Address delivered by Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, Khalifatul Masih V, Head of the Worlwide Ahmadiyya Muslim community (may Allah strengthen his hand),  on 19th December 2009, at the VIP Reception held at Ratskeller am Römer, on the 50th anniversary of the Nur Mosque, Frankfurt.

All the honourable guests, Assalamu ‘Alaikum Warahmatullah, Peace and Blessings of Allah be upon you all.

Firstly, I would like to thank all the guests who have come to attend the 50th Anniversary of our Nur Mosque here in Frankfurt today. The fact that you are here shows that you are open-minded people because you have come despite the fact that there is an ongoing anti-Islamic campaign being waged in society; not only against Muslims, but against Islam itself. And after listening to the speeches of all the honourable speakers I am now more confident that I am right in thinking this, of having this view, that you are all open-minded people sitting in front of me. Anyway, this campaign by the opponents of Islam presents Islam as an extremist faith; however, this is far removed from the actual teachings of the religion.

When people, who are unfamiliar with Islam, hear such claims, or when they listen to news of terrorists, Muslim suicide bombers, or fanatics and hardliners, they begin to believe that Islam really is an extreme religion that promotes terror, and that Muslims follow hatred and consider every non-Muslim to be worthless. Moreover, they consider that it is only the teachings of Islam that pose a threat to the world peace. And it is now, I am happy that those who are sitting here are not of this view, but there are quite a number of people in the world who still hold this view. Unfortunately, this entirely false notion has now taken firm root. However, I shall now clarify some of these misunderstandings in light of the true teachings of Islam.

As I mentioned earlier, the fact that you have come here, despite hearing all such allegations, proves that you do not wish to only hear one point of view but, fulfilling the requirements of justice and fair-play, you have come to see what the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at says about the teachings of Islam.

I have always said that I am not ashamed to admit that certain extremist ‘Muslim’ groups have created great disorder in the world. However, this lack of peace exists more in the countries of the perpetrators themselves rather than in Europe or other places in the world. This clearly illustrates that this battle is not against any religion, but is the work of a small and self-serving group who create disorder and carry out attacks in the name of religion. If you analyse the situation, you will realise that these people, who serve their own interests, have killed more Muslims than people of other faiths. The non-Muslims being killed are those who are sending armies to assist such Muslims countries, perhaps, on the pretext of establishing peace.

I do not wish to comment on whether military assistance is right or wrong, or whether the assessments of the western powers regarding the future plans of the terrorists are sound. Nor do I wish to comment upon the strategic position of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq or whether the terrorists are trying to dominate such areas, or what the final solution should be in tackling the war on terror. These are all separate issues on which I would prefer not to speak at this time.

However, as the Head of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at, I would like to remove the misunderstandings about Islam in light of its true teachings and present to you the real and beautiful picture of Islam as we see it.

I now present to you a few examples of Islamic teachings based on the Holy Qur’an with regards to establishing world peace.

If we look at the fundamental reasons for religious animosity amongst the followers of religion, the principle causes are when people reject the founders of each other’s religion as false, mock them and consequently ridicule the customs and rituals that are linked to the founder of respective religion.

Let us see what Islam teaches about the prophets or the founders of religions. Chapter 3, Verse 85 of the Holy Qur’an states:

Say, ‘We believe in Allah and in that which has been revealed to us, and that which was revealed to Abraham and to Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the Tribes, and that which was given to Moses and Jesus and other Prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and to Him we submit.

This is the beautiful teaching of Islam.

If a Muslim claims to obey Allah, he is duty bound to believe in all the prophets, to the extent that at another place, Allah the Almighty states that He has sent prophets to all the nations as a means to reform people, some of whom Allah has named in the Qur’an. Thus, Islam has laid the foundation for peace, harmony and reconciliation by making all the founders of religions worthy of respect.

If we look at the early history of Islam we see that when, due to the extreme cruelties against the Muslims in Makkah, they were forced to migrate from Makkah to Madinah, even then the disbelievers of Makkah did not leave them alone and in fact continued their persecution. They tried to finish the Muslims by attacking them. It was only then that Allah granted the Holy Prophet(saw), peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, and his followers permission to fight and defend themselves.

This is mentioned in the Holy Qur’an in Chapter 22, verses 40 and 41; the translation is as follows:

Permission to fight is given to those against whom war is made, because they have been wronged – and Allah indeed has power to help them – Those who have been driven out from their homes unjustly only because they said, ‘Our Lord is Allah’ – And if Allah did not repel some men by means of others, there would surely have been pulled down cloisters and churches and synagogues and mosques, wherein the name of Allah is oft commemorated. And Allah will surely help one who helps Him. Allah is indeed Powerful, Mighty.

Now see, it is not just the rights of Islam that have been considered. Muslims have not been instructed to only preserve their own rights, but have, in fact, been commanded to eradicate the evil intentions of those who associate partners with God, on the basis that, were they to fail to act, the oppressors would become so bold that they would try to annihilate all religions.

Muslims have been instructed to preserve and protect the sanctity of all places of worship of all religions, and they have been taught that if they have to assist other religions in compliance with this command, then they must do so. If you act with good intentions then God will help you.

God Almighty has said right from the outset that even if you have to wage a war in order to stop cruelty of the wrongdoers, then do so; God will help you.

And history bears witness to this. The 313 companions of the Holy Prophet of Islam^(saw), peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, who were totally ill-equipped for war, confronted and defeated a well-equipped force three times bigger than them. This is proof that God is on the side of truth. If any Muslim today acts contrary to these teachings he acts against the commands of Allah.

In view of these teachings, decide with your own hearts whether anyone can raise any fair objection against Islam.

Should the actions of a handful of Muslims, pursuing solely their own interests, be used as a source of torment for the rest of the Muslim world? Most certainly, the heart of any decent person who wishes peace in the world would definitely desire that he should not cause distress to anyone else.

As I said previously, and as you are all aware today, we are holding this function on the 50th anniversary of our mosque, Nur Mosque. From this building the same message has been preached for the past fifty years, that mosques are centres of spreading love, peace, affection and the worship of the One God.

Today, the number of mosques of the Ahmadiyya Community, Ahmadiyya Jama’at in Germany, has reached to almost 35 or 40. You will not hear voices or slogans of hatred or of those who spread disorder from any single one of these mosques. If any voice is raised, it is the call to worship the One God and to fulfil the rights of His Creation. And this is not only in Germany.

The Ahmadiyya Jama’at has thousands of mosques all over the world. From not a single one can it be proved that hatred is being spread, or that even minor distress is caused; nor has it ever happened.

Nonetheless, I say with great sorrow that in the West a wave has been unleashed in some countries, and by certain classes, that, without distinction, every Muslim ought to be considered a terrorist, and that Islam teaches terrorism. From time to time they raise their voices against Islam.

The most recent example is the referendum held in Switzerland, and it has been quoted by two of our honourable speakers: putting a ban on the minarets of mosques. According to newspaper reports, it was German-speaking Swiss people who cast the majority of the votes in favour of the ban.

I cannot understand how changing the shape or cosmetics of the mosque will change the character of those who come to worship at the mosque. If we suppose that mosques are the breeding grounds of teachings of hatred, then by not building minarets will these teachings of hatred suddenly cease? These hatreds and animosities will not cease in this way, rather such acts will cause distress amongst the peace-loving majority of Muslims. Their feelings are being played upon through this action.

On the one hand they claim, I mean the Western Governments, to be secular, and on the other, they place restrictions upon religious freedom. By doing this they have tried to counter extremism with extremism. When these types of thoughtless solutions are employed, then the reaction will likewise be senseless.

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at, under the supervision of Khilafat, never reacts in a wrong manner. We even respond to abuse with prayers. In certain Muslim countries, there are restrictions on the minarets and arches of our mosques, yet we remain silent. However, non-Ahmadi Muslims can react in an extreme way and this has happened in the past.

Thus I implore all of you, the educated class of Germans, to continue to display the open-heartedness that you have shown in the past. You should certainly acquire the good things from your neighbours but avoid the bad. The minarets of mosques are symbols of spreading light, and from where the call is raised that God is Greatest, and that there is none worthy of worship except Him, and that Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, is His Messenger and Servant; come to the mosque to worship because you can only establish peace in the world by developing a relationship with your Creator, with Allah; and come towards success because it is only through worship of Him and by maintaining peace in the world that success can be achieved.

