Questioner: What do you see as the role of the Ahmadiyya movement in solving the crisis and the terror of countries, especially in terms of war, especially to those involved? For example, like a country of Sierra Leone, where we have lots of Ahmadis and they are involved now in this present situation?
Huzoor (rh): You see, as far as the peace and war is concerned, they are only reflections of what man hides within. When they come out and play in the open, then you know whether the man had peace in his breast or war in his breast. And man is hiding war within him, although he talks of peace. This is the type of hypocrisy I just mentioned. Go to the United Nations, each member of the United Nations is practically a hypocrite, because he loudly speaks of peace and adores peace and preaches peace, while at every moment of the national interest of that country, he would chuck the peace to the forewinds and adopt a selfish course which would be in contradiction to his claims. A selfish course which will go for the usurpation of other countries’ rights in relation to his own country. And this is what he would call patriotism. So if patriotism has a sphere away from or removed from the sphere of absolute justice, then there can’t be any peace whatsoever. The problem today with man is that he is restless within, he is unhappy within, he has no peace. As such, whatever emerges from him, bubbles out of him occasionally, is war, is trouble. Without repairing what is within, you can’t even seek to repair what is outside. This is a simple statement, but it is absolutely true. You can’t find solutions to the world problems unless you find solutions to the inner problems of man’s heart and intentions. Rectify them, and the rest will automatically be rectified. Improve the quality of the seed, and the tree will grow healthy. But if the seeds are diseased, if the roots are diseased, spray the trees as amply as you may, but the trouble will never leave the fruit. The fruit will always be born diseased. I have known it myself through my own experience. I am a farmer by profession, and once in my orchard, the fruits began to rot before becoming ripe. A strange, ugly phenomenon, you know. You were waiting for them to become ripe, and they rotted before they ripened. We sprayed and sprayed and did everything, and nothing happened, nothing worked. Then I asked some experts to come and examine, and they said, the disease lies with the roots, not with the branches, not with the stem. You have to dig it out and cure the roots, treat the roots, only then you can find favorable results. And that is what we did, and the fruits were healthy from then on. So this is exactly the situation with man. The roots of intention in his heart are twisted, ugly and diseased. And he claims to be a godly man, a believer in God, but when it comes to his own personal choices, he would every time abandon the course of godliness in favor of ungodliness when it suits him. So what sort of belief that is? That is what I mean, the diseased roots in man go for their cure. So instead of trying a superficial attempt, making a superficial attempt to do away with all the problems, wipe them out as if they do not exist, we go for the basic maladies in man, and religion can rectify that only. Only faith in God, genuine faith in God, and religious education and religious training, which has no contradiction within itself. That we are trying to do. You see, we are spreading the message of Ahmadiyyat, and wherever we do that, you are a witness that the Ahmadiyya society does change, does register a very visible change in relation to the society from which Ahmadiyyat came. You see, Ahmadiyyat is spreading, not as something ethereal, but in the form of Kohlons and these and that, they start dealing with their societies and come into Ahmadiyya society. And these people shed something of their evils behind. Otherwise they will not become Ahmadis. Because to become an Ahmadi requires sacrifices. Unless you are genuinely convinced of the truth, you can’t even think of entering Ahmadiyyat and leaving your families, etc., and previous faiths behind you. When you do it, you suffer at the hands of your earlier relationships and friends. So that also requires sincerity. That is why you have greater strength to shed your evils than others who are just flourishing in the society without any challenges. With the grace of Allah, I have noticed it, there is a big difference between Ahmadis and non-Ahmadis, and the difference is widening with the passage of time. There is somebody to take care of Ahmadi morals. He is concerned. There is no one to take care of others. They do whatever they may. The Mullahs will have restful sleeps. If all their following become corrupt and worshippers of devil, they don’t care. As long as they claim to have the same set of beliefs as the Mullah has. The Mullah means religious leader. This is exactly the state of affairs in every other religion. You see, the church fathers and the priests and bishops and cardinals and all that, they don’t move a muscle in their body. They don’t turn a hair at the sight of the society becoming immoral through and through. Ungodly, cruel, you know, abusing everything, even their own children. They don’t care. But if they hear that some preachers of other religions have come and started taking some of their followings away from them, then they raise and rouse the whole people and say, look here, it’s a threat to Christianity, threat to Islam, threat to Hinduism. Rise against it. A few people are taken away from them, from their leadership, and they are so deeply disturbed. In fact, so much so that they shatter the peace of the whole society because of that, you know, sense of loss. It is a sense of personal loss, not a sense of loss to God. Otherwise, the same people, when they run away from God, when they think which sever their ties with God, why are they not disturbed? As long as they keep the same robe on them, under the same titles of a religious denomination or a sectarian denomination, as long as the titles don’t change, the robes don’t change, what happens within, they don’t care. So that is another example of the hypocrisy I was telling you about. We must wage a war against it. But Ahmadiyya community, with the grace of Allah, is setting a beautiful example of, at doing what they believe in. Everywhere our struggle is within, not with outside as much. We are trying every measure to make the believers, practicing believers, make them realize that they have a moral duty towards their God. And making them realize that if they behave corruptly, we’ll sever our ties with them. So that shows that we don’t care for number. You know, we threaten Ahmadis that we’ll check you out. We don’t care for your presence. As long as you behave, you’re all right. The moment you begin to misbehave, you have no relationship with us. What better proof would you require that we act differently, we believe differently? Number doesn’t mean anything to us as long as the number is misbehaving. The number means to us, of course, when it begins to reform and change its ways to more godly ways. So where are the other religious sects or entities, whatever you call them, who keep throwing out their members if they misbehave to God, and misbehave to humanity? Is there one example in your mind? You find none. Scan the whole horizon of religion, and your eyes will return to you frustrated, you will not find. Another example like Jamaat-e-Ahmadiyya, where people are penalized for not being loyal to God. But not being loyal to your set of ideologies is always punished, everywhere. Right? So what more shining proof would you require in favor of Ahmadiyya honesty and deep genuine effort to reform the society?
