The fact is that despite the spread of Christianity, as well as that of Islam in their respective regions, there are certain nations which are virgin in the sense that religion in the biblical and the Quranic sense is just new to them. The concept of religion has been totally different from that of the Holy Quran and that of the Bible. So these are the nations which have been referred in the Bible as virgin nations, to whom as if Christ would come again as their bridegroom. And as we know, Hazrat Masih Maud a.s. to be the representation of Christ, so naturally it is quite logical to infer that Jamaat Ahmadiyya would introduce Islam to these virgin nations. As far as the Christianity goes, they are not entirely virgin. But as far as Islam is concerned, they are completely virgin. In reality.
For example, in Fiji, there is not a single Muslim Fijian. And in Australia, among the aborigines, there has been no conversion to Islam. To Christianity some, of course. To Islam there has been no conversion. Some Australians might have, I mean, the migrated, the migrants from the West might have accepted, but I am talking of the true Australians, the aborigines. So this is what I meant, that there are new nations being discovered by Ahmadiyyat, which are virgin as far as Islam goes, and the prophecy will be fulfilled, inshallah, through Ahmadiyyat. And we are not only discovering, we are establishing contacts with them, and hopefully so. So among the Fijians, we got quite a few conversions, even during my stay there. And I made contact with the aborigines, one of the aborigines leaders, and he was quite favorably influenced. At occasions he was deeply moved, in fact, with the message I gave him, because previously he was under the impression that everyone who comes in the name of religion will behave like the imperialists. And he would draw their blood and subjugate them to the lowest state of life, and then would try to save them from physical annihilation, spiritual annihilation.
So that was a paradox, which they simply could not accept. This is why they ran away from such pseudo-religionists. So when I conveyed the message of Ahmadiyyat and explained the whole situation, one thing he found very interesting, as common between us, was persecution. That hit him where it hits. He said, you are being persecuted today in this world, and we know what persecution is. We have been persecuted for the last so many centuries, and very cruelly so. So he had his sympathies immediately aroused. And then he told me something which was almost an inside story. He told me that when the Western scholars come to us and try to find out about our religion, we never disclose the realities. We just keep numb over it. And we don’t want to disclose our religion because they are profane. And we don’t want our religion to be defiled by these profane people. We don’t want even them to understand it. And because if they understand, then they’ll be dangerous.
This is why he told me that what you read in the Western literature about us is just a superficial hollow view. So for example, perhaps it was me who mentioned it first, I said, what about that dreamy thing about you which the Westerns write, that you are a dreamy people. And the impression given in those books is that you are daydreamers, keep dreaming about things as if they are lazy people who dream about their future, while there is no reason, no support in the present to hope for a good future. So that was the impression I received from the books. So he told me, this is why, because we don’t want them to understand what dream, what we mean by dream. He said, by dream we mean that there is a creative force which comes into contact with us during sleep and foretells us the events of future.
It tells us where the dangers lie, and it also tells us what are the glad tidings the future has in store for us. And the language is symbolic. No ordinary person can understand, but our elders do understand and interpret them correctly. And then we see things happen exactly as they were foretold. So that was exactly the philosophy of dream in Islam. And when I told him of the Ahamdiyya experience, I said, exactly this is the dream, the sort of dreams which we’ll see. So another thing is in common between us. And then I saw a bit of a shadow of a smile on his face. As I told you many, many times earlier, these people are so deeply gone under sorrow and pathos that their whole life fibre has sunk into sadness.
Something very tragic you simply cannot describe. When I read books before going to Australia about Aborigines, some Western scholars who were sympathetic to their cause, they had mentioned this fact, that they are so deeply sad that the words can’t describe what we mean. You have to meet them to realize what we mean. So when I met him, he was quite a well-to-do, highly educated person. And I think he was a lawyer by trade or something, an engineer, I’m sorry. He was an engineer by trade. But there was that sad look which seemed to have sunk deep into his life force and which started depressing me. But gradually when I spoke to him and spoke of a good future which Islam could offer them, I saw a flicker of a smile, you know, on his face, which told me that as if he was reviving from something.
So that is the affair, something common with all Aborigines. They have been so badly and cruelly treated and so consistently and persistently trampled upon that they have lost that thing you call life force. They are just living dead bodies. So it was a very sad experience, but I, in the end, there was some encouragement from him to me too. He told me that although our elders are very reticent and they don’t want to meet any foreigners, but after I have met you, I can assure you that our elders would not behave like that to you. If you go and see them, they are very clever and they know their man. Although they just don’t make themselves appear clever, he said, they are very deeply clever people. And I believe that if you meet them, they will not hide anything from you. And you can establish a communion with them at that level. And that is what he suggested, that unless a communion is established at higher level, our people will not be converted truly.
So that I told to the president, who is still the president, Dr. Ejaz-ul-Haq to make a contact with them and so on. I don’t know whether he has done or not, but that is how the Aborigine people, we are after Inshallah.