Thus, this is the purpose of the minaret, and if any other voice is raised apart from this, from any minaret, it is against the teachings of Islam. It is the responsibility of the Government to punish such criminals, rather than punishing every peace-loving person for the crimes of one misguided individual.

World peace cannot be achieved in this way. Walls of hatred are certainly erected because of this, and to bring down these walls of hatred the Holy Qur’an has taught us in Chapter 5, verse 9:

O ye who believe! Be steadfast in the cause of Allah, bearing witness in equity; and let not a people’s enmity incite you to act otherwise than with justice. Be always just, that is nearer to righteousness. And fear Allah. Surely, Allah is aware of what you do.

This is Islam’s beautiful teaching: that if the relationship between people and countries can sometimes sour, this does not mean that you can discard the requirements of justice. If you discard the requirements of justice then that will be far removed from righteousness; and one who is far removed from righteousness, has no relationship with God. Such a person’s actions are not for the sake of God, because God says that if you want to come close to Him, then you must discharge the rights of others by fulfilling the requirements of justice. Even your enemy should not suffer unnecessarily from you.

At another place, the Holy Qur’an states that the recompense of an injury should be proportionate to the injury itself, but if one chooses to forgive and that act of forgiveness brings about reformation, then it is better, because the reward for such forgiveness is given by God Himself. These are the methods for the reformation of society and these are the ways for establishing peace that have been taught to us by Islam.

And, according to our beliefs, to give a fresh lease of life to this teaching, Allah sent the Founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at as the Promised Messiah for this age, who proclaimed the concept of love, affection and peace to bring an end to religious extremism and religious wars. He inclined us to take care of the religious sentiments of others.

This is exactly in accordance with the teachings of Islam: that one should not say anything against even the idols of non-believers, lest they say something about your God, and it destroys the peace of society.

As I said before, speaking ill against the founders of religions and the observance of religious customs creates hatred and destroys peace. The world is immersed in such problems today.

Economic and social problems have caused unrest and such conditions themselves are the cause of creating disorder. Adding religion to this instability is not a sensible idea, even though it is common knowledge that there are some people with vested interests who are in search of creating disarray.

Thus, by reference to today’s function I will request that for the sake of societal peace, we must be considerate of each other’s religious sentiments. In this age, due to our trade and media contacts and fast means of transport, we now call the world a ‘global village’. Therefore, in every country, each religion should have complete freedom, so long as it does not harm the peace of the country.

The followers of any religion should be able to practice their religious customs freely, otherwise if the government will interfere with religion, in this civilised world, such interference will negate their claim to being secular and discharging the rights of others.

I conclude my speech by saying that every person should try to discharge the rights of his Creator and Creation, rather than trying to usurp the rights of mankind, so that peace can be established in the world.

Finally, I would like to once again thank all of you who participated in our function and by doing so displayed your openheartedness.

Thank you very much.

Continuation of an extract from Victory of Islam, an English rendering of the Urdu Fath-e-Islam, written by the Promised Messiah and Mahdi, Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad(as).

Here an episode is worth recording. Some time ago I had the occasion to go to Aligarh. Because of over-work, from the effects of which I had suffered even before at Qadian, I was not in a condition to hold long conversations or to undertake any hard mental work. Even at present I am not in a fit condition to hold long converse or do very hard thinking. In such a condition, I happened to receive a Maulawi Sahib of Aligarh, Muhammad Ismail by name. With great humility he requested and persuaded me to deliver a sermon. He said people had been waiting to see and hear me; that it was proper to hold a gathering in a suitable place where I should address them. My own strong and sincere desire has always been to look for opportunities of communicating important truths to people. So, I accepted this invitation with pleasure. I thought I would be able to explain at a public gathering the meaning of Islam, what Islam really was and how it had come to be understood by people today, and so on. I assured the Maulawi Sahib that, God willing, I would be able to speak on the subject of Islam. But after I had agreed, I was forbidden to do this by God. I feel certain that because of my state of health, Almighty Allah did not want me to undertake anything involving such exertion, anything which meant physical trouble for me. So I was restrained by God from delivering this sermon. Once before it had happened thus with me. I was in a low physical condition and then in a vision I saw a prophet from amongst the prophets of the past. Out of sympathy and concern, this prophet said to me, “Why so much mental work? Mind, lest you become sick”. In short, I was stopped by God and I informed the Maulawi Sahib accordingly. My excuse was a true excuse. There are people who have seen me, how I have suffered after long conversations or after hard mental work. Such people may not care for my revelations. But they would be quite certain that I suffer in this way. Dr. Muhammad Hussain Khan, Physician and Honorary Magistrate of Lahore, continues to be my doctor. This doctor’s constant advice to me is that I should avoid hard mental work while liability to suffer lasts. So this doctor is similarly first witness. Among them are my brother Maulawi Hakim Nuruddin, Physician to the State of Jammu, whose heart and soul are devoted to me, and Munshi Abdul Haq, accountant, a resident of Lahore, employed in Lahore, who has attended on me during this sickness of mine and serves me in ways impossible to describe. All such friends know and all will bear witness to this condition of mine.

Regretfully, therefore, I have to say although Muslims have been commanded to trust people, Maulawi Sahib of Aligarh chose not to trust me. On the contrary, he chose to disbelieve me and to depose deliberately against me. A statement has since been compiled by a friend of his, a doctor Jamaluddin by name. This statement which has been broadcast among the public, I proceeded to reply point by point:

“I asked him (that is, the present writer when he was at Aligarh) to address the Friday congregation the following day to which he agreed, but the following morning sent a message saying he had been forbidden by a revelation. I think it was for lack of speaking ability and for fear of the test.”

Maulawi Sahib’s apprehension is nothing but sheer distrust on his part. And distrusting is a seriously forbidden thing in the Shari‘ah, eschewed by all good natured people. Did I announce my claim to revelation for the first time during this visit to Aligarh? If so, there could be some basis for this lack of trust. It could be said that I became over-awed by the intellect and scholarship of the Maulawi Sahib and became so afraid of him that I was obliged to invent an excuse for not keeping my appointment. But my claim to revelation was announced in the country about six years before this visit to Aligarh. The claim is mentioned in many places in my Barahin-i-Ahmadiyyah. If I was so devoid of the ability to speak in public, how could I have composed books like Surma Chashm Arya, which was delivered orally before several thousand people friendly and hostile? How could a man as inferior in public-speaking as I accomplish such a task? How could I carry on a public campaign which entails confrontation with thousands of people of all manner of abilities and tastes? Pity, a thousand pities! Most present-day Maulawis are so consumed by jealousy! From the pulpit they teach the manners of good believers, brotherliness, mutual trustfulness and so on, and always quoting from the Holy Book; but themselves, they do not as much as touch these injunctions! My dear Sir, may God open your eyes! Is it so impossible that God out of His wisdom should stop by revelation a favoured servant of His, from doing something he is about to do? And not for the sake of the servant only, but also so that people like you may be tested and so that your evil thoughts and dispositions may expose themselves. As for awe-inspiring scholarship – I have little respect for scholars steeped in darkness and selfish desires. Were they masters of all the known philosophies and sciences, they would be no better than dead worms in my view. But what are you? You are not half as learned. You are a Mullah of the old school, pedantic and mean like any of them. Remember, my visitors include men learned in sciences and arts and eager to inquire and know more. They come and benefit from insights I am able to impart. You – in comparison with such of my visitors – are like a child beginning to learn. Even such a description is more than you deserve.

Is this not enough to cure you of your delusions? Will you still continue to distrust? If so, then with the help and mercy of God, I am ready to confront you in a public speaking contest. I am not so well. So, I cannot undertake a long journey. If you agree, you can travel at my expense to a central place like Lahore in the Punjab. I feel I could invite you to such a confrontation and such a test. I promise to stand by my invitation. I await your reply.

“This man (that is, the present writer) is utterly incompetent with no scholarship to his credit.”

My dear Sir, I have no claim to earthly wisdom or scholarship. I have no use for knowledge and skills of this world. They illumine not the soul. They cleanse not the dirt and filth that is in men’s minds and motives. They promote not humility and modesty. Rather, they make rusty minds rustier and add unbelief to unbelief. Enough for me is this: That the Grace of God lent His Hand of Help to me and imparted to me knowledge, which one learns not in the conventional schools but only from a Heavenly teacher. If I am described as unlettered, what is there in this to be ashamed of? It is something to be proud of. Was not even my Leader and Chief^(saw), the Chief of all God’s creatures, who came to reform and raise all mankind, unlettered? I have no respect for him who prides himself in scholarship but is dark in outer and inner character. Read the Holy Qur’an and ponder over the similitude of the donkey laden with books. Should not this be enough?

