This question is very important and very interesting as well, and it has many aspects. Number one, the same question has been asked of me from a completely different angle. Some people wanted to know that other people than religious have been persecuted and prospered in the world. Other isms and movements. So what is the criteria for truth then? What is the distinctive mark of religious truth as against the truth of a secular nature? Now you are asking it differently. Within the realm of religion, you want to ascertain which are the signs of truth while apparently there is similarity of situation between two sides.
For instance, let’s define that by calling them Baha’is. There are Baha’is in the world who are being persecuted, and so are Ahmadis. So why do we say that we have been persecuted for the sake of Allah and Allah would look after us and this is a sign of truth? Why shouldn’t Baha’is make the same claim and run away with it? That is the question perhaps, or anything which applies to a similar situation. So let’s just find out the nature of the claim. And the nature of the claim also calls into mind the claimant and his personality and his character.
Just the single factor of persecution is not enough to prove anything. Because as I mentioned earlier, this is a factor which is present and common between religious and secular both. So by itself it is not a distinctive feature. People have been persecuted for their crimes. People have been persecuted against their organized effort to capture some societies and for other secular reasons, for political reasons and so on and so forth. So just the factor of persecution cannot decide. Now the claim also cannot decide alone.
The point is what the claim is, number one. Number two, the constancy of the claimant. Whether he stood firm in his claim or wavered and was shaken after the persecution or under the influence of persecution. And thirdly, what is the outcome of that struggle against odds. These three factors put together would decide to some extent. Now in case for instance of Baha’is as compared to Ahmadis, one thing is very obvious that the claim, the founder of Baha’is, first it was Baha’is and then Baha’is, the claim that was made has been wavering and at times has been taken back and has been changed completely.
So that is something which does not indicate that the source of origin to be Allah. Because Allah does not falter under the influence of persecution and does not permit his prophets or his messengers to change their claims. For instance, Allah has been categorically told that if you budge an inch or make the slightest diversion from your course, Allah will abandon you and you will be totally destroyed. You will have no place to step on. This is the Holy Quran’s claim giving a warning to Allah, not that there was a possibility of having ever done it, but only to emphasize in principle that Allah’s prophets never budge an inch and they never falter in their claims.
Moreover, they do not change their claims to suit the situation, to make the claims more popular. The fact is that their claims always remain to be the bitterest and challenging to the society. Once they make a claim and an opposition starts, their second claim is always more bitter and more pronounced in the same direction of offending others. While there are others who do not follow this line, once a claim is rejected and they are persecuted, they find new societies and change their claim to suit the new societies and make new measurements. With the result that they are after the public pulse, the public beat, and they want to measure the rhythm of the public intentions. And for instance, like politicians, they have their fingers on the pulses of the people and if they have made a wrong claim, then they rectify it to suit the people.
Now, I will explain the first part, then I will compare it with a similar situation. Hazrat Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam made a claim to address the Meccans to begin with. Apparently from the Holy Quran it seems that he came to threaten to warn ummul quraa wa maa waman hawlaa the people of Mecca and those who were around. But even before that, we read it mentioned anzir ashirataka wal aqrabeen anzir ashirataka wal aqrabeen You warn your next of kins and close relations. ashirataka wal aqrabeen So the orientalists have picked it up.
They say that he is inventing claims because the first claim is narrow and shorter, the second becomes wider and he is progressive. And when he goes to Medina, he begins to address the Ahle Kitab as well, the Jews and the Christians. And in the end, he becomes the prophet of the whole world. So it is just a psychological development that we observe in him. This is their claim. But from the criteria which I have put forward, this is not a proof of his falsehood. This is the strongest proof of his truth. Because if you study human nature more minutely and acutely, you will find that their inference is totally wrong. If a claimant makes a small claim and then he is well received and becomes popular, it is quite natural for him to step forward in the same direction and widen the claim.
And if that claim is also accepted with pleasure and open arms, then naturally he should think why not take a few steps further. But if after making the first small claim, he is beaten thoroughly and thrashed and treated so ill that a man of smaller stature may have committed suicide in such situations. Then psychology demands that if it is a false man, he should not go ahead and make a more offending claim to the rest of the world and broaden the circle of his own enemies by widening his claim. So here, this is the situation. In the case of a true prophet, this always is the situation. And in the case of Prophet Muhammad, this situation is highly pronounced. That what Meccans did to him did not frustrate him. It should have frustrated him. But he widened his claim.
You know what happened when he called them to a feast and told them what his claim was and why he had called them because Allah had told him So they all got up and became very furious and Abu Lahab insulted him in very strong terms and said, what is this nonsense? So they ate his food and ran away calling him bad names. And then to go to Medina and instead of making them friends to turn them into enemies as well. And then as if it were not enough to make the whole world his enemies. This is not possible if the claimant was a false claimant. So in case of Ahmadiyyat, this is exactly the situation. Hazrat Masih Maud A.S. never made a popular claim throughout his life. Never made a compromise.
