False Statement by a Maulana
Maulana Mufti Zubair Bayat, President of the Jamiat-ul-Ulama of the Natal Province on the ‘Ahmadiyya Case’ in South Africa
by Dr. Zahid Aziz
The Light (UK), July 2008 Issue (pp. 7–8)
The famous Pakistani Urdu newspaper Nawa-i-Waqt, Lahore, dated 31st May 2008, carries a short interview with a Maulana Mufti Zubair Bayat, (page 20, column 3) described as President of the Jamiat-ul-Ulama of the Natal province in South Africa. The Maulana was interviewed by a Nawa-i-Waqt correspondent during the Maulana’s visit to Makka where he was performing Umrah.
One question which the Maulana was asked by the interviewer was as follows:
“How many Qadianis are there in South Africa, and what line of action are the Muslims there taking in order to defeat the mischief (fitna) of Qadianiyyat?”
The question is itself biased against the Ahmadiyya Movement by assuming that it is a fitna and that to defeat it is a creditable achievement! If the question was merely prejudiced, the reply given by the Maulana was entirely false. He said:
“A few years ago, Muslims in South Africa instituted a court case against Qadianiyyat in the High Court. They made it clear that the Ahmadiyya community is not a sect of Islam but is a new religion. They have no connection with Muslims; in fact, the Qadianis are a non-Muslim group. The High Court of South Africa considered the beliefs of the Qadianis and, being sensitive to the feelings of the Muslims, it ruled in favour of Muslims by declaring the Qadianis as kafir [non-Muslims]. On the side of the Muslims, Ulama from Pakistan such as Maulana Manzoor Ahmad Chinioti and others played an important role. If today there are any Qadianis in South Africa, it must be an insignificant number.”
As this Maulana is from South Africa, he cannot plead ignorance for his mis-statements in this reply. While being on Umrah in Makka, a sacred occasion, he has uttered a number of absolute untruths in his reply, as we explain below:
1. No “Qadiani” was at all involved in any such court case in South Africa. In one case it was a member of the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement and in the other case it was a Sunni imam who was being persecuted by the ulama because he regarded Ahmadis as Muslims. This was in the 1980s.
2. The “Muslims in South Africa” never instituted any court case against any Ahmadi. Both court cases were instituted against the Ulama.
3. No court in South Africa has at all, ever, ruled that Ahmadis are kafir. In fact, in the case that concluded in 1985 the court ruled that Lahore Ahmadis, the plaintiffs, are Muslims. The court determined that the Ulama were defaming our members by calling them kafir, and it prohibited them from continuing with this defamation.
4. The claim of the Maulana that “Muslims in South Africa” filed a suit is quite shameful for the following further reasons: (a) The Ulama vigorously submitted to the court in 1984 that the court, being secular, was not qualified to determine who is a Muslim. (b) When the court ruled in favour of the Ahmadi plaintiff, the Pakistani Ulama and legal experts who had been helping the Ulama in South Africa published statements in Pakistani newspapers in November 1985 saying that “the judge was a biased Jew” and as “Qadianis are agents of Israel” therefore he ruled in their favour.
But now history is turned on its head and we are told by the Maulana in his interview that the Ulama actually themselves asked the court to determine if Ahmadis are Muslims, and the court gave a ruling in favour of the Ulama. What, we ask, happened to the “biased Jewish judge” story that was splashed across Pakistani newspapers by these Ulama in November 1985 and retold in Muslim organs all over the world?