“I questioned him (that is, the present writer) on the subject of revelation. Beyond giving some meaningless answers, he said nothing.”

Remember well. My answers were full of meaning, sufficient to convince anyone capable of understanding and weighing. You did not understand, it is true. But to whose discredit does this go? Your own, or anyone else’s? You could publish those very questions in some newspaper and receive fresh answers to test your notions of yourself again.

“It is impossible to think that such good books are really his work.”

How could you think so? The unbelievers who saw the Holy Prophet^(saw) with their own eyes could not think so. Their minds were hooded, they could not perceive the merits of the Holy Prophet^(saw). So they went on saying that the powerful speech – the Holy Qur’an – which fell from his lips and which he addressed to all God’s creatures, was taught to him in secret by other people! And the teaching went on regularly morning and evening! In a sense, the unbelievers’ taunt was true. The Holy Qur’an in power and wisdom is far above the intellectual power of the Holy Prophet^(saw). Far above the intellectual capacity of any human being. Only the Most Knowing, the Most Powerful God could have imparted this speech. Similarly the books composed by this humble one are the result of Help, which came from the Unseen, above my ability and my capacity. And thank God, Maulawi Sahib’s criticism has made true a prophecy entered earlier in my Barahin-i-Ahmadiyyah. The prophecy said there would be people who on reading this book would declare, it is not this man’s work!

“Syed Ahmad Arab, whom I know to be reliable, told me that he (Syed Ahmad) lived with him (i.e., the present writer) for two months: in an inner circle of devotees, taking care to be present on all occasions and observing and watching out carefully. He (the Arab) found astrological instruments with him which he (i.e., the present writer) made use of.”

Come, let us call our sons and your sons, and our women and our women, and our people and your people and then let us pray fervently and invoke the curse of Allah on those who lie. (Holy Qur’an, Ch.3:V.62)

This verse from the Book of God is my reply. I remember not at all this Syed Ahmad who was with me for two months. It is up to the Maulawi Sahib to produce him before me, so he may be asked to tell us what apparatus he saw. But why this? I am alive and Maulawi Sahib himself could come and live with me for two months and see things for himself. We need no Arab or non-Arab to do this.

“When I have read the so-called revelations and thought over them, I am not at all impressed: the revelations do not seem to be revelations.”

No more were the unbelievers of the Holy Prophet^(saw)’s time impressed. Has not God Almighty said about them, And they declared false our signs totally (Holy Qur’an Ch.78:V.29)? The Pharaoh believed not. Abu Jahl, Abu Lahb believed not. But they who were poor and pure of heart believed. This grace comes not of one’s own sinews, not until the Gracious One gifts it Himself.

“Making claims is contrary to showing signs and to say that those who doubt may come and see is false, futile.”

My claims are not mine really. They are claims on behalf of Him Who is entitled to make every claim. No lover of truth can allege lies to such claims. True, claims of supernatural powers cannot be made even by prophets. But could not God – through a prophet, apostle or Muhaddath – make such claims?

“I lost my belief in him after the meeting. Every believer in the One God who meets him (the present writer) will similarly lose his belief in him. He is late with daily prayers, very late. And he does not always join others at prayers.”

It matters not to me that Maulawi Sahib lost belief in me. But his lying and fabricating and distrusting – to such extremes – do surprise me. O God, have mercy on this Ummah [(people)] of the Holy Prophet^(saw) whose leaders, guides and friends are Maulawis of this kind!

Let readers consider this complaint of the Maulawi that has arisen only from lack of charity and from abundance of jealousy. It is obvious that I was in Aligarh a sojourner for a few days. I was bound to observe concessions allowed to travellers by the Shari‘ah of Islam. Not to observe these concessions at all is a kind of unbelief. What I did was what I should have done. I cannot deny that during my stay of a few days, I said two prayers at one time, and this is the Sunnah. I have said Zuhr and ‘Asr prayers together late at the time of Zuhr. Strict believers combine prayers even at home when they are neither on journey nor prevented by rain. I do not deny that during these few days I have not been absent always, in spite of being ill and on a journey. Maulawi Sahib would know that I said my Friday prayers behind him and I do not know now whether this was correct. It is true, quite true, that I avoid attending mosques when I am journeying. But this – I seek refuge with Allah – is not for laziness or for indifference to divine ordinances. Unfortunately mosques in our time, in our country, are in a very bad condition. When one wishes to lead the prayers at such mosques, the official Imams do not tolerate it. Should one choose to stand behind an appointed Imam, then I have doubts whether prayers are then properly said at all. Why? Because it is known to all and sundry that leading prayers has become a business with these Imams. Five times a day they enter not a house of prayer but enter rather a shop to attend to customers.

They and their families live on its income. Parties go to court whenever there is dispute over maintaining or not maintaining a given person as Imam. Maulawi Sahiban file appeals to obtain a legal decree for their status as Imams. This is living off Imamat in the forbidden way, a most disgusting way. Are you not similarly involved in a crooked selfish enterprise? When things are like this, why should one who knows ruin his own faith? The traditions of the Holy Prophet^(saw) dealing with the latter days, speak of the filling of mosques by hypocrites. This prophecy relates to Mullahs of our time who have the Holy Qur’an on their lips but who are thinking all the time of their own bread and butter when they face their congregations. Combining Zuhr and ‘Asr prayers or Maghrib and ‘Isha’ has always been permitted during journeys. When this permission was abrogated I do not know. Nor do I know who has forbidden the saying of prayers during the latter part of their [appointed] time. It is amazing – you think backbiting permissible but combining Zuhr and ‘Asr prayers or Maghrib and ‘Isha’ prayers by a traveller haraam [(forbidden)].

“Fear God, ye believers in One God, for the time to depart is near and Allah knows everything you try to hide.”

Looking for spiritual ailments as a target, and then – by arrows of counselling as it were – trying to eliminate those ailments and reform moral weakness, much as a dislocated part is restored to its true position, requires the presence of the patient before the physician. Proper treatment is possible in no other way. Thus it is that God has sent several thousand prophets and messengers into the world and required men to flock round them and profit by their life and example. For, as exemplars, they are living embodiments of the word of God. To follow them is to follow the word of God. Companionship of these holy men is one of the essentials of religious training. Were it not so, God would have sent His revelation without sending any messengers or prophets. Or, He would have sent prophets and messengers in the beginning and then stopped sending them forever afterwards. Divine wisdom did not brook this arrangement. On the contrary, holy men gifted with divine revelation continued to come at all times of need – to cure godlessness and restore the love of God and purity of life – and to serve as models of daily life for others. The two are interconnected. If God is concerned to provide guidance and reform in time of need, then it is imperative that the elect of God who receive their wisdom from God and who are taught to always stand by God’s wishes should continue to arise. It follows, therefore, that the Herculean task of reforming a whole people cannot be accomplished by academic devices. It can be accomplished only by methods which have always been employed by God’s holy prophets. The example of Islam proves this in a unique and unparalleled manner. The Holy Prophet’s^(saw) companions rose to more than 10,000, yet this large number lived and moved in close association with the Holy Prophet^(saw), ready and eager with conviction and humility to acquire knowledge of divine truths and learn the art of true divine living.

True, even Moses^(as) had a following, a Jama’at. But of what sort was this Jama’at? It was rebellious and arrogant and far removed from the acceptance of spiritual discipline and the style of a good life. Readers of the Bible and students of Jewish history are aware of this. The companions of the Holy Prophet^(saw) present, by contrast, a tremendous miracle of internal transformation, which took place through their following the Holy Prophet^(saw). They presented an outstanding picture of cohesion and equality of spirit. This was how Islamic brotherhood came into being. The brotherhood was an organic whole. The light and influence of the Holy Prophet^(saw) had penetrated deep into their minds and souls. One and all had become perfect reflections of the character of the Holy Prophet^(saw). This was the result of the example of a true and perfect prophet. Those steeped in the grossest idol-worship became worshippers of the One, Invisible God. Those who were sunk in the pleasures of this world became devotees of the True Beloved, so much, that they hesitated not to shed their own blood in His path. In consonance with this, this humble one has been appointed to institute something similar. I desire in fact to widen this circle of visitors who would come and live with me, so that those who are eager to promote their faith, their love of God, and their certainty of convictions should come and live in daily contact with me, so that they also should become gifted with the love of faith with which this humble one happens to have been gifted; and so that they also should enjoy the spiritual experiences which this humble one enjoys; that they also should acquire the devotion and enthusiasm for the faith which this humble one has acquired; and that – thus and in consequence of this – the light of Islam should spread far and wide in the world, and that the present black image of Muslims, a people only to be hated and despised, should evaporate. I had tidings of this revolution to come. God, yes God Himself, spoke to me and said:

“Arise! Thy appointed moment has come and now followers of Muhammad^(saw) will soon mount on to a minaret very high, with their feet more firmly planted than before.”

