Questioner: Do you get any feedback from the younger members of your community, any activity between themselves and the police, or any attitude?
Huzoor (rh): Not from our community. I have never come across any such complaint. Because I think of the same phenomena which I have just described. Our community is, although it’s oriental, different ethnic group, but it does not most often carry the same evils which belong to certain groups.
Because it is modelled on religious values, not only in just ideology, but practically we see to it that they carry those values in their conduct, and they become a part of their everyday life. So most of the Ahmadiyya youth, when you come across them, you will find they are different. Different from not only their own respective people of their own respective countries, different from others as well. They have a different courage, responsibility, they want to do good to others, they don’t want to be evil. So most often they don’t have to face police at all. Why should they?
But some of them, of course there are exceptions in every society, you can’t claim 100% purity or otherwise for any group. So I know some of them behave criminally, and they are apprehended as well. When they do, then we dissociate with them. We don’t stand for them, for their behaviour, sometimes we have to excommunicate them. And the result is that they are not encouraged to relate such things to me, of all the people, you know.
Even they would try to hide such experiences from the presidents of the local chapters. If these things are happening, even if they suffer at the hands of some police, so-called brutality, they would rather keep it to themselves than to let me know.
Questioner: Do you find that when you excommunicate a youth, the whole family…
Huzoor (rh): No, no, not the whole family, in fact the excommunication, when we say that, has a different connotation from the word as normally understood. We just tell them that you are no longer the spiritual part of the community, we will not accept any financial sacrifice from you.
It is a completely different type of punishment. Instead of their being deprived of any benefits, we tell them that we are going to be deprived of your benefits. When we call the community for community work, you will be exempted. We will not expect you to participate in community affairs. We are ceasing to accept financial contributions from you. So, if they have any spiritual value attached to the community, they suffer. If not, then they are no longer our members anyway. But as far as their parents are concerned, they are not only not advised, but they are not permitted to withhold any benefits which should normally flow from the parents to the children.
That sort of coercion and compulsion is not permitted in the community. If it were, then the whole system of morality would crumble down. Because we don’t believe in education through compulsions. That education doesn’t mean anything. As long as the compulsion is there, you behave. The moment you lift the lid off, then the whole thing explodes. So, our system is different. And most often they feel so much that they transform themselves. They reform and they cry and they write to me very, very pathetic letters that please let me participate in the community work again. I am so sorry and so on. So, this is the true reform which takes place through these measures which apparently are no compulsion at all.
