A Survey of the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement

History, Beliefs, Aims and Work

by Dr. Zahid Aziz

Text of pages 11 to 19:

Death of Jesus:

As Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was the mujaddid inspired by God to defend and extend the cause of Islam, his mind was illuminated by Divine light to receive the solution to this intractable problem. He announced, in 1891, that the belief in Jesus being physically lifted up to heaven was erroneous. Just as there are examples of other prophets being saved by God from death at the hands of their enemies and then dying a natural death later on, similarly Jesus, having survived death on the cross, had died on this earth after spending his remaining life. Hazrat Mirza established this on the basis of the Holy Quran and Hadith reports. Jesus was not alive now, but had died long ago, and would not return.

Promised Messiah:

But what of the Hadith prophecies speaking in detail of his return, and the signs of the last days such as the coming of a monstrous, one-eyed creature called dajjal [antichrist] who would wield divine-like power over the world and reduce the Muslims to utter helplessness, and who was to be vanquished by Jesus on his return? These Hadith reports are so widespread and well-recognised that they cannot all be rejected as spurious.1

Hazrat Mirza, again under Divine inspiration, offered a solution to this most perplexing riddle. Prophecies generally must be interpreted metaphorically, not literally, and by the coming of Jesus is meant the coming of a mujaddid of the Muslims bearing a likeness to Jesus, at a time and in circumstances similar to those in which Jesus arose. And who and where was the dajjal against whom the Messiah was to fight? All the signs of this dajjal were met with in the materialistic and the religious sides of modern Western civilisation. The Messiah of the prophecies, or the Promised Messiah, would have to counter the materialism and atheism of this civilisation, and show to it the existence of spiritual realities, and he would also have to refute the religious propagandists of this civilisation who were preaching the divinity of Jesus while he had taught the oneness of God.

The expected coming of Jesus was associated, in the prophecies, with the triumph of Islam in the whole world, and that was the mission which Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad proclaimed as being his. We may quote here from some of his writings published at the time when he first made the claim to be the Promised Messiah:

“Do not wonder that Almighty God has, in this time of need and in the days of this deep darkness, sent down a heavenly light and, having chosen a servant of His for the good of mankind in general, He has sent him to make uppermost the religion of Islam and to spread the light brought by the ‘best of His creatures’ [i.e., Prophet Muhammad] and to strengthen the cause of the Muslims and to purify their internal condition … The truth will win and the freshness and light of Islam which characterised it in the earlier days will be restored, and that sun will rise again as it arose first, in the full resplendence of its light.”2

Referring to a sign in Hadith that

“the sun will rise from the West”,3

he writes:

“What has been shown to me in a vision is this, that the rising of the sun from the West signifies that the Western world which has been involved of old in the darkness of unbelief and error shall be made to shine with the sun of Truth, and those people shall have their share of Islam. … In reality, the Western countries have, up to this time, shown very little aptitude for religious truths, as if spiritual wisdom had in its entirety been granted to Asia, and material wisdom to Europe and America … now Almighty God intends to cast on them the look of mercy.”4

“In this critical time, a man has been raised up by God and he desires that he may show the beautiful face of Islam to the whole world and open its ways to the Western countries.”5

Islam for Today’s World:

These were not merely claims. In his writings and lectures, particularly from 1891 when he claimed to be the Promised Messiah till his death in 1908, Hazrat Mirza has presented the principles of Islam in such a way as to show that they answer the doubts and questions of the modern age and meet the needs of the time. In this article, we have not the scope for giving even a proper summary of all the teachings that he put forward. However, it is essential to mention certain points as below.

Islam and other Religions:

Islam teaches that, before the Holy Prophet Muhammad, God raised prophets among all nations, and as is well-known, Muslims believe in the Israelite prophets, many of whom are mentioned in the Holy Quran. Hazrat Mirza explained, much more explicitly than any previous Muslim thinker or theologian, that this implies that the founders of the other great religions, besides the prophets of the Bible, were also prophets raised by God who received revelation. So Muslims should accept, for example, the great Hindu sages, Buddha, Confucius, etc., as true prophets of God. He laid great stress on the Islamic teaching of the universality of revelation, and contrasted it with the views of various religions which confined the great gift of God’s guidance to just their own nation, tribe or land. Commenting on the first verse of the Quran where Allah is described as

رَبِّ الۡعٰلَمِیۡنَ

“Lord of the worlds”

he writes:

“Opening the Holy Quran with this verse, which embodies such breadth of view, is a reply to those nations who limit, each to itself, the universal bounty and providence of God, and regard other peoples as though they were not a creation of God. … In the Holy Quran it is explained by various examples that just as Almighty God has been providing for the physical needs of the people of every country, so also has He been providing for the spiritual sustenance of every land and nation.”6

