Frequently asked Qadiani Questions
about the Lahore Ahmadiyya Beliefs
|
There are certain questions which we are repeatedly asked by members
of the Qadiani/Rabwah Jamaat, and also by other people,
relating to the issues of disagreement between the Qadiani/Rabwah
Jamaat (known as the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam) and
the Lahore Ahmadiyya Jamaat (known as Ahmadiyya Anjuman
Ishaat Islam Lahore).
This page has been created to give short answers to such questions
and to refer readers to other links on our website for fuller details.
The questions below are quite real and were received at our website
by e-mail from time to time. The words of these questions have not
been altered, except for correcting typographical and grammatical
errors.
1. Why had you accepted the first khalifa if you are against
this form of administration?
The form of administration for the Ahmadiyya Movement was laid
down by Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, by creating a body known as Sadr
Anjuman Ahmadiyya. For details see our article
entitled Khilafat in the Ahmadiyya Movement. We accepted
that system from the day he put it into operation during his own
life. The same system continued to operate under Hazrat Maulana
Nur-ud-Din. He was Khalifa working according to the system
set up by Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. That was why we accepted him.
However, Mirza Mahmud Ahmad in 1914 introduced the system of autocratic
rule by a khalifa possessing absolute power, who has to be
obeyed blindly regardless of what he orders. This is completely
against Islam. That is why we could not accept his khilafat,
because there is no sign or trace of such an institution in Islam
or in the teachings of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad.
Read a more detailed answer.
2. Is it true that the split occurred after the elderly ulama
of your section refused to give the pledge to a youth Mirza Bashir-ud-Din
Mahmud Ahmad because they felt they were better than him?
Please tell us what you mean by elderly? Maulana Muhammad Ali was
39 years old at the time of the Split. First you should read what
opinion the Promised Messiah expressed about Maulana Muhammad Ali
and how he appointed him to the highest positions. See our article:
Maulana Muhammad Ali in the eyes
of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad.
Our objections to Mirza Mahmud Ahmad were about his beliefs. In
1911, three years before the Split, he published an article which
he himself later summarised in English as follows:
Regarding the main subject of my article, I wrote
that as we believed the Promised Messiah to be one of the prophets
of God, we could not possibly regard his deniers
as Muslims.
not only are those deemed to be Kafirs who openly
style the Promised Messiah as Kafir, and those who although they
do not style him thus, decline still to accept his claim, but even
those who, in their hearts, believe the Promised Messiah to be true,
and do not even deny him with their tongues, but hesitate to enter
into his Baiat, have here been adjudged
to be Kafirs.
For full references and scanned images please see our article:
Declaring Muslims as kafir.
For fuller details of the Split read the following chapter from
the biography of Maulana Muhammad Ali: 3.
Events of the Split in the Movement and migration of Maulana Muhammad
Ali to Lahore.
3. If Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was just a Mujaddid, why
he had been asked to establish a community,while other mujaddideen
were not?
Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was directed by Allah to establish a
Jamaat in the year 1888. This was the time when, even
according to the Qadianis, he had only claimed to be a Mujaddid.
How can the Qadianis raise this question when according to their
own beliefs he was asked to form a community when his claim
was only that of a mujaddid.
4. If he was the Promised Messiah whom Muslims are awaiting he
should be a prophet because the Messiah was a prophet?
He himself wrote when he claimed to be the Promised Messiah that:
If the objection be raised here that, as the Messiah
(Jesus) was a prophet, his like should also be a prophet, the first
answer to this is that our leader and master (the Holy Prophet Muhammad)
has not made prophethood a necessary condition for the Messiah to
come. (Tauzih Maram).
For full details see our page: Hadith
in which Promised Messiah is called Prophet.
He also wrote:
The Holy Quran clearly states that the Holy Prophet
Muhammad is the Khatam al-anbiya. But our
opponents make Jesus the Khatam al-anbiya, and they
say that the mention of the Messiah as prophet of God in Sahih
Muslim and elsewhere refers to real prophethood.
