New Quotation about Finality of Prophethood
Qadianis omit Translation of Crucial Words
The Light & Islamic Review (US), July/August 1999 Issue (Vol. 76, No. 4, p. 14)
One of our venerable members in the North-West Frontier of Pakistan, Mr. Muhammad Ibrahim of the village of Data, has compiled an Urdu booklet (as yet unpublished) entitled
‘Hazrat Mirza’s denial of claiming prophethood and affirmation of the finality of prophethood’.
One reason for writing this booklet, says the author, is that he has discovered a powerful reference from Hazrat Mirza [Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian] which has never before been presented in our Movement’s extensive literature. It is a revelation which Hazrat Mirza mentions in his book Minan-ur-Rahman as follows:
“God revealed to me that the true religion is Islam, and the true Messenger is the Mustafa, the Leader and Imam, who is the Ummi and Amin. So, just as our Lord is the only One worthy of being worshipped and is One, similarly our Messenger is the only one who is to be followed. There is no prophet after him, and there is no partner with him in being the Khatam an-nabiyyin.” (Minan-ur-Rahman, See Ruhani Khazain, vol. 9, page 164)
This extract occurs in the part of Minan-ur-Rahman which Hazrat Mirza wrote in Arabic. Having read Mr. Ibrahim’s manuscript, we checked this reference in the Ruhani Khazain collection, the compilation of Hazrat Mirza’s books made by the Qadianis. There an Urdu translation of this Arabic section has been added under the Arabic, and in that Urdu translation the words
“There is no prophet after him”
have been missed out!
Similarly, we checked and found that these words have also been omitted by Muhammad Zafrullah Khan in his abridged English translation of Tadhkirah (the collection of the revelations of Hazrat Mirza), published 1976. We reproduce below, verbatim, Zafrullah Khan’s translation of the same passage:
“It has been revealed to me that the true faith is Islam and the true Prophet is Mustafa, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, who is the Chief spiritual leader and the immaculate and trusty Messenger. Thus, as worship is due to God alone, Who is One without associate, in the same way obedience is due to His Messenger alone, for he is unique in that he is the Seal of the Prophets (Minan-ur-Rahman, p. 20).” (Page 161)
He has left out the words
“there is no prophet after him”
which occur within this extract immediately before the words
“for he is unique in that he is the Seal of the Prophets (Khatam an-nabiyyin)”!
Zafrullah Khan knew Arabic sufficiently well to have translated the Holy Quran as well as a Hadith book into English, so he could hardly have been unaware that Hazrat Mirza’s original Arabic revelation contains the words
“there is no prophet after him”.
It is perfectly clear that the Qadianis have omitted these words in their Urdu as well as English translations of this revelation to suppress Hazrat Mirza’s real belief.
There also exists an English translation of the entire book Minan-ur-Rahman, by the Qadianis, entitled Arabic, Mother of all Languages, translated by Kazi Abdul Hamid in 1963 (from an Urdu translation, as he says in his Translator’s Note). There the translation runs as follows:
“So, just as, worship is for God alone Who is One without an associate, our Prophet too is unique in this respect that it is he who is to be followed. He is one by himself in this that he is the Seal of Prophets.” (pages 49–50, edition published 1979, Lagos)
Again, the words
“there is no prophet after him”
have been omitted before
“He is one by himself”.
The Qadianis may argue that Hazrat Mirza later on changed his views on this question. But Hazrat Mirza says that God has revealed to him that there is no prophet after the Prophet Muhammad, in a phrase akin to the one which occurs in many hadith reports (la nabiyya ba‘di). Therefore, he is not merely expressing his belief, he is relating what God told him. While the possibility of Hazrat Mirza “changing” his earlier beliefs might be admitted, surely no one can suggest that God sent a wrong revelation at first, informing Hazrat Mirza that there would be no prophet after the Holy Prophet Muhammad, and then later on God corrected His own earlier revelation!