He believed that Muslims could establish peaceful relations with followers of other religions, such as the Hindu religion in his own country, by accepting the Divine origin of those faiths, and he proposed that followers of the other religions reciprocate by showing respect for the Holy Prophet Muhammad. In the modern world of travel and movement, with a much greater inter-mingling of followers of different religions than in the past, Hazrat Mirza has clarified the relation of Islam with other religions on a basis enabling Muslims and others to live in peace and harmony. He strongly supported the holding of inter-faith conferences where, in his words, the advocates of each faith would show the virtues and merits of their respective religions, rather than find fault with others. It is essential to point this out because he was forced to devote much of his time to refuting the most vituperative, scurrilous and bitter attacks on Islam and the Prophet Muhammad by Christian missionaries and leaders of the Arya Samaj Hindu sect. His statements made in response are often quoted out of their proper context to create an entirely false impression that he aggressively assailed other religions, while in fact he made it clear that such responses were specifically directed against venomous, unjustified attacks on Islam by particular individuals.

Tolerance and the True meaning of Jihad:

A related point upon which he laid stress is the Islamic teaching of tolerance and generosity towards other religious communities. This is also connected with clarifying the doctrine of Jihad and associated questions. Hazrat Mirza reiterated that Islam teaches its followers to show the greatest human sympathy, respect and kindness towards all human beings, regardless of their religion. Religious and doctrinal differences with others must never incite us to be unjust to them. Jihad as taught by Islam was not, as generally thought, the act of physically attacking non-Muslims or fighting a war against them. It may only take that form under special circumstances if an enemy seeks to destroy Muslims by force of arms. Jihad is a permanent struggle of two main kinds:

  1. An individual’s struggle to conquer his or her own passions and wrongful desires.
  2. The individual and collective struggle to present the message of Islam to the world by means of knowledge and argument. It was to this true Jihad that Hazrat Mirza directed his followers. The Quran itself commands Muslims: وَ جَاہِدۡہُمۡ بِہٖ جِہَادًا کَبِیۡرًا Wa jāhid-hum bi-hi jihād-an kabīr-an (25:52), meaning, Conduct a mighty jihad against the unbelievers by means of the Quran.

In the time of Hazrat Mirza, the doctrine of Jihad was greatly misunderstood by most Muslims as well as the critics of Islam. It is little different today, a hundred years later, with the tragic international consequences that we see. Jihad was taken to mean that Muslims were required to wage war against unbelievers. Naturally this portrayed Islam as a violent religion. By explaining the true meaning of this teaching, as found in the Quran and the example of the Prophet Muhammad, a great stigma was removed from the name of Islam. It was also taught by Hazrat Mirza that Muslims could not only live peacefully under non-Muslim rule, but indeed it was an obligation upon the Muslim citizens of a non-Muslim state to be law-abiding citizens of that country if they had the freedom in it to practise and preach their religion. He had a deep conviction that if Islam was propagated by argument and peaceful means it would win over the hearts of the non-Muslim nations ruling the Muslims. Therefore he wished to dissociate Islam altogether from force, violence and fanaticism. He also believed that, being in the likeness of the Messiah, he too should adopt peaceful means of preaching, and reject recourse to force.

Another consequence of his teaching in this respect is that Muslims can do their duty, as citizens, of obeying the secular authorities and at the same time follow their religious obligations of moral and spiritual progress, rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and rendering unto God that which is God’s — a distinction which it is generally thought Islam does not teach a Muslim to make. There are today Muslim minorities in every Western country, and also in other non-Muslim countries, who have to do exactly that. However, Hazrat Mirza did not believe that Muslims should do this out of opportunism, pragmatism or hypocrisy, but sincerely out of conviction. His approach was entirely opposed to the notion of rebelling against the authorities to establish a so-called Islamic government. In this age of argument and reasoning, he wanted Muslims to prove the truth of their religion and thereby change the thinking of their non-Muslim rulers.

Freedom of Religion given by Islam:

A final point in this connection is that the Islamic teaching giving every individual the freedom of religion and freedom of expression was greatly stressed by Hazrat Mirza. Not only does Islam recognise the freedom of non-Muslims to follow their own faiths, but a Muslim too is free to adopt another religion without fear of any legal penalty. Followers of Hazrat Mirza, as well as some other Muslims, have proved from the Holy Quran and the practice of the Prophet Muhammad that it is a sheer misconception to believe that so-called “apostasy” is punishable in Islam by any penalty whatsoever, still less the death penalty. Similarly, there is no punishable crime in Islam of “blasphemy” or “insulting” or “abusing” the Holy Prophet Muhammad, who himself underwent the bitterest abuse in his lifetime yet never sentenced anyone to any punishment for it.

