller
Srinagar
BBC Radio 4
March 27, 2010

A belief that Jesus survived the crucifixion and spent his remaining years in Kashmir has led to a run-down shrine in Srinagar making it firmly onto the must-visit-in India tourist trail.

See this link.
By Sam Miller
Srinagar
BBC Radio 4
March 27, 2010

Chance for Crankthatskunk to take me to court

I am making my response to the following part of the comment by Crankthatskunk into a separate post. (His other points I will attend to later on under his comment).

He writes:

[quote]
3- I repeat once again, take my “Butler test”; not the hilarious fudge you showed last time, then find out; how I am compare to them. Find out who is going to run. Why don’t you take me on?

Zahid, let’s face it, you are gutless, you very well know I will destroy Mirza’s credibility and the basis of your cult. You will never ever take that chance, because you know I will fulfil my promise if you ever show foolishness to go to court of Law against someone like me. Do this and you will find out the bitter truth. I just laugh at your hypocrisy, lack of courage, and your capacity to make lame excuses.
[unquote]

Crankthatskunk asks me to give him the chance to take me to court. Here it is.

I hereby make the following statement about him, and he can institute defamation proceedings against me if he wishes:

His challenge to a debate is quite fake and fraudulent because he is on the side of those who oppress and persecute Ahmadis and who prohibit Ahmadis from expressing their views as is done in Pakistan. He is therefore lying when he says he wants a debate with Ahmadis, because what he supports and wishes to see is that their voices are strangled.

Crankthatskunk poses the danger of inciting people to murder Ahmadis. The organisations he supports have already murdered Ahmadis and burnt their properties.

I speak as one whose close personal friend, and Ahmadi Imam, was shot dead at point blank range in 1986 by a man motivated against Ahmadis by the kind of hate-inciting propaganda that Crankthatskunk is spreading.

Crankthatskunk believes that Ahmadis are murtadd (apostate) and that it is the duty of Muslims to kill apostates.

His question number (3) makes it clear that he believes in a violent jihad against the British government (because it was this war-like striving that Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad said was against the Quran). Crankthatskunk clearly wishes to incite Muslims in Britain to resort to violence against the state. He is therefore a risk to peace and order in the UK.

This should give Crankthatskunk sufficient grounds for instituting defamation proceedings against me.

Search feature extended

I used to be puzzled when, searching for terms in this blog which I knew should be found, I would not get any results back. Other readers may have had the same experience. I then realised that the default WordPress search was only searching the initial posts, and not the subsequent comments on the posts. Today I have added a plug-in which searches comments as well. I have tested a search before and after installing the plug-in, and confirmed that it does search comments.

Each search result is a link leading you to the start of a post, plus its comments, within which the terms occurs. To reach the term on that page, you can do a ‘find’ in your browser (In IE: Edit > Find on this page. In Firefox: Edit > Find. In Google Chrome: ‘Control the Current Page’ > ‘Find in Page’).

Post-1974 denials of being Ahmadi, and ironies

In the immediate aftermath of the 1974 declaration of Ahmadis as non-Muslim, some people in Pakistan issued announcements that they were not (or were no longer) Ahmadi but were ‘Muslim’. This was done usually in order to avoid facing intense hostility, discrimination, social ostracism etc. To convince their friends and acquaintances that they really meant it, they cut off all connection with the Jamaat, discarded any Jamaat books that were in their homes, strictly forbade any Ahmadi who was visiting them from making any mention of the Jamaat while in their houses, etc.

Time passed.

A person then middle aged became elderly. The elderly have a tendency to forgot recent events while their impression of events of longer ago remains strong. They often find comfort in regressing to a time sixty or seventy years ago. The person who did all the above in 1974 has a hazy memory of the denial, but does clearly remember times before that and starts speaking with affection about the Jamaat elders of those times! I wonder if according to the Maulvis such a person is now a murtadd, perhaps a “memory-loss murtadd”!

