My response to the Addendum of T. Ijaz (26 February 2004)
I asked T. Ijaz by e-mail: Could you please let me know the name and date of the original source in which this statement of Maulana Nur-ud-Din was first published?
His reply: The book by Zafrullah Khan sahib is the source - a compilation of written statements of Maulvi Nurrudin, including letters to Ahmadis. I don’t think that letter was published in a jamaat periodical.
My comments on content of letter
Parts of this 1907 letter are self-contradictory and confusing because either the translation is badly done or possibly the context in which the letter was written is unknown, without which it cannot be properly understood. But most importantly, the key point that T. Ijaz is making from this letter (that Ahmadis should make no distinction between those who do not believe in the Promised Messiah and those who do not believe in the Holy Prophet Muhammad) is contradicted by the published statements of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and Maulana Nur-ud-Din himself, including statements made after 1907, and is also entirely opposite to what the Qadiani Khalifas have been declaring during the last fifty years.
As to the quotation being self-contradictory and confusing, it begins by quoting from the Quran that some messengers were exalted above others. But then he says: “If there were not equality of status between Messengers, ...”, meaning that there is equality of status, but the verse he has quoted says the opposite (that messengers were of differing ranks). He goes on: “... there would not be such equality of status as you have in mind between those who do not believe in them”. This is completely confusing. How does the Maulana know what the questioner has in mind from the words of the question? The Maulana appears to be saying that the questioner believes in equality of status between the two sets of rejectors, and yet he is also answering as if he disagrees with the questioner!
What I have called T. Ijaz’s key point was being contradicted by the Promised Messiah at the very time of this 1907 letter and later. In Haqiqat-ul-Wahy, published May 1907, he protested strongly (p. 119-120), saying that he did not take the initiative in calling his Muslim opponents as kafir but that they were the ones who took the initiative: “…how dishonest it is that, while they are the ones who call us kafir, they accuse us of having declared all Muslims as kafir”. A few days before his death he again declared most strongly that he did not call as kafir those who did not call him so (Malfuzat, v. 10, p. 376-378). Thus those who merely do not accept the Promised Messiah are not regarded by him as kafir. So they are far from being the same as those who do not accept the Holy Prophet Muhammad.
In 1912 Hazrat Maulana Nur-ud-Din was asked “about the instruction in the conditions of the bai‘at to show sympathy to Muslims: Does it mean Ahmadi Muslims or non-Ahmadis as well?” He replied: “This means all Muslims, whether they are Ahmadis or non-Ahmadis” (Badr,18 July 1912). Again here the non-Ahmadis are classed as Muslims and are not classed with those who deny the Holy Prophet Muhammad.
In January 1954, the Qadiani Khalifa Mirza Mahmud Ahmad was asked at the Munir commission of enquiry the question: “Does not belief in a new prophet affect the attitude of those who accept him towards other people?” His answer was: “If he is a law-bearing prophet, then the answer is Yes. But if he does not bring a new law then the attitude of those who accept him towards other people depends upon how other people treat them.”
This reply is directly the opposite of T. Ijaz’s standpoint that there is no distinction between those who do not believe in a law-bearing prophet and those who do not believe in a non-law-bearing one.
When Mirza Mahmud Ahmad was asked in the same court: “Is it not kufr to deny a true prophet?”, he replied: “Yes, it is kufr, but kufr is of two kinds: one which expels a man from the religion and the other which does not expel him from the religion. Denial of the Kalima is the first kind of kufr. The second kind of Kufr results from wrong beliefs of a lower level.”
This is a very big distinction between those who do not accept the Promised Messiah and those who do not accept the Holy Prophet Muhammad.
When Mirza Nasir Ahmad was Qadiani Khalifa, he stated at a press conference in Europe in 1979, as published in the Qadiani Jama‘at book Daura-i Maghrib, that the difference between his Jama‘at and other Muslims was on a secondary issue, namely, that of acceptance of the Promised Messiah, and that all believers in the Holy Prophet Muhammad are agreed on the fundamental beliefs and practices, and that they (Ahmadis and other Muslims) are all part of the Muslim Umma. He is making a huge distinction between those who don't accept the Prophet Muhammad and those who don't accept the Promised Messiah. Those who don't accept the Promised Messiah are, according to Mirza Nasir Ahmad, part of the Muslim Umma, following the same fundamental religious beliefs and practices as the Ahmadis.
This issue (whether other Muslims become non-Muslim by not accepting the Promised Messiah) is the key point underlying our differences. Hence I have selected it here for rebuttal.
Zahid Aziz.