As regards vituperative and offensive books written against Islam, Hazrat Mirza was of the view that the allegations contained in them must be refuted. Calls for the banning of such literature, which in any case is quite widespread and impossible to eliminate, or demands for action against its authors, merely encourage the impression that Muslims are unable to refute it. Hazrat Mirza believed that once doubts and questions have been raised in people’s minds, they cannot be removed by banning books but by countering them with accurate and authentic knowledge.

Supremacy of the Quran:

As part of his reform work, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad stressed to Muslims that they must restore the Quran to its rightful place that it should occupy in their individual as well as collective lives. Muslims no doubt held the Quran in very high reverence, but the ordinary Muslim used it only for formal recitation without knowing its meanings, this being done to mark certain important occasions in particular. The religious leaders and scholars based their understanding of the Quran on commentaries and books of law written centuries ago, which they regarded as providing the final, unalterable exposition of its meanings. With rare exceptions, they did not attempt to study the Quran directly and seek guidance from it on problems and questions arising in modern times. They declared it as unlawful to translate the Quran into another language and felt not the least concern for spreading its message in the world.

The Quran was thus a closed book to the Muslims, and Hazrat Mirza opened it up for them to use as intended by this holy Book itself. He thus addressed his own followers:

“Read the Quran with understanding, and love it very greatly. Love it as you have not loved anything else because God has informed me that all types of good are in the Quran. Pity be on those people who give precedence to something else over it. The source of all your success and salvation lies in the Quran. … God has done you an immense favour by giving you a book like the Quran… so value the blessing given to you.”7

He taught the principle that the Quran is the supreme authority of Islam, and anything found in sources such as Hadith, Islamic law books, commentaries of the Quran and histories, which conflicts with clear statements of the Quran, cannot be accepted as such. If possible it must be interpreted to accord with the Quran, otherwise it must be rejected. Following this principle enabled him to remove misconceptions about Islamic teachings on many points and to establish the truth. The death of Jesus, in addition to his survival from death on the cross, is clearly mentioned in the Quran. However, on the basis of Hadith reports prophesying his return to this world, Muslim scholars of a later age held that Jesus had never died but had been raised up to God’s presence in his living body, and thereby they overruled the Quran by those reports. Hazrat Mirza, however, gave precedence to the Quran and subjected the Hadith reports to the Quran’s verdict. Thus he proved that Jesus had died and reports of his second coming could be interpreted metaphorically to conform with this.

Another point clarified in this way relates to religious freedom in Islam. The Quran recognises full freedom of religion for everyone to adopt whatever religion anyone wishes, but Muslim jurists and scholars had drawn the conclusion from some reports in Hadith and other sources that if a Muslim leaves the religion of Islam he must be sentenced to death unless he returns to Islam. By placing the Quran first and accepting it as definitive and absolute, and treating other sources as secondary and accepting them conditionally, it is clear that there is no punishment whatsoever prescribed by Islam for apostasy. The related issues of the meaning of jihad and the conditions under which Muslims are allowed to wage war can also be easily settled by giving precedence to the Quran, and we find that Islam does not at all allow Muslims to engage in unprovoked, aggressive war, nor does jihad mean war. The widely-held view of Muslim scholars that certain later verses of the Quran have abrogated or cancelled injunctions in certain verses that were revealed earlier has also been proved to be wrong by the Ahmadiyya Movement on the basis that there is no inconsistency in the Quran.

It was because Hazrat Mirza brought the Quran to the forefront that his followers started its translations and their dissemination in the world at a time when hardly any translations by Muslims existed.

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Footnotes:

  1. For example, see Bukhari, Kitab-ul-anbiya and Kitab-ul-fitn, and Muslim, Kitab-ul-iman and Kitab-ul-fitn. ↩︎
  2. Booklet Fath-i Islam, published 1891, p. 7 and pp. 15–16. ↩︎
  3. Bukhari, Kitab-ul-fitn, and Kitab-ul-tafsir under Sura 6. ↩︎
  4. Izala Auham, published 1891, pp. 515–516. ↩︎
  5. Izala Auham, p. 769. ↩︎
  6. Message of Peace, English Translation of lecture Paigham-i Sulh delivered 1908, p. 2 and p. 3. ↩︎
  7. Kishti-i Nuh, p. 24. ↩︎

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