The fact is that they compare what followed our Huzoor’s death with what they saw during his lifetime. This is not a true comparison because it is a fallacious comparison. What is more important, and this is the fundamental point in this allegation or this point of view, which has to be analysed first. The western so-called orientalists who study Islam, they also take up this stance and exaggerate what follows Huzoor’s, or his death, with a particular purpose in mind. They want to say that all the gains of Islam were temporary and transient and nothing was left in it.
The moment our Huzoor closed his eyes, everything was totally lost and the Arab returned to its old pre-Islamic feudal position. So that was the gain of Islam. Only a few years of our Huzoor’s time and after all that bloodshed, it is not worthy of mention in the history of nations. That is the real objection behind all these exaggerations of history, distortion of history. The fact is that this comparison is wrong. We must be pragmatic about what happened and start from the beginning. The Arabs whom Huzoor addressed, they were a completely different people from the Arabs which he left.
So different that they are unrecognisable. Not only this is true, but that is also true, that those who had gone astray after his death and fought with each other, even those were so different from the pre-Islamic Arabs that there is no comparison to be made. So the sum total, the sum gain is so obvious. If you compare the condition of the pre-Islamic Arab with the post-Islamic Arab and take our Huzoor’s era out of it for a while, that comparison would be true comparison and that would be the true Islamic gain which we see in that comparison. So the gain is there and very much so. The message of the Muslims on both sides of the warring factions were morally so highly elevated that their style of war, their attitude to each other, their behaviour in victory, their conduct in defeat, everything is different from the pre-Islamic Arab. And they are highly civilised people now. So what happened then?
If they had gained so much, why a difference appears from the time of the Prophet and the time after his departure? That is very obvious. The fact is that the Prophet had brought a book, a teaching, and also he had his personal conduct to play, personal role to play. The book in itself was not enough, nor the teaching. It was his outstanding authority and outstanding example which completely dazed the Arabs. They were such unruly, defiant people that the greatest miracle that was shown by Hazrat Muhammad Mustafa was this, he harnessed them so perfectly and so completely that they were like fully trained animals. It was not within them to revolt against him. And that was due to his personal influence, in addition to the Islamic influence. When he was removed from the scene, there had to be a difference. If there was no difference then, one should say that for the Prophet to be or not to be, that was not very much important. While it was, nobody could replace the Prophet completely and perfectly. So that gap which appeared, the sudden shock, that had to be noticed. And that is what is noticed from here nowadays, looking backward at the history. But not noticed, not observed in its true perspective.
That is an additional fact, to which you have yourself pointed out. The additional fact is that the animosities between the two factions, of Sunnis and Shias on the one hand, and the hostile attitude of the middle era Orientalists, both together have joined hands to distort those images. Whenever there is one particular issue to be observed, and I have investigated myself, I found that still there are seeds of truth scattered here and there in history, and still it is possible to put two and two together by a little effort, by the exertion of a little effort. So, this is how, this is the approach, exactly what you find in Khatam al-Nabiyyin, the book Khatam al-Nabiyyin by Hazrat Mirza Bashir Ahmad Sahib. He has straightened up quite a few things there, while the historians had distorted these things.
So it is for Ahmadis first to straighten things up, to put them back in the true perspective. Even when they do it, they must not hope too much, because a difference will positively be observed between the state of people whom we find in the time of Hazrat Muhammad Mustafa sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, and the state of people whom he left and after he left. Because his presence cannot be completely filled by any person on earth, however pious he may be. And the people whom he addressed were so unruly, and for centuries it had been their second nature to fight with each other, to revolt against authority, to take up petty differences and enlarge them into huge wars of bloodshed and destruction. This was the people.
So they had to revert anyway. Like a spring, when you leave it, it automatically collapses to its original size, but if a too powerful hand has extended it, it won’t fall back to the same original position. Still it will fall back. So what Hazrat Muhammad Mustafa sallallahu alaihi wa sallam brought about was the miracle that that spring was left very little to recede to its original position. Though it did, but very little. As compared to the pre-Islamic era, many goodness was deeply ingrained in them by Hazrat Muhammad Mustafa sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, which became a part of their life. And that was not affected. That is the goodness you see through the masses of Muslims as against the behaviour of the governments which followed.
Two different streams are observed from then on. One is the stream of the Muslim masses and the pious people. And the other is the stream of the government, which is not Khilafat, but is just Malookiyat. And the crimes of the Malookiyat are taken to be Islam by the Western historians intentionally again, to further exaggerate the situation and to prove their point. While the piety of masses is ignored, the piety of the pious people in whose hands Islam was ultimately handed over by Allah for its safety and its survival, those are the people who are termed differently Ghawth, Qutub and Wali and these people. I am talking of them.
They are spread all over the Islamic world. The great traditionists and so on and so forth. It was they who carried the banner of Islam, not the governments of Muslims. So it is an intentional distortion of history on the part of hostile historians to present Islam from the mirror, from the reflection in the mirror of the government. But that was not Islam. That was opposed to the real Islam in fact. The governments very soon had started opposing the Islam, the true Islam and they are known to have punished all the great ulema and great pious people, scholarly people. Yet they hired a few mullahs on their side. So mullahism was then from then on protected by the government. That mullahism is not the scholastic Islam at all.
That mullahism is an instrument in the hand of the government to employ against piety, against true Islam. And the parallax from then on is seen to develop and to become larger and larger. This is the history of Islam and what they did to Islam in nutshell. In this perspective, those things do not appear to be strange, but otherwise look very strange to you.