THE ESSENCE OF ISLAM
This series sets out, in the words of the Promised Messiah(as), Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, a summary of his exposition of four outstanding topics: ISLAM; ALLAH, THE EXALTED; THE HOLY PROPHET(saw) and THE HOLY QUR’AN. The original compilation, in Urdu, from which these extracts have been translated into English, was collated with great care and diligence by Syed Daud Ahmad Sahib(ru). The English rendering is by the late Sir Muhammad Zafrulla Khan(ra), and is quoted from The Essence of Islam, Volume 3. All references throughout, unless otherwise specifically mentioned, are from the Holy Qur’an.

Though different people, on account of their short-sightedness or lack of courage, appoint various types of objectives for their lives and stop short at worldly purposes and desires, yet the purpose that God Almighty has specified in His Holy Word is:

I have created jinn and men so that they should worship me. (Ch.51:V.57)

According to this verse the true purpose of human life is the worship and understanding of God Almighty and devotion to Him. It is obvious that it is not open to man that he should himself appoint the purpose of his life by his own authority inasmuch as man does not arrive in the world of his own will, nor will he depart from this world of his own will. He is a created being and He Who created him and bestowed upon him better and higher faculties than those bestowed upon other animates, has appointed a purpose for his life. Whether anyone comprehends that purpose or not, without doubt the purpose of man’s creation is the worship and understanding of God Almighty and to lose himself in Him (Islami Usul ki Philosophy; Now printed in Ruhani Khaza’in (London, 1984), Vol. 10, p100).

We offered the Trust to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, but they refused to undertake it and were afraid of it. But man undertook it. Indeed he is capable of forcing himself to obey, disregardful of consequences. (Ch.33:V.73)

This means that the Divine Trust, by which are meant the love of God and complete obedience to Him, was offered to the angels and the whole of creation and the mountains, all apparently full of strength, but they all refused to undertake it, being afraid of its grandeur. But man undertook it for he possessed two qualities, that he could force himself in the cause of God Almighty and could advance so far in love of Him as to forget altogether everything else (Taudheeh Maram, pp27-28).

The real purpose of all the external and internal limbs and faculties that have been bestowed on man is understanding and worship and love of God. That is why, despite a thousand occupations, man does not find his true well-being except in God Almighty. Having acquired great wealth, or achieved high office, or having become a great merchant, or having acquired governing authority, or become a great philosopher, he departs in the end from these worldly involvements with a sense of frustration. His heart rebukes him all the time about his deep concern with the world and his conscience never approves his wiles and deceits and wrongful actions. This problem can be appreciated in another way. The purpose of the creation of a thing is determined by its highest achievement beyond which its faculties cannot rise. For instance, the highest a bullock is capable of is ploughing, or irrigation, or transportation, and therefore these are the purposes of its life and it cannot rise above them. But when we take stock of man’s faculties and powers to discover his highest capacity, we find that he is invested with the faculty of seeking after God so much so, that he desires that he should become so devoted to God’s love that he should have nothing of his own and that everything should become God’s. He shares his natural needs like food and drink and rest with other animates, and in industry some animals are ahead of him; for instance, the bees produce such excellent honey from every type of flower that man has so far not been able to compete with them. It is clear, therefore, that the highest capacity of man is meeting with God Almighty and thus the true purpose of his life is that the window of his heart should open towards God.

How To Achieve The Purpose Of Life

The question is how, and through what means, can man achieve this purpose? The principal means for achieving this purpose is the correct recognition of and faith in the True God. If this first step is wrongly taken and a person sets up a bird, or an animal, or any of the elements, or a human being as his god, it cannot be expected that his subsequent steps would be taken along the straight path. The True God helps His seekers; but that which is dead cannot help the dead. As the Holy Qur’an says:

Unto Him is the true prayer. Those on whom they call beside Him, do not respond to them at all. Their case is like that of one who stretches forth his hands towards water that it may reach his mouth, but it reaches it not. The prayer of the disbelievers is but a delusion. (Ch.13:V.15)

Second Means

The second means of achieving the true purpose of life is to become aware of the perfect beauty of God Almighty, for beauty is something that naturally attracts the hearts and generates love. The beauty of God Almighty is His Unity and His Greatness and His other attributes, as the Holy Qur’an says:

Proclaim: He is Allah, the Single; Allah, the Self-Existing and Besought of all. He begets not, nor is He begotten; and there is none like unto Him. (Ch.112:Vs.2-5)

This means that in His Being and His attributes and His Glory, God is One without associate. All are dependent upon Him and every particle derives its life from Him. He is the Source of grace for everything and receives no grace from anything. He is neither a son nor a father for none is equal to Him. The Holy Qur’an repeatedly draws attention to God’s perfection and greatness and points out that such God is the Besought of all hearts and not one who is dead or weak or lacks mercy or power.

Third Means

The third means of achieving the purpose of life is to become aware of the benevolence of God Almighty, for love is generated by beauty and benevolence. The benevolent attributes of God Almighty are set forth briefly in Surah Fatihah [(Opening Chapter)], where it is said:

All praise belongs to Allah, Lord of the worlds, Most Gracious, Ever Merciful, Master of the Day of Judgement. (Ch.1:Vs.2-4)

It is obvious that the perfection of benevolence consists in that God Almighty created His servants from nothing and thereafter His Providence was bestowed upon them and He became the support of everything, and all types of His mercy were manifested for His servants. His benevolence is without limit and beyond count as is repeatedly set forth in the Holy Qur’an, as, for instance:

…If you try to number the bounties of Allah, you will not be able to count them… (Ch14:V.35)

Fourth Means

The fourth means of achieving the true purpose is Prayer, as is said: Call on Me, I shall respond to you (Ch.40:V.61). There is repeated urge towards Prayer, so that man should achieve his purpose not through his own power, but through God’s power.

Fifth Means

The fifth means of achieving the purpose of life is striving in the cause of Allah with one’s property and one’s faculties and one’s life and one’s reason, as is it said:

…Strive in the cause of Allah with your properties and your lives… (Ch.9:V.41);

and it is said:

…They spend out of whatsoever We have bestowed upon them (Ch.2:V.4);

and it is said:

Those who strive after Us shall We guide along the paths that lead to Us… (Ch.29:V.70)

Sixth Means

The sixth means for achieving the purpose of life is steadfastness; that is to say, that a seeker should not become tired and should not be daunted by trials, as it is said:

On them who affirm: Our Lord is Allah; and then remain steadfast, angels descend, re-assuring them: Fear not, nor grieve, and rejoice in the Garden that you were promised. We are your friends in this life and in the hereafter… (Ch.41:Vs.31-32)

This is an indication that the pleasure of God Almighty is won through steadfastness. It is true that steadfastness is more than a miracle. Steadfastness is that one should find oneself surrounded on all sides by calamities and one should find one’s life and honour in danger and nothing comforting should be available, so much so, that God Almighty should stop comforting visions and dreams and revelation and should leave one in the midst of terrifying fears, but that at such a time, one should not abandon courage and should not step back like a coward and should not let one’s fidelity be weakened. One’s sincerity and loyalty should not be shaken, one should be pleased with the humiliation, one should be reconciled to death, one should not await the support of a friend, one should not seek glad tidings from God, because of one’s delicate situation, and one should stand up straight despite helplessness and weakness and the lack of every comfort. One should stretch forth one’s neck, saying: Whatever is to happen, let it happen; one should face courageously whatever has been determined and one should not be impatient nor complain till the trial is completed. This is the steadfastness through which one wins God. This is that the perfume of which is given forth by the dust of Messengers, Prophets, Siddiqs [(Truthful persons)] and martyrs. This is indicated in the prayer:

