Peace be upon you. My question is about Shab-e-Barat. The people, I mean the non-Ahmadi Muslim people, they celebrate Shab-e-Barat, especially the Indian and Pakistani Muslim people. And my second question is, does the Middle East Muslim people, especially Saudi Arabian people, does they celebrate Shab-e-Barat or not, which will be tomorrow? I doubt if they do, very much. They don’t, because they don’t believe in these innovations. The Wahhabis do not believe in such innovations. And there we agree with them to this extent, that we look at the Islam of the time of Hazrat Muhammad Mustafa, as complete Islam, which can neither be added upon nor subtracted from.
It’s in totality the most beautiful thing that could happen. If you begin to take away things from it, some features, or add some others, then you’ll only be either reducing beauty or adding ugliness. So, this is why according to Hazrat Masih Maud’s teachings, his principle teachings to us, we only follow that for which we have positive evidence that it was practised as such at the time of Hazrat Muhammad Mustafa and his companions and his caliphs. Because they had learnt from him, so if we find them doing a thing, we consider that to be a part of Islam, as it should be practised.
So, of these things, Shab-e-Baraat and all these things, and Fatihah and Chaliswa and these things, there is not the slightest evidence in the time of Huzoor-e-Aqam that these things were celebrated as they are celebrated today. Not only that, they were not celebrated in any way whatsoever. The concept was not there. So, what is this Islam which was not known to Huzoor-e-Aqam and his companions? We don’t believe in these things. Because that is an insult if you truly look at it in this perspective. It’s not a sign of love, it’s a sign of disrespect.
Huzoor-e-Aqam came, understood Islam from Allah Himself and practised it and left a rich legacy of Islam as practised. And you think it’s not enough? You add Qawwalis here and there and Fatihah at that point and Shab-e-Baraat at another point and so on and so forth. You are destroying Islam, you are not serving Islam in any way. So, in principle, we agree that the Islam of the later times should not be taken as Islam. Take it as a local tradition, worthless tradition, but not Islam. So, some sects of Muslims agree with us there. There, we are at one with each other. But some other sects practise these things and in other cases, we agree with other sects against them.
Because there, our principle leads us in a different way from Wahhabis and there we disagree with Wahhabis and agree with the Barelvis because we consider them to be right in that respect. So, we do not confirm to these sects as such individually to any sect in totality. But partially, we agree with almost every sect and partially, we differ with almost every sect. And the guideline is given to us by the Promised Messiah. The first important principle is that of the Holy Qur’an.
The second is that of Sunnah, that is tradition, as practised. And the third, Sunnah, tradition as spoken by Hazrat Muhammad Mustafa. And all that together, as seen through the eyes of the Imam Mahdi, as he read those things and whenever we were in doubts, those doubts were clarified by Imam Mahdi himself because he saw with the light shown to him by Allah.
So, Islam to us is now completely purified as found in the early days and we don’t need to look elsewhere to other people and other sects to teach us Islam because this is pure Islam which we have with the grace of Allah. Thank you.