Another event in this connection. In Pakistan a person grows up in a “denial” household and impresses upon Ahmadis that for the sake of their own safety and lives they must deny being Ahmadi and become ‘Muslim’ under the Constitution, which he is proud of being.

Time passes. It is 2005. The person happens to come to U.K. where the train bombings have just taken place in London. The police are on the look out for Pakistani or Muslim looking people travelling on trains wearing backpacks. The person tells his friends that he is worried about being needlessly picked on, while being a wholly innocent person. Now his convenience lies in not being thought of as a Muslim!

I joke: If I was stopped and questioned I would show the authorities the Pakistan constitutional amendment and some anti-Ahmadiyya literature and say, look I am a non-Muslim according to the “entire Muslim Umma”, and in fact our Founder has been declared by them as being your (i.e. British) agent!

Significance of the ‘Kalima’

Submitted by Ikram.

Repeatedly on this site attention is drawn to the Kalima-Shahada which is:

Ashhadu an la ilaha ill-Allah, wa ashhadu anna Muhammad-ur rasul-ullah
“I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, and I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah”

This declaration is the fundamental oath of a Muslim. It identifies the source of belief (Allah) and the messenger (Muhammad)

By declaring Allah as one’s God, one is barred from either thinking or acting like a god himself unto others neither taking others as god unto oneself. This declaration fundamentally humbles and unburdens mankind from shackles of arrogance, myths and fears of life, thus unleashing human potentials. Yet, it is the very objective of Islam to revive godly attributes in one-self.

By declaring Muhammad as the messenger, the oath assigns a human status to Muhammad and prevents the Muslims from attributing super human qualities to him. Unlike other religions whose followers, out of love for their respective messengers, coupled with their ancestral and inherent idolatrous traditions, over a period of time started attributing godliness to their messengers. In contrast, this oath preserves the fundamental immaculate monotheistic nature of Islam.

In light of the Kalima, it does not behoove the holders of majority point of view to act as God towards a minority opinion; else they are contravening the basic oath of Islam. Having the audacity to declare another adherent of this oath a Kafir is extreme form of arrogance.

Quran draws attention to the moral laws of retribution for such behaviors where it speaks on behalf of the minority:

5:59. Say, “O People of the Scripture! Do you not blame us because we believe in God, and that which is revealed to us and that which was revealed before? And because most of you are drifting away from the Right Direction?”

Quran then in the same breath admonishes the majority:

5:60. Say, “Shall I point out to you something much worse for retribution with Allah? Worse is the case of those whom Allah has rejected, and His Law of Requital hits them. And whom Allah’s Law relegated from the honorable stature of humanity and they started behaving like apes and swine (2:65). And they fell into becoming the slaves of TAGHOOT (tyrants and the priesthood of any religion (4:51)). Such are in worse plight, and farther astray than the mockers.”

Quran then continues on to identify such transgressors by their attributes:

5:61 When they come to you O believers, they say, “We believe”. In fact they come in disbelief and depart in disbelief. God knows best what they conceal.

5:64 (The Divine System wants people to contribute to the society) The Jews say, “God’s hand is tied down.” It is their hands that are tied down. Their uttering deprives them of God’s Grace. His hands are wide open and He showers His Bounties according to His Laws. (O Prophet) Since the Revelation given to you by your Lord brings about a benevolent revolution in the society, people with selfish interests hate it. Many of them plunge deeper into transgression and disbelief. Consequently, Our Law has sent down into their hearts and ranks animosity and hatred until the Day of Resurrection. God has put down the flames of war that they repeatedly ignited. They try to create corruption and disorder in the land and God does not love the corruptors.

At the time of revelation of these verses, the transgressors were people belonging to older interpretations of the scriptures. Now that we have Quran for more than fourteen hundred years, these verses squarely include the arrogant Mullahs and their followers as well. With this in mind, please re-read the verses above.

[The Qur’an As It Explains Itself – Shabbir Ahmed]