Guide us along the straight path, the path of those on whom Thou hast bestowed Thy favours… (Ch.1:Vs.6-7)

meaning, show us the path of steadfastness by treading along which one wins Thy bounties and favours and with which Thou art pleased. This is also indicated in another verse:

…Our Lord pour down upon us steadfastness and cause us to die in a state of submission to Thee (Ch.7:V.127)

meaning, Lord: at this time of trial send down upon our hearts the comfort that should make us steadfast and do Thou so ordain that we should die in a state of submission to Thee. At the time of trials and misfortune, God Almighty causes a light to descend upon the hearts of those who are dear to Him, being strengthened by which they face misfortunes calmly and, out of the sweetness of their faith, they kiss the chains that are put round their feet in His cause. When calamities descend upon a man of God and signs of death appear, he does not contend with his Lord that He might be safeguarded against them, inasmuch as to persist at such a time in supplications for security amounts to fighting God Almighty and is contrary to complete submission. A true lover advances forward at a time of calamity and holding life as nothing, and saying goodbye to love of it, submits himself completely to the will of his Lord and seeks only His pleasure. Concerning such people, God, the Glorious, says:

Of the people there are those who dedicate themselves to seeking the pleasure of Allah; and Allah is Most Compassionate towards such devoted servants. (Ch.2:V.208)

That is the spirit of steadfastness through which one meets God.

Seventh means

The seventh means of achieving the purpose of life is keeping company with the righteous and to follow their example. One of the needs of the advent of Prophets is that man naturally seeks a perfect example, for it fosters eagerness and resolve. He who does not follow a good example becomes slothful and goes astray. This is indicated in the verse:

…Keep company with the righteous (Ch.9:V.119)

and:

The path of those on whom Thou hast bestowed Thy favours… (Ch.1:V.7)

Eighth Means

The eighth means of achieving the purpose of life are pure visions and dreams and revelation from God Almighty. To travel towards God is to tread upon a very delicate path that is attended by diverse types of calamities and sufferings. It is possible that a person may be overtaken by forgetfulness in pursuing this unfamiliar path or may give up hope and should abandon further advance. Therefore, the mercy of God Almighty seeks to comfort him in his progress in this journey and strengthen his heart and to uphold his resolve and to increase his eagerness. Thus it is God’s way that from time to time He comforts those who are voyaging along this path with His revelation and manifests to them that He is with them. Thus strengthened, they perform this journey with great eagerness. He has said:

For them are glad tidings in this world and in the hereafter… (Ch.10:V.65)

There are several other means for achieving the purpose of life which the Holy Qur’an has set out, but considerations of space forbid us setting them out here (Islami Usul ki Philosophy; Now printed in Ruhani Khazain (London, 1984), Vol. 10, pp101-108).

A question is raised that God Almighty being Gracious and Benevolent, His direction that man should worship Him is for the benefit of man and not that it adds in any way to God’s honour. It is true that through the worship of God man’s own welfare is intended, yet the Rabubiyyat [(Providence)] of God Almighty demands that avoiding evil and devoting himself to His worship and obedience, he should achieve his good fortune. If he does not wish to follow that path His wrath is aroused not for His own sake, but for his sake and He subjects him to diverse types of warnings and admonitions. If he still does not take heed, he is consumed in the fire of rejection and of despair. It is not permissible that anyone should say to Him: Why do You bother about what would harm me or benefit me? Why do You admonish us and send revealed Books and punish us? If we worship You, it would be for our own good and if we do not worship You, we shall suffer loss. Why should You worry? Should anyone say that, and indeed if the whole world and all mankind were to supplicate Him that He should spare them His admonitions and commandments and revealed Books, and that they do not desire paradise, but would be content with this world and should be left for ever to it, that they do not desire the great bounties of the hereafter, that He should not interfere with their actions and should abstain from planning rewards and punishments for them and should not concern Himself with their benefit or their loss, their supplication would not be granted even if they continued to submit it throughout their lives crying and weeping. It is not enough that a person is free and worships God for his own benefit and that Permeshwar has no concern with it, but the Glory and Greatness of God demand that man should carry out the worship of God and should follow the ways of goodness. His Godhead naturally demands that the signs of servitude should be manifested before Him and His perfection demands that man should humble himself in His presence. That is the reason why in the end His chastisement overtakes the disobedient and the vicious and those who persist in wrong-doing. His Blessed Being has eternally possessed the power to award reward and impose punishment; otherwise, he would not occupy Himself to award good recompense to the virtuous and ill recompense to the vicious. Were it not for His attribute of awarding recompense, He would have kept silent and abstained altogether from bestowing recompense. Therefore, though it is true that the harm or benefit of man’s actions reverts to him and the greatness and kingdom of God Almighty are neither increased nor decreased thereby, yet it is true and is a firm verity that His attribute of Rabubiyyat demands that His servants should be firmly established in their position of His worshippers, and that if anyone should raise his head in the slightest degree out of arrogance, his head be immediately smashed. In short, there is a demand in God’s Being for the manifestation of His Greatness, His Godhead, His Supremacy, His Glory and His Kingdom, and recompense and the requirement of obedience and servitude and worship are the consequences of that very demand. For the manifestation of His Rabubiyyat and Godhead, He has created this variegated world. Had His Being been free from this desire of manifestation, why should He have addressed Himself to creation at all? Who had coerced Him that He should create the universe and by establishing a relationship between souls and bodies should make this world the manifestation of His wonderful powers? He must have possessed a power of determination that moved Him to the creation of the universe. There are indications in His Holy Word, the Qur’an, which show that God Almighty created the universe so that He should be recognised through His attribute of creation, and after creation He showered His mercy and benevolence upon the world so that He should be recognised through His mercy and benevolence. In the same way, He instituted punishment and reward so that His attributes of retribution and bounty might be recognised. After death, He will raise up mankind again so that He might be recognised as All-Powerful. His purpose in all His wonderful works is that He should be recognised. Thus, by the creation of the world and by the system of recompense, what is desired is the understanding of God, which is the essence of worship. This proves that God Almighty Himself demands that His creatures should attain His understanding, the perfect reality of which is known through worship. As a beauteous one on account of the perfection of his beauty desires to display it, so God Almighty, Who possesses to perfection the reality of beauty, desires that His excellences should be disclosed to people. This proves that God Almighty demands worship, which is the basis and means of recognition from His servants, and His supremacy attends to the destruction of one who opposes His desire and denies His worship and turns away from it. If you reflect over the world and observe carefully that which God Almighty has hitherto meted out to rebels and non-believers, and that which He has always done to the faithless ones and the wrong-doers, you would realise that without doubt it is an established verity that God Almighty, by the demand of His Being, loves goodness and hates evil and is at enmity with it. He desires that people should discard vice and should adopt goodness, and though goodness or evil, which man practises, does not in any way interfere with God’s kingdom, yet that is His demand. It is thus obvious that if God Almighty has not created the souls, He has no right to demand from any soul why it does not render to Him that perfect worship that is due to its Creator (Surma Chashm Arya (Qadian, 1886); Now published in Ruhani Khaza’in, Volume 2 (London, 1984), pp.215-220).

A ‘Good Man’ Defined

Let me now turn to the important question: What is the definition of a good man? The Christian view is that a man has to possess all virtues and to be free from all vices, all defects, to be called a good man. Other religions have more or less followed the same line. But the Holy Qur’an says explicitly:

Then, as for him whose scales are heavy, he will have a pleasant life. But as for him whose scales are light, hell will be his resort. (Ch.101:Vs.7-10)

For instance, if an examinee answers nine questions correctly but his answer to the tenth is not correct he will not be penalised for it. Similarly doctors too commit occasional mistakes but if by and large their patients get well, they are considered good doctors.

This means that a moral person is one the quantum of whose virtues is overwhelmingly greater than that of his vices, or alternatively an immoral person would be one whose vices outweigh his virtues. This is unlike what other religions say. From their point of view, a person may live a clean, full and virtuous life; but let him commit one mistake and this would be enough to condemn him as immoral. The Islamic approach is different. In Islam a moral person is one who honestly and sincerely exerts himself to do what is right, so much so that his virtues cover and score out his faults.