For instance, each claim he made was bitter and it widened the sphere of his enemies. There is not a single claim which won him friends. For instance, he first claimed to be a Mamur for the Muslims a Mahdi and you know how bitterly they opposed him. Then he instead of eating his words retrieving what he had said he went forward and said, alright if the Muslims were not enough enemies why not turn the great British Empire into an enemy? And claimed that the only son of your God is dead. And I am Messiah. That was the bitterest claim that one could ever make or think of in the great British Empire which went for converting India en masse. That was their policy. They were spending billions of rupees at that time.
So that was the claim. And now two enemies have been made. Then he considers, alright, what about Sikhs? They are majority around Kanyan and so on. So why not turn them into enemies? So he claimed that you have no religion at all. All you have is Islam. And the founder which you call a guru or founder of a new religion was just a convert He was a Muslim. That inflamed Sikhs very much. And they were the strongest community around Kanyan. The largest single religion in India which was the most powerful as well was Hinduism.
So he was not fully satisfied with that. He said, alright, let’s turn them into enemies as well. This is not enough for me. So the founder made two-fold claims to antagonize both the important sects of Hindus. Number one, Arya Samajis. They were most volatile and militant Hindus. In Punjab particularly they were the strongest militants of any religious followers. And he claimed that you say that God is one and this is Hinduism Aryans are those who believed in the unity of God and claimed that this was Hinduism. So he proved them to be false. He said you are thieves.
You have taken the concept of unity of God from the Holy Quran while the Vedas are full of filth and pantheism and idolatry and all these things and you say that Hinduism believes in monotheism this is totally wrong. And he challenged Lekhna. He was one of the leaders of Arya Samaj. And he was murdered as prophesied by him. So that was his claim not to win over a strong party from among the people but to further antagonize. He went after them like anything. He said look here, you believe you attack Islam by permitting 4 wives while you permit 11 husbands to a wife by preaching Yoga and this and that. And his attack on Hinduism on all aspects their concept of co-existence of God with creation and all that those who read his first book Brahin-e-Ahmadiyya noticed from there that there was a rising star who is going to defend Islam on all directions. But later on when he made the claims then he went into open debates with strong Hindu leaders on these issues. And many books are written on this issue.
So the whole of India was inflamed against him. Not at the time of Brahin-e-Ahmadiyya. Not a single voice was raised against him at that time. But when he started making claims then there was not a single denomination of human beings you can conceive whom he had not turned against him. Through a progressive claim a chain of claims which went in the direction of creating hostility. Not winning friends. This is the important feature. As I have explained in the first instance. In the case of Baha’i-ism, if that is the direction then one should suspect that they are also right. But this is an absolutely different story with them. First they claim that Baha’u’llah claims that I am the door through which the new reformer would appear.
I just announced the coming of the new reformer. Then he started the claim that I am the God manifest. Making this claim. Then when he was opposed he took back that claim at different places and said no this was not my claim. My claim is that. Then Baha’is claimed that they are a part of Islam for a while. When they were treated ill at the hands of the then government of Iran and externed, then they openly claimed that they were messiahs not for the Muslims. But the messiah of Christians outside Islam and they had come to amend Islam.
And later on their concept of messiahhood was a compromise between Christianity and Islam. This is why they became popular in the Christian world. They started supporting the Christian belief and tried to win friends there. So only if you study the history of varying claims by Baha’u’llah and the subsequent followers that would prove that they are not consistent in their claims. They keep on varying. So that is one way of studying whether the phenomena is similar to the phenomena of prophethood that has been unfolded to us through ages past or it differs in fundamentals. In this case we can prove and I have in fact books prepared. Have they come on Baha’ism? Afzal Sahib also from Iran also helped me in this. So this is very important.
We need them to be published immediately. This confusion must be removed. That Baha’is are similar to us. They are not at all. They are fundamentally different. And they are not different only to the messiah of Islam’s claims but they are different to this particular phenomena. Prophethood has a particular phenomena. There is no going back, no faltering. It has a direction and a set direction and every opposition further strengthens the claim and there is total lack of respect for the public opinion. But in Baha’ism exactly the opposite is witnessed. But that I don’t remember verbatim so I can What I was thinking was that Ahmadiyya views on Baha’ism should be widely published nowadays so that people may not confuse them with us particularly the Iranians. Because a section of Mullahs are now propagating that we are like Baha’is. We are not at all like Baha’is.
Now another important factor is very important. These are just academic studies nobody can enter into academic studies. There must be some open clear sign from Allah which we can present which makes distinction between one from the other. That is Allah’s behaviour to those who persecute his dear ones. Allah’s treatment to those who persecute his people. In case of true prophets Allah’s punishment is very fair and very strong and visible and noticeable to those who continue to persecute the true followers of Allah’s path. And not only that it is foretold. In each case there is a prophecy covering that treatment which would be meted out by Allah to those people. And apparently there is no reason why this should happen.