(Kitab al-Barriyya, p. 191, footnote.)
He says that it is his opponents who say that the coming
Messiah must be a prophet. This makes Qadianis
the opponents of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad.
5. How can you explain that God let the Qadiani group be more
prosperous and in number of members, although all the money and
ulama and establishments were with the Lahori group after split?
This is another fabrication spread by the Qadiani leaders. Please
use your commonsense. The Movement was established in Qadian. Our
elders left Qadian to come to Lahore. So everything remained behind
in Qadian! They started from scratch in Lahore.
Mirza Mahmud Ahmad himself, in his book The Truth about the
Split, writes about this question of how many members of the
Jamaat sided with each party at the split. He says about the
gathering in Qadian where he was declared as khalifa:
Out of about 2000 people who were present at the
time, only about 50 withheld their Baiat. All the rest took
the pledge. (page 344)
This means that more than 97 percent were with Mirza Mahmud Ahmad!
Then a little later he writes about the first gathering called by
our Jamaat in Lahore:
They invited the community at large to assemble
on 22 March at Lahore
there assembled at Lahore a gathering
of 110 men inclusive of local members. Only 42 came from outside
Lahore.
This left to them only 100 men. According to the
Lahore party the decision of these 100 men was the authoritative
decision of the entire Ahmadiyya community, while the decision of
the very much more numerous gathering at Qadian was the result of
collusion and conspiracy (pages 357, 358).
So according to Mirza Mahmud Ahmad far more people were with
him than with the Lahoris. The Qadianis are therefore now contradicting
themselves! Are they correct now or is Mirza Mahmud Ahmads
earlier account correct?
6. Why is there a pledge in your community although there isnt
a khalifa?
There is a pledge in our community because Hazrat Mirza Ghulam
Ahmad directed in his will (Al-Wasiyyat) that after his death
there should be some righteous elders who should admit new people
into the community by taking from them the pledge in the name
of the Promised Messiah. Hazrat Mirza also wrote that any forty
Ahmadis could agree on an elder as being a suitable man to take
the pledge from new entrants. Our Anjuman has always appointed such
elders.
Nowhere has Hazrat Mirza stated that the pledge must be taken on
the hand of one particular individual or that existing Ahmadis must
repeat their pledge on a so-called khalifas hand.
7. Do you believe in the prophecy of Musleh
Maood (Promised Reformer) that Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
received concerning the illustrious birth of his son and his subsequent
service to Islam?
We certainly believe in all the prophecies revealed by Allah to
Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. But the interpretation and fulfilment
of those prophecies must be in accordance with the principles and
precedents that govern the fulfilment of prophecies from God. Those
principles are given in the Holy Quran and Hadith, and can be seen
in the Bible as well. Islamic scholars of past times have also explained
them, and in particular Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad has expounded
them extensively and clearly in his writings. Therefore his followers
should not have any problems in understanding how a prophecy is
fulfilled and how it is not fulfilled.
As to why we do not accept Mirza Bashir-ud-Din Mahmud Ahmad to
have been the true Muslih Mauud, we make the following
points:
- The Split in the Ahmadiyya Movement took place in 1914, almost
thirty years before Mirza Mahmud Ahmad announced his claim
to be Muslih Mauud. Therefore it cannot be said that
the leaders of the Lahore Ahmadiyya Anjuman opposed him in 1914
because of his claim of being Muslih Mauud, in the
way in which people oppose those who are sent by Allah. Mirza
Mahmud Ahmad was fiercely opposed for his beliefs (in particular,
his calling of other Muslims as kafirs and as excluded
from the fold of Islam), long before he claimed to be Muslih
Mauud. Those who are truly appointed by Allah do not
face such opposition before their claim; on the contrary, they
are widely held in high regard and honour before their claims,
as were the Holy Prophet Muhammad or Hazrat Mirza sahib.