The truth is that other religious teachings regard the Shari‘ah as arbitrary. To them it is nothing more than commands which must be obeyed to please the law-giver’s fancy. The slightest breach brings down a penalty. There is no forgiveness, no exception, no leniency. The Shari‘ah, according to them, is nothing more than a manual of penalties. The Islamic view of Shari‘ah is quite different. The Shari‘ah rituals are not ends in themselves. They are exercises to help promote the really good life; the life of the heart. Therefore, if you fail to perform a prescribed ritual, you do not at once attract punishment, unless the omission or the error violates the purpose of the exercise itself. This does not mean, however, that occasional wrong-doing is permitted in Islam. No. That is not so. Deliberate wrong-doing is a kind of holiday from moral life. It is rebellion; and certainly rebellion is not permitted. If in a school examination a student refuses to answer one question and says he will not answer, because he has so willed, his act will be treated as a kind of indiscipline. He is just asking for punishment. It amounts to insulting the institution. But if he is unable to answer one or two questions, that is quite another matter. That would not entail any punishment. But deliberate refusal would be quite a different story.

Can Morality Be Taught?

The question arises; can morality be learned and taught? The answer is, why not? But this is a general answer. When the question is faced directly and a person is asked: Have you done all you can to improve your moral life? Have you met with the desired change? The reply generally is: No, I have tried but it is very difficult. Ask anyone in a group if morals can be improved; the answer will be: Yes. But when you ask if the person concerned has succeeded in actually improving his morals, he will say: I have done my best but I have not succeeded. The position is paradoxical. We have, in most matters, a poor opinion about others but a good opinion about ourselves. But in the matter of moral change and improvement by effort and exercise, human behaviour is the other way around. Somehow, others seem to be able to do something to improve their morals, but not we. We have some special difficulties or circumstances which hinder us. However, the Holy Qur’an is quite explicit on this point. According to the Holy Qur’an, moral life can be improved. Says the Holy Qur’an:

Continue to admonish, for admonition always helps. (Ch.87:V.10)

A Prophet is never to tire of giving good advice to his people. Good counsel never goes unrewarded. The Holy Qur’an is definitely optimistic in this respect and it is a thing worth noting. No wonder the Promised Messiah^(as), who drew on the Holy Qur’an for everything he taught, held fast to this teaching of the Holy Book. What he said to his followers again and again and in different ways inspired hope. Once he said:

‘Think not: “We are sinners, so will our prayers be heard?” Do not think like this. Man makes mistakes, but a time comes when he is able to overpower his sinning self. This power to overcome the sinning self is also built into the nature of man. Water puts out fire. This is part of its nature. However much you may heat it, when water drops onto fire it must put it out. That is natural. So is man a purifier by nature. Every man has this purifying property. Do not feel defeated because you have been involved in sin. Sin is like a stain on the surface of a piece of cloth. It can be washed away. Your habits, your dispositions may be dominated ever so much by your passions. Pray to God weeping, crying – He will not let your prayers go waste. He is full of compassion.’ (Al-Badr, 1907)

The Promised Messiah^(as)’s message is full of hope. It is the message of the Holy Qur’an, amplified in his style by the Promised Messiah^(as). The optimism which permeates the Holy Qur’an is unequalled in any other Holy Book. The way it is amplified by the Promised Messiah^(as) is indeed unequalled by any similar writer on the subject.

It becomes crystal-clear from the Promised Messiah^(as)’s words quoted above that human nature has something built-in, which, when put to use, washes away all sin, and the sought-for resulting improvement is there for all to see.

Is Man in his Natural State Good or Bad?

The question may be asked: If man is so capable of counteracting evil, why is there so much evil in the world? Or, why is there more evil than good in the world?

I answered this question on another occasion before. But during the last few days, about half a dozen different people from different places have put this question to me again. It is quite strange that the same question should be raised by so many people at once and the same time. But let me proceed to answer the question.

The question is: Can we say that man is good by nature? We must remember that God has endowed man with all sorts of capabilities and has also endowed him with the freedom and the discretion to use them in a good or bad way. The parting of the ways is shown to him and then he is left free to act. Says the Holy Qur’an:

We have shown him the Way, whether he be grateful or ungrateful. (Ch.75:V.4)

More Good or Evil

The fact is that it is often forgotten owing mainly to errors of observation that the world is more good than evil. Take a thief; true, he commits theft, but against each theft, he does so many things which are good. Perhaps he meets people in a pleasant manner. He is generous and charitable. He serves his parents, and takes good care of them. If you count up in this way, you will find the good in each person preponderating over evil.

So also men taken individually do more good things than evil. The quantum of good or evil in the world would certainly give good an edge over evil, possibly more than an edge. Why do people generally think the number of evil actions to be greater? This wrong impression is the product of two cir-cumstances. One is the too patent fact that in terms of formal, professed belief and unbelief, certainly unbelievers would be found in a much larger number. The other circumstance is that most men suffer from one moral defect or another. Because of this, the quantum of evil seems larger.

But it is an illusion. These circumstances are not adequate proof that there is more evil than good in the world. Certainly, there may be more unbelievers. But the number of enlightened and convinced unbelievers is much less than appears on the surface. The so-called unbelievers are often such as have not really analysed or tested their beliefs. Many so-called Kafirs [(disbelievers)] are not Kafirs in the eyes of God. They will yet have the chance to decide. Or, if this does not happen, their actions, which they have performed freely and responsibly, will be taken into account in determining their moral merit. Thus weighed, can we say how many will turn out to be good men and how many evil? Altogether it seems there is more belief in the world than disbelief. Proportionately, therefore, it would be safe to say that there is more good in the world than evil.

The other circumstance too, that all or most people suffer from some moral defect or other, is open to question. In fact, this is not the way to judge the matter. The question is: Are most men good or bad? If most men are good, the quantum of good in the world is greater. If most men possess most of the good moral qualities, the good predominates. Keeping in view the total good of men in the world as a whole, the evidence on the side of good will be found to be more incontrovertible.

Some people at this point interject and say that if most people are in for punishment of one kind or another, then what does it prove except that Satan has won and God has lost. But I would say: No, still God is the winner and Satan the loser. For, does not Islam say that ultimately, that is, after all accounts have been settled, all human beings will enter the Divine Garden:

And I have not created the Jinn and the men but that they may worship Me. (Ch.51:V.57)

This eventuality fulfilled, as it must be, who will think that any human beings who have, by trial and error, become images of their Creator, should still remain in Hell and not go to the Garden, which is the destiny of all good men and women? From other evidence also we know that a time will come when hell would be emptied of all its inmates, also that they will all have been admitted to the Garden. All will have become good servants of Allah. When this happens, where will Satan be? Do you think he will be sitting by himself alone, unlike the rest of the creatures? He also will join the others in the Garden after he has been cleansed of all evil. So he will after all be defeated in his personal aim to mislead human beings and will himself stand de-satanised. Those who consider Satan as the winning party shall stand corrected when they find Satan in the Garden: Satan who has ceased to be Satan.

To turn to the question of the definition of the perfect man. The perfect man is free from sin to the extent that in after-death he finds himself equal to the requirements of the good life. “Requirements of good life” means to deserve the pleasure of God and to be safe from His displeasure. The good soul has enough good deeds to its credit to enable it to enter the Garden of Divine pleasure at once. The emphasis is on at once. The perfect man is ready to enter the Garden at once, to which sooner or later, every soul will be admitted. The perfect man’s only distinction is that he will be among the first to enter.

What is Sin?

I now turn to the definition of sin. Sin is an activity which renders the human soul sick and incapable of viewing the face of God. Difficulties have to be encountered in the journey which the soul undertakes as it moves towards the purpose of its creation. Activities which amount to sinning are either physical, whose dangers are visible to oneself as well as to others; or, they are spiritual. Of the physical activities many are such that the dangers and disabilities they entail are obvious.

What are good deeds? Good deeds are deeds which bring a person enough strength to join the onward march in the hereafter and which makes the soul capable of viewing the countenance of the Lord. Normally, a healthy person means one who is capable of going about life’s activities in a normal way. One does not have to be extra-capable. One has to be just capable. Otherwise, small defects exist in everyone. Doctors cannot point to a single perfectly healthy body. A good man is one who has done enough good deeds, both physical and spiritual, to be capable of viewing the countenance of God.

Kinds of Virtues and Vices

We cannot give an adequate account of the different kinds of sin, unless we can also describe different kinds of virtue. So, let us remember, there are three kinds of virtues and correspondingly three different kinds of vices or sins. They are as follows:

• Virtues and vices which pertain to the heart. These indeed are the real virtues or vices.

• Virtues and vices of the tongue or expression.