Because in worldly persecutions and in case of persecutions of false claimants this does not happen. This is exactly the situation with the Iranians with Baha’is. The persecutors of Baha’is were never punished. They flourished. They succeeded in curbing them. They succeeded in checking them out. And they did whatever they wanted to do without any punishment from Allah which could tell very prominently and visibly that Allah shows his wrath to those who persecute his people. And there was no prophecy either. In case of Ahmadiyyat there are prophecies by Prophet Muhammad. But it is a so widespread spread phenomena.
So widely experienced phenomena that even there are Ahmadis individually who are persecuted and Allah tells them that I will do this to your enemies. And it so happens. There would be instances where one of their forefathers who became Ahmadis saw some signs of Allah and his closeness and nearness. This is a phenomena totally lacking in cases of false claimants. For instance I will quote the shahadat of S. Abdul Latif Shaheed. Now so many people are murdered every day. Much more in number than those who follow Allah and accept his messages.
As far as the persecution intensity and amount of persecution is concerned in reality those who are secular who have no friend in God, they are murdered en masse. And nobody takes notice of them. But the religious people become pronounced because Allah has an eye on them and their persecution becomes much more pronounced than the others. But anyway that’s not the point of discussion. The point is that while thousands or sometimes hundreds of thousands of people are murdered and persecuted, nobody is told by Allah that this is what I am going to do to your persecutors. Nobody makes such claims and that does not happen either. In case of this first nature of persecution that is religious, truly religious persecution the phenomena is fundamentally different. There are thousands of cases in 74 where Ahmadis were told that Allah’s aid would come to them and it came to them and Ahmadis were told that their enemies would be punished and their enemies were punished. And in such manners that it was for a common neutral observer it was impossible to discredit that and say it may have happened accidentally.
There was no question of accidents involved. It happened systematically. And I have got a collection of such cases certified by non-Ahmadis. I think if you write to I think it must be lying there that file. I couldn’t get all the cases but maybe there are hundreds where I tried to get it certified by the local people that these were the circumstances in which Ahmadis were treated. This was the fate of those who did it. And the fate was so similar in nature and sometimes so outstanding and rare that it was the local people themselves who felt this was because of that.
For instance, in Montgomery, which is your district there was a family not a family I think one single man who was sleeping in the mosque when the enemies attacked the mosque and they rolled him in the straw mat and tried to put him to put fire. In fact they put the mat on fire and they thought he would be burnt alive or strangled. So after a while they left. But you know how the fire works in sheets wrapped up sheets. It goes along the sheets. So apparently it was burning and although he was blistered very severely, but when they left he was still alive and the inner sheet had not yet caught the fire. So he survived with the grace of Allah and went out.
Now after a month from this there was an accident of a bus in which it was reported that no people died of accident. Nine people of a single family got burnt in the accident because of the petrol which caught fire and they all belonged to the single family and that was the family which was responsible for this. These men belonged to a single family who tried to put him on fire, to burn him alive and the report of accident when I read I was surprised. I didn’t know that this was a family. I sent someone I said go and investigate. They must be the same people because this news is very strange. It does not normally happen that there is a bus accident, nobody gets killed but nine people get burnt and burnt to death and they are all of the same family.
Then testimony came that the elder members of this family were responsible for that effort and it was their family which was burnt alive. So there are so many such cases. In case of Hazrat Shahzada Abdul Latif Shaheed a very interesting incident when he was taken to be stoned and buried in soil that was the time when a British engineer chief engineer at that time was working in Kabul. After that period of Habibullah he wrote a book under the title of An Absolute Amir. That was the title, under An Absolute Amir. So that was just a secular study historical study of how absolute he was and what happened during his lifetime and this and that. He quotes now and the words will be mine but this is exactly what he has written. He says during the lifetime of that Amir it so happened that there was a great mullah who was the court mullah and highly respected man. He went to India and accepted a claimant who called himself a Madhi and Basaya and this and that.
And although he knew that he would be severely punished he came back and he I mean from the government side debate was organized between him and the top mullahs and this is a long story very interesting but I cut it short. We reach the end. What he tells which is very significant and which relates to this discussion is this. That he says that before he was to be stoned he told the people around that I know one thing Allah has told me that a great calamity is going to befall you and that will happen very soon. So I am not afraid for myself but I am afraid for you. You will be terribly punished by Allah. So nobody paid heed to this but he said that the first strange thing that happened was that half an hour after his stoning a strange let’s say dust storm like a typhoon appeared which was totally red in colour and this was no season for dust storms.
Never in the history of Kabul a storm had appeared during that season and then of that severity and for it to be coloured red that was also something which aided the people to believe in the words of that Mullah. He used the word Mullah and they started talking and they said that Mullah must be right he must have been a godly person and this is the first sign that Allah has shown us.
So he said it was so strong a rumour that in the palace people shook with fear and they realised that this was a great blunder they had committed within 7 days according to his report he was a neutral observer, he doesn’t know Ahmadiyyat, even he misquotes Ahmadiyyat he said within 7 days a cholera broke out which was very severe in nature and thousands of people began dying and with great torturous deaths that ch
