I started to talk to a non-Ahmadi Muslim who is Pakistani about five or six months ago. And initially I thought that I was just talking to a deaf ear because he was not ready to accept my views at all. He said, well I am quite contented, I believe in God Almighty, His Prophet and that is enough for me. But by the grace of Allah, I feel now he is moulding slightly. You must have turned to the other ear this time. That’s right sir. So first of all, may I very respectfully sir request you to kindly pray for him. Yes, Inshallah. Guide him.
Now yesterday sir, I was talking to him about the death sentences passed on two of innocent Ahmadis in Pakistan by the dictators of Pakistan. And his view was, although he is very sympathetic, but his view was that because there is an Islamic injunction that anybody who denounces Islam, he is liable to be executed. It was his viewpoint. And because from Pakistan point of view, or law in Pakistan, Ahmadis are non-Muslims or they have denounced in a way Islam, that’s why it is justified to kill. To kill two of them or all of them? That is still injustice to these two, that only they are picked out of so many, and everybody deserves to be killed according to this dictate.
Sir I try to answer this in my own way, but sir I would very respectfully ask you, is there any incidence in the history of Islam where the Holy Prophet or his caliphs exercised this? Yes, I’ll explain that. There is not a single incident in the lifetime of the Holy Prophet, where by his act or by his word, it can be even remotely implied that somebody should be killed against his profession, or for the crime of renouncing Islam. There is not a single incident in the lifetime of the Holy Prophet, nor could it be so because the Holy Quran categorically mentions the cases of such people who accept Islam once and then renounce it.
And if this was the injunction, that they should be killed, immediately there should have been a following order, such people should be killed and done away with. But the Holy Quran says, and then they accept Islam again, and then after a while they renounce Islam again, then still the order doesn’t come that they should be killed. Then Allah tells us that Allah would put them to hell after they die. If they die in this state of renouncement, if they die in such state of apostasy, then it is Allah who is going to punish them.
Nowhere any punishment is mentioned at the hands of Muslims in any way. So it is a big lie. It’s an allegation against the Holy Prophet of Islam that he taught his followers to punish apostates by death. Another way of looking at it is this, that the Holy Quran is full of incidents where previous prophets and their followers were treated by their enemies, who took exactly the view which the mullahs of today take according to their religions. They believed, or their faith or their isms, whatever it was, they believed that the death for apostates, the punishment for apostates is death.
So this is what they told the prophets and their followers, that because you are renegades, you have left our mullah, so the only natural consequence is that we must kill you, or you return to our ummah. Either this, or you should be expelled from this land. You have no right to live here anymore. This is how they addressed prophet after prophet, and incident after incident, the Holy Quran goes on relating and condemning it roundly, categorically. This was their attitude. This was their crime. And suddenly the whole picture is reversed, and the worst attitude, most strongly condemned by the Holy Quran, is attributed to the best of the prophets? Imagine.
It is the gravest crime against the holiness of Hazrat Muhammad Mustafa s.a.w. to attribute to him such a viewpoint, and to the Holy Quran such a viewpoint. What shall you do with the chapters which are dealing with all the previous ummahs at taking this attitude and being condemned to hell for this? And presenting on the other hand, the most wonderful stance of the prophets, who said, are you going to kill us, or through compulsion, you know, graft your views into our hearts? This is the nearest translation I can make.
Can you, per force, graft your views, your doctrines into our hearts, despite the fact that we are not convinced? We don’t want to adopt those doctrines. How can you do it? It is impossible for the sword to carry doctrines into one’s hearts by striking against the hearts. So that is the inadequacy and inability of that attitude to achieve any change in one’s views through force, which is exposed in these verses. And out of the blue, suddenly, the Holy Quran reverses the whole position, and the most condemned, the most ugly attitude in human affairs is being attributed to Muhammad and the very best to his opponents?
What a shame. These people are blind, they can’t see things. This is what the Holy Quran means by blindness, spiritual blindness. Now they later on, I was talking of the time of the Holy Prophet of Islam, Muhammad. Now we come to the time of Khilafat. We reach an age where religion was not separate from the state anymore. The Islamic conquest, which was first the conquest of the heart, ultimately ended into the conquest of the whole region, whose hearts were one, so the state automatically went into the hands of the Muslims.
So what the Caliphs inherited were number one, the spiritual leadership, and that was the most important thing they inherited from the Holy Prophet of Islam. Inherited not in the ordinary sense, but in the sense that they were made Caliphs after them by Allah. They were representatives of his spiritual authority and his spiritual task was to be carried out by them from then on. That is his inheritance. But also, they inherited the statecraft, the state, the government, which had automatically slowly got shifted into the hands of Hazrat Muhammad Mustafa sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
There is no revolution about it. It so happened that gradually he also acquired the state power. So the punishment against rebellion, rising against the state, is a crime which is punishable – I was describing it in a different manner, but now I come to this – rising against state, rebellion against state, is punishable by death, by any standards in the world. So this is exactly what the Muslim state found itself in. This was the state of affairs. And not only that, let’s enlarge upon it and examine it in detail what was actually happening.