• Virtues and vices which entail the use of the other physical organs like hands, feet, eyes, etc., etc.

Where Does Sin Come From?

Here an important question arises. It may be asked, with so many encouragements towards a life of virtue, and so many discouragements towards a life of vice, and so much room for improvement, how does vice manage to enter the life of man?

I can only briefly indicate the answers to this important question. The main causes of sin are the following.

(1) Ignorance. Sometimes a person allows himself no time for reflection while trying to satisfy his natural impulses and allows a passing interest or pleasure to determine his action. The excitement of the moment removes from his view the more permanent and the more solidly happy ends of life.

Why should this happen? Why are the more permanent ends of life ignored?

Firstly, because of ignorance, which may be permanent or passing. Permanent ignorance is a thing apart. Temporary ignorance is ignorance despite knowledge. This sort of ignorance can have many causes:

• Greed – too much greed blinds a person to many important matters

• Pugnacity

• Intense need

• Bad health

• Excessive fear

• Excessive love

• Excessive optimism

• Excessive pessimism

• Excessive insistence on anything

• Excessive desire

• Excessive lack of desire

• Hereditary tendencies

These are the twelve sources or circumstances which produce or promote ignorance.

(2) Besides ignorance, the second big source of sin is social contacts and companions. Man is a born imitator. He tends to do as others do, without weighing and considering the consequences of what he is doing. These social influences include the influence of parents and other relations, playmates, teachers, social institutions and customs.

One source of sin and sinning we have said is ignorance. But ignorance can be just ignorance, or it can be wrong knowledge, which makes it different from sheer ignorance. Wrong knowledge is invariably accepted as knowledge, and spurious generalisations as authentic principles.

Another source of sinning is bad habits. Knowing very well what truth is and that merit attaches to telling the truth, when the crucial moment arrives a person tends not to tell the truth. An addict makes up his mind not to drink any more. He knows all about drinking and not drinking. But when the party sits down to drink he allows himself to join in and cannot resist the temptation. At the slightest call his resolve not to drink is broken.

Sinning is also caused by habits of laziness and lack of organised hours of daily life. A person tends to take things easy. He is carefree. He has no inclination to work. When the time comes, he tends to make light of what he has to do. Time passes and he suddenly finds himself drinking. Once a sincere companion of the Holy Prophet^(saw) was all but ready to go to the battlefield, but he made no preparation for it. He had persuaded himself that when the time came he would be able to join the party with ease. He continued to leave his preparations to the end. The result was he was left behind and could not join the army. Laziness, therefore, is often the cause of sin. Man is lazy and easy-going and is incapable of commanding himself to get up and go.

One source of sinning is lack of comparative judgment. Out of two alternative courses of action, a person cannot decide which is the better of the two. It also becomes a question for such people how different emotions are to be applied to different situations and is made by two parties, but how far does one go with one party and how far with the other? A man loves his wife but also his mother. Both have a similar title to love. This gives rise to difficult situations which are largely self-created. Similarly, many people become convinced of the truth of the Promised Messiah^(as) but hesitate to join the fold. They say they owe allegiance to another saint whom they do not want to leave. These difficulties are due to an incapacity to judge.

Another source of sin is the many invisible influences which criss-cross one another in our lives. They exert a kind of hypnotic influence, unknown to the person affected. No argument is given nor is any appeal made, but the presence of influences which ideas generate is undeniable. This needs some explanation. Let a decent person live in close proximity to nine others not so decent, who nurse evil thought without any overt communication. He will soon begin to feel the evil influence. This reminds me of a Sikh student who had great affection for the Promised Messiah^(as). On one occasion he sent a message to him – through Hadhrat Maulawi Nuruddin Sahib^(ra) – that his mind was being affected by agnostic thinking. The Promised Messiah^(as) suggested that this young man should change his seat in the classroom and sit away from his classmates who sat close to him. The change proved the cure for his agnosticism. No argument had passed between them, but unexpressed thoughts were being communicated in some mysterious way.

Thoughts are like waves and have a power of their own. The Holy Qur’an and the Holy Prophet^(saw) endorse this. Animal life also bears out this point. For example, two cats confront each other in an imminent fight. After an exchange of the usual mutual threats and noises, one of them is found to lower its tail and leave as if worsted. There is no visible fight; yet there was some kind of a contact.

Animals communicate without words or signs. Let four or five lions be brought together. Before long, only the strongest of them will be left standing as the master of the scene. Others will have lowered their tails and slipped away. If meat is thrown to them, none will dare eat except the strongest; the rest will just stand by and watch as if paralysed with some secret fear.

Hypnosis: Under hypnosis too we can observe similar phenomena. I was once experimenting with hypnotic influences. I had some questions raised by agnostics which I wanted to answer experimentally. Our grandmother who was an amused spectator and was standing nearby, dismissed the whole idea. She thought animals could not be influenced. She said: Here is a sparrow. Catch it if you can. I took her at her word. As I gazed into the eyes of the sparrow, I went close to her. She did not move. But when I proceeded to catch her, my hand intervened between her eyes and mine. This broke the spell and she flew out of my hand.

One traveller writes: I saw a squirrel running mad. Round and round she went gravitating at the same spot from which she had started. When I went near the spot I saw a snake protruding out his neck. The two were eventually very close to each other. The snake was about to make a morsel of her. I too went closer. The snake was still intent on eating her up. I hit the snake and scared it away. It is obvious; the squirrel was aware of the presence of the snake and wanted him to run away, before she did.

Another traveller writes: In an African jungle I saw a bird fluttering for life. I looked closer and saw a snake looking intently into the eyes of the bird. I killed the snake but later I found the bird too had died, possibly out of the fear of being caught.

In England they performed another kind of experiment. Two insects of the same species were placed apart at a distance of five miles from each other. In course of time, they both found each other. Something intangible must have exerted its pull to join them together.

An American biologist built an ant-house and sealed it carefully from the outside. After a while, whole colonies of ants were found sticking to the outside of a wall of the ant-house. On closer examination, it was discovered that the ants were sticking on the outside of the wall exactly on the spot where another colony of ants had collected inside. The experiment was repeated in another house, with the same result.

From these examples it is obvious that even at the animal level waves of some kind shoot out which are more mental than physical. Their impact on intercommunication and mutual relations is undeniable. They do affect our modes of behaviour. It is said that whenever the Holy Prophet^(saw) mixed with groups of people, he would invoke God’s forgiveness and protection seventy times, not that he was afraid of physical contagion, though it is true Prophets love to be clean and that was one reason why he sought God’s protection, but the other and the more important reason was that he cared for people who were clean in their own right but were likely to be affected by unclean thoughts and their evil influence.

Sin-Infected Conditions

To combat sin it is necessary to be able to identify sin-infected conditions. I would, therefore, give an account of such conditions so that their identification should become easy. Among them are the following:

1. A person looks upon sin with horror but now and then finds himself inclined towards it.

2. He still hates sin but is unable always to resist the temptation and falls for sin.

3. He does not hate sin but no more does he relish a life of sin. The result is that he commits a sinful action occasionally, without really liking or disliking sin.

4. He relishes sin but not without shame. If he sins, he sins in secret. If he refrains from sin, he does so because of past habit or because of social custom.

5. At this stage, he sinks much lower. Past habit and social custom cease to be adequate restraints. He is now ready to indulge in and enjoy a sinful life.

6. At this stage, he is not only sinful and evil, but also encourages others to be evil and sinful like him.

7. At this last and lowest stage, he becomes a profile of Satan, propagation of evil becomes his daily concern.

In comparison with sin-infected conditions, we have the following good conditions listed below in an ascending order:

1. To do good for the sake of reward.

2. To choose good as a commandment of God.

3. To do good for the sake of good and to consider virtue to be its own reward.

4. To do good as a natural habit.

5. To enjoy doing good.

6. To propagate good in the world.

7. To become an embodiment of good and to treat its dissemination as one’s single unalloyed aim in life like the angels. There are higher grades of goodness like prophethood; but they are a gift of God and cannot be attained by mere effort.

I have explained above that human actions may be good both morally and spiritually. When human actions pertain to other human beings, they are called moral. When they pertain to God, they are called spiritual. This means that from the practical point of view, they are subject to the same practices and rules, the same exercises and the same general principles. Moral and spiritual ailments, therefore, can be classed and treated together. I do not feel the necessity of elaborating this treatment any further. Others have already done this, including Sufis. So I would not like to add to whatever little I have said on the subject. The practical side of sin, however, remains important. This has to be studied in the light of the teachings of Islam.

