First of all, I’ll attend to that part of the question which deals with yasya kudyama. You think that it was a debate between angels and God and angels were wrong or should have been proved wrong when they said and asserted that this would cause bloodshed. This is not so. Had the angels been wrong in their assessment, the holy Quran should have denied there and then that statement and said you are wrong or Allah might have punished them for making such wrong allegations against the best of his creation and all that.
While Satan is punished, angels are not. That shows that their statement was correct. Bloodshed was to follow the creation of Adam and that was a part of the scheme of things. But that bloodshed was not to be the responsibility of Adam or any false deeds on his part but was to be the responsibility of those who would oppose him. To that extent it is correct and every history of the beginning of any religion proves this fact that whenever a claim was made by someone to have come from God there was bloodshed. But it was the innocent bloodshed of Adam and his people shed by those who opposed them.
That is all which is meant by this statement and even now you are passing through that phase of history and you are observing it with your own eyes. Do you think that the Ahmadiyya bloodshed at the hands of non-Muhammadis is the responsibility of the Adam of this age or the responsibility of the enemies of the Adam of this age? What is your candid opinion about it? That is exactly what I was coming to, sir. That our sharia and our law has failed to inform the matter. Failed to do what? No, no, just a minute. That will come later on. First give answer to this question. Having observed the unfolding of the same old phenomena in your own lifetime, what is your candid opinion? Who is to be held responsible for this bloodshed which is caused by the claim of Hazrat Masih Maudud A.S. to have come from God? Who is to be held responsible? Yes, Ahmadis or Ahmadis enemies? Not Ahmadis. Not Ahmadis. Not Hazrat Masih Maudud A.S.
So this is exactly the debate that was held during the time of angels and first Adam. What angels said was there will be bloodshed. Allah said yes, there will be bloodshed but not at the hands of my people. Adam is not to be held responsible. It would be a bloodshed caused by the enemies. So that is all. As far as the reformation, the second, I am coming to the second part now. The reformation claimed by any religion is concerned. A reformation through coercion has never been claimed by any true religion or any religion at its source. Let’s not enter into the debate of what is true religion and what is not. Let us affirm only that every religion at source has been claiming freedom of conscience and the enemies of every religion at source when it came into being were the opponents of freedom of conscience. The religion was attempted to be suppressed by force and naturally the weapon of the opponents and the hostile elements was sword and the defendants could not preach use of sword in the matter of ideologies.
So they were completely free from any allegation to that extent. Now if that be true and this is exactly the case, then the second, the converse is also true. The religion which does not claim use of force would never propound a philosophy that the whole mankind is going to be reformed by that religion or a part of the mankind is going to be reformed by that religion whether people believe it or not. Only those will be reformed who accept the message of their abolition, not by force, because force is outside the realm of religion. So when the force is outside the realm of religion, no religion can make a claim of wholesale reformation. It’s impossible. Now that is the use of force in relation to a religion, to other religions or other societies around. Within religion too, there is no force.
So this is why I have appointed you among them as a warner and as one who admonishes. You are not held responsible for their acts and you are not to coerce them to follow you. That is the meaning of Musahadev. You are not responsible for the end product.
Only it is for you to convey. If they don’t accept, if they don’t believe, neither you are to cause nor will you be held responsible for their actions. So when the very claim of religion is not totalitarian, this is the gist of the religious claim. If man is not reformed, how can you say the religion has failed? Religion has succeeded in the claim that when man did not want to be reformed, we held true to our claim and we did not reform such a man. Those who wanted to be reformed, they got reformed. And they made a difference between them and the rest of the society. A visible, observable difference. And that is exactly the case today of the Pakistani society.
You can see a very great difference between the attitude and acts and the philosophy of life of Ahmadis as against the non-Ahmadis. So still among Ahmadis, they are monotheistic too, they are weak people too. And we are not using force to rectify them because it’s against the fundamental claim of religion. So if such things happen at the time of any religion, during the first part or the latter part, it is not a negation of the claims of that religion, rather it is a testimony to the truth of those claims.