- The evidence and arguments which the leaders of the Lahore Ahmadiyya
Anjuman presented since 1914 to show the falsity of the beliefs
of Mirza Mahmud Ahmad remain entirely valid even after his claim
in 1944 to be Muslih Mauud. Mirza Mahmud Ahmad cannot
just say, after thirty years of failing in argument, that his
beliefs are right because Allah has told him that he is the Muslih
Mauud. A person can only prove the truth of his beliefs
by arguments and evidence, and not by claiming that God has appointed
him to a status and therefore he must be right in his beliefs.
When Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad announced that Jesus had died,
he gave arguments and evidence from the Quran and Hadith to prove
it, and did not say that his interpretation was right because
God had made him Promised Messiah.
As Mirza Mahmud Ahmads beliefs (that the Promised Messiah
was a prophet, and those who do not accept him are kafir
and excluded from Islam) are wrong, and are contrary to Islam
and to the teachings of the Promised Messiah, he cannot possibly
be the Muslih Mauud.
- All Ahmadis believe that the prophecy in Hadith about the coming
of Jesus the son of Mary was fulfilled in the person of Hazrat
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, despite the fact that he was neither Jesus
nor the son of any woman called Mary. Therefore, when Hazrat Mirza
sahib himself prophesies the coming of a son, then
it certainly does not necessarily mean a physical son.
In his pamphlet Ayk Ghalati Ka Izala Hazrat Mirza sahib
has referred to the belief of some Muslims who held (and still
hold) that the coming Mahdi would be a physical descendant of
the Holy Prophet Muhammad because there are some Hadith reports
which say that he shall be from me. Hazrat Mirza
sahib writes:
People who think in physical
terms have variously considered this promised one to be
a descendant of Hasan, or of Husain, or of Abbas. But the Holy
Prophet only meant that, like a descendant, he would be his
heir heir to his name, heir to his nature, heir to his
knowledge, and heir to his spirituality displaying his
image within himself from every aspect.
Similarly in
the verse We have granted thee al-kausar
[the Quran, 108:1] there is the promise of a burooz
In this verse also, the necessity for physical progeny is
belittled, and a prophecy is given of buroozi offspring.
And although God has bestowed upon me the privilege of being
an Israelite as well as a Fatimi, having a share of both stocks,
I give precedence to the spiritual relationship which
is the burooz connection.
Therefore the most important condition to be fulfilled by the
Muslih Mauud is that he must be a spiritual
heir, regardless of whether or not he is a physical descendant.
As Mirza Mahmud Ahmad, unfortunately, went contrary to the beliefs
of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad on certain very basic issues, it
means that he is not his spiritual heir and cannot be the Muslih
Mauud.
- As to the service to Islam performed by Mirza Mahmud
Ahmad, we do not wish to deny any service that he or anyone
else may have rendered to Islam. However, the specific
service to Islam which the Promised Messiah exhorted his followers
to perform, namely, the propagation of Islam and of the Holy Quran,
was done most prominently by Maulana Muhammad Ali. For details
please see our following page: Maulana
Muhammad Ali in the eyes of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad.
One important example of his service may be given here. Hazrat
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad wrote in his book Izala Auham in 1891:
I wish to prepare a commentary
of the Quran which should be sent to them [the Western nations]
after it has been rendered into the English language. I cannot
refrain from stating clearly that this is my work, and that
definitely no one else can do it as I can, or as he can who
is an offshoot of mine and thus is included in me. (page
773)
Maulana Muhammad Ali performed this great service and published
his English translation and commentary of the Holy Quran in 1917.
It received, and still receives, great acclaim all over the world
for its unique qualities. By rendering this magnificent service,
Maulana Muhammad Ali proved himself to be a true branch of the
Promised Messiah, about which the Promised Messiah has written
that he is included in me. It may be noted that the
Qadiani Jamaat under Mirza Mahmud Ahmad was unable to produce
any English translation of the Holy Quran for thirty years
after Maulana Muhammad Alis translation first appeared.
See also this link in connection with
the general issue of Muslih Mauud (from where you can
access three khutbas by Maulana Muhammad Ali in 1944). |