When the tribe of Arabia rose against the government of Islam, also among them were those who claimed to be prophets, but who had not that claim of prophethood after the death of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam, who had made that claim during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam. So that claim should not have been confused with this rebellion against the state. Now what the Muslim scholars of today are trying to do is they are going to swap these situations. The act, the decision of the caliphs to move against these rebellious people was based on their rebellion against state.
So they switched this on to the claim of prophethood by some people among them. And they said, you see, this is a punishment. Because tribes had renegaded and accepted false prophets, and because to claim falsely to be a prophet is a crime punishable by death, so Hazrat Abu Bakr moved against these people and so Hazrat Ali and so on and so forth. This is false, absolutely false, because this claim to prophethood was made during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam and many tribesmen, many tribesmen followed in the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam people like Musail Maqazab.
And Hazrat Muhammad Mustafa sallallahu alaihi wasallam did not move an army against him and his people. On the contrary, his last order was to move against the northern borders of Syria where troops were being amassed against Islam, the world of Islam, and it was, the news had reached that Roman armies were, Constantinople armies were gathering there to attack the Arab world or the Muslim world, I should say. So that was his last order. It was not to march upon Musail Maqazab, but to march upon distant borders which were a few hundred miles, more than 200, about 300 miles or more perhaps, definitely more. No, no, not from Medina, I’m sorry. From Mecca, they are more than 300 miles, but from Medina, what the distance would be to the Syrian border of that time, I don’t know.
It would not be less than 150 miles or so anyway. So that was the order of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam before his death. You know when Osama bin Zayed was to lead that army against them. Now this is yet not all the picture. To see things in their true perspective, we have to find out a few more facts. It is wrong to claim that these were minorities, rebellion, rebellious people were in the minority and the whole might of Muslim ummah moved against them. It is exactly the opposite. They were in the majority and the whole might of these people moved against the Muslim ummah. So the whole perspective is completely changed and transformed.
The Mullahs paint a picture which has no reality, no relationship to reality. What was happening was that the entire world of the tribesmen, if not entire, some very important and powerful tribes, let’s say, living around Medina had gone into rebellion and a small town of Medina found itself in almost the same situation as during the battle of the trenches. The Muslims of Medina found them earlier and the fear was so strong and foreboding was so real that people like Hazrat Ali, who was one of the bravest, bravest companions of He advised Hazrat Abu Bakr to stop that Lashkar from moving northward, which had been ordered by the Prophet to move towards the Persian border.
Although he loved the Prophet so much, although he could not dare change his last wish, yet such was the urgency. This is what I am pointing out. A brave man, the bravest, perhaps among the fighters who ever fought with the Prophet. Yet he advised Hazrat Abu Bakr not to move the Lashkar because he said that we stand in danger of our lives today, we have nothing to defend. If you send all these people out, who will defend Medina against these tribes? The answer of Hazrat Abu Bakr Siddiq, you know well, you know what he said?
He said, who is Ibn Abi Qahafa, Abu Qahafa’s son, who is he to change the last wish of Hazrat Muhammad Mustafa when he comes to occupy his seat as his resurgent? You think his first order should be to cancel the last order of Hazrat Muhammad Mustafa? That was the comparison he made and that finished the case of all those who advised him. Just one word from Hazrat Abu Bakr left the entire opposition to this view. So the Lashkar was sent. After that what was left in Medina were a few old men, a few children and women or some young men who were not thought fit to move that far.
So to say that the army of Islam moved against these rebellions, these people who were denigrated, it is just an imaginary picture, a dream of the Mullah. This is not what had happened. The armies of the Arab tribes were moving upon Medina and they not only rebelled against the state, they attacked the state, they got the initiative in their hand. It was then that Hazrat Abu Bakr Siddiq was left with no choice but to move against them. And during all that campaign, you know what the orders were, that if you become conquerors, if you defeat them totally or partially, if you enter any village or any habitation where you enter after defeating the enemy, that is the state he is describing to the marching armies.
Your order not to kill any women, your order not to kill any children and even if you hear the voice of Azaan from any mosque in that area, you have nothing to do with the people of that town and you have not to dispossess them of anything then, not to mention the killing. If you see the mosques in the same direction as our mosques are towards Qibla, even then you have no right to interfere with their affairs. Despite the fact that the rebellion is made, despite the fact that they have initiated and they have attacked, they have taken the offensive in their own hands.
These are the orders of Hazrat Abu Bakr Siddiq R.A. And whoever says Kalima la ilaha illa Muhammad Rasulullah, you have nothing to do with him. In his name today, the demands are that those whose mosques are Qibla-wise, they should be killed, unless they change the direction of their mosques. Those who say Azaan, they should be killed, unless they cease to say Azaan. And this is what they call Siddiqiyat. Imagine the audacity and the shamelessness of these people. In the name of Siddiqiyat, they are exactly reversing the whole picture.
And saying those who say Kalima, they should be killed, they have no right to say Kalima. This is the entire story of apostasy, according to the facts of life. Because the pictures, imaginary pictures created by the bloodthirsty Mullah of today, whatever they may believe, it’s up to them, they are answerable to God. But what they believe in is not history of Islam, anything but history of Islam.