The Islamic treatment of sin is unique – it is part of its perfect teaching. Islam does not start treating sin after it has been committed. It turns more to prevention than cure. It raises the question: What can be done to prevent sin? There is no doubt that this is the rational approach, which contains the key to the treatment of sin. When a piece of cloth has become dirty, it needs more effort to clean it. It is best to see that we do not let it become dirty. This indeed is the main difference between Islamic and other teachings. Unlike other religions, Islam does not merely tell us what to do after a person has become sin-infected, it also tells us what is to be done when sin has not yet appeared and what may be done to prevent it appearing.

It is to be regretted that despite the fact the Holy Qur’an has invited our attention to this subject and many Muslim saints have done the same, Muslims as a people have not given as much attention to this aspect as they should have. They have ignored the important fact that the foundations of sin are laid long before a person becomes an adult. Sin is not a sudden phenomenon. When a person suddenly takes to a life of sin, it is usually forgotten that it is not a sudden change from good to evil. It is not now that the adult has become bad. The seeds of badness were sown long ago. Only, the seed that was sown when he was a child has sprouted forth and becomes a tree. If the potentiality of sin was not there, where did sin come from when the erstwhile child attained puberty? Seeds of sin are indeed sown long before puberty. Muslim scholars have also pointed this out. The fact of the matter is that the seed of sin is sown soon after birth and sometimes even before birth.

When doctors of religion start worrying about the bad morals of an adult, the adult is already in the firm grip of Satan. I am not so pessimistic as to think that when a man becomes adult, he has already acquired every possible evil that he can. What I mean is that the inclination and the power to do evil have taken root. I have already said that the basic dispositions of matter out of which morals are born, are limited. If these dispositions somehow go wrong in childhood, outwardly the child would seem to be sinless and harmless, but in reality he would have acquired all the power and all the means to commit sinful actions.

Now ponder a little. Where does sin come from? Does it come from parents? No, certainly not. But we know that sometimes certain dispositions run in the family from generation to generation. The same habits, the same dispositions, the same skills keep emerging. You cannot make a people courageous overnight whose courage has been dead over many generations. When such people go to the battlefield they are certain to let you down. In any case, they will fail to show the degree and quality of courage which a seasoned force of fighting experience extending over many generations is able to do. True, there are remedies for defects and deviations, but hereditary traits acquired through generations of habit and training are hard to correct.

Similarly, sin is also rooted in greed, aggression, fear, love and excess of desire. Now ponder a little. These desires and inclinations are planted in childhood. The child is a great learner. He begins to learn as soon as he is born. His first acquisitions seem harmless enough. Sometimes he shows streaks which could become sins later on. But the parents ignore them saying he is but a child. They forget that it is in childhood that the seed is sown and impressions become deep. A person who begins to steal as an adult could have been saved from this nefarious practice if he had been checked and taught self-control when he was a child. He need not have become a thief as an adult. Similarly, a person goes to the battlefield as a soldier, but on facing the enemy, he recoils and runs away. How cowardly, exclaim the people around him. But the fault is not his. As a child he had been told tales of cowardice. It is these tales which have made him afraid at the sight of the enemy.

The same is the case with aggression and pugnacity. Parental control is lax and these emotions are allowed an unbridled play. The result is that when the child grows up, he becomes the quarrelling type who would fight on the slightest pretext.

Sin is invariably rooted in lack of will-power. Lack of will-power is not a natural defect. It has its causes. How is it that a person continues throughout life making and breaking resolutions? He keeps doing this because of lack of will-power. Remember, it is in childhood and in childhood alone that this emotional sickness takes hold. Nobody notices it at the time, but a habit is being built then which it will not be easy to break later on; otherwise, there is no reason why an understanding adult should wish to give up something and not be able to do it. It means he has been trained badly as a child. Otherwise it should be quite enough to tell him that such and such a thing is good and ought to be chosen and pursued and such and such a thing is bad and is not worthy of pursuit. On just being told, one should be able to choose the right course.

How can the young child be protected from this early sickness? The first thing is to keep pure the thoughts and emotions which sway the parents, for parental thoughts and emotions also play their part in shaping the character of the child even at the prenatal stage. The door to evil thoughts must be closed particularly while we are preparing to receive the child. What can we do except, as far as possible, to keep our thoughts always pure and clean? If you desire to do your unborn children any good, then your own thoughts must also be pure. Islam has a recipe for situations like this. This recipe is that when husband and wife consort together, they should supplicate:

“Shield us, O Allah, against Satan, and keep Satan away from whatever Thou mightest bestow upon us.”

This supplication is not a magic incantation, nor is it a charm. It is not necessary either that its Arabic version must be employed. The substance of the prayer is that we say to God: O Allah, sin is a filthy thing, save us from it; and also safeguard our children against it. This prayer and this thought will act as a wall between the unborn child and the influences of Satan. The Holy Prophet^(saw) has assured that the child born after this prayer will be free from Satanic influences.

Many people say that they have used this prayer but the result has not been as expected. Let me tell them that addressing the prayer like a magic formula or a charm is not enough. I am quite sure that many who complain use the prayer only as a charm. Secondly, this prayer does not cover all the subsequent delinquencies of which man is capable. Many learn evil habits after birth. Only the inheritable delinquencies are covered by this prayer.

After acquiring the disposition to sin at the parental stage, a child begins to develop sinful dispositions in his early childhood. Islam has expounded this great truth and has laid down that the training of the child should begin not only at birth, but long before birth. I almost think that the Holy Prophet^(saw) would have gone even further back. He would have laid down that the training of the child should begin while the child is still in his mother’s womb. But not many people would have been prepared to undertake the care of the unborn child during this delicate period. Therefore, the Holy Prophet^(saw) laid down that the training should begin at birth. The first thing is to recite the Adhan (Call to prayer) in the child’s ear at its birth. Nobody should think that this is just a piece of magic incantation. Both the words and the meaning of Adhan find their way to the mind of the child. Moreover, it is a reminder to the parents that they are responsible for the life of the newly born. The training of that life is now their responsibility. It begins from its birth. Besides the Adhan, the Holy Prophet^(saw) has laid down, that children should be taught good manners from their childhood. He is reported to have given the following advice to Hadhrat Imam Hassan^(ra), his own grandchild, when he was having his meal. The Holy Prophet^(saw) said to him:

“Eat with your right hand and from that which is in front of you.”

Hadhrat Imam Hassan^(ra) was only about two and a half years at the time. In our country, if a child begins to manipulate the whole dish and starts taking big mouthfuls, not minding the clean clothes of whosoever sits on either side, the parents only enjoy the scene and say nothing to the child. At the most they administer a mild rebuke or two. Their aim is not really to teach the child or to prevent him or her from wrongdoing. The casual rebuke is not seriously meant. There is another episode from the life of the Holy Prophet^(saw). A basket of dates had arrived to be distributed among the poor. Imam Hassan was very young at the time. He picked up a date and put it in his mouth. As soon as the Holy Prophet^(saw) noticed this, he put his finger in the child’s mouth and pulled out the date. What he meant was that a Prophet^(saw)’s grandchild was not to eat what belonged to others, that he was supposed to make his own living when he grew up and not be a burden on others.

In short, childhood training is very important. What he becomes as a child, he will become as an adult. No wonder the Holy Prophet^(saw) has said:

“Every child is born true to nature. It is his parents who make of him a Jew or a Christian or a Magian.”

Readers are invited to read the full transcript of this enlightening discourse, available at: www.alislam.org/books/seekers

He was born in 570AD in the town of Makkah. At the time, every region of the world was steeped in moral degradation. Christianity’s original teachings were on the wane. In India, idol worshipping and hundreds of “isms” were flourishing. Racial and caste-based discrimination and the dogma of “untouchability” were rampant. In the Qur’an this is depicted in the following words:

Corruption has appeared on land and sea because of what men’s hands have wrought… (Ch.30:V.42)

Even the so-called civilised nations were at the lowest rung of the religious, moral and spiritual ladder. In fact, in the 5th and 6th centuries, the civilised world was standing at the precipice of moral annihilation. People in general were ill-mannered, unlettered and ignorant. The vices of alcoholism, gambling, oppression, tyranny, violence, cruelty and various other wrongdoings were the order of the day. It was because the Holy Prophet^(saw)’s personality was naturally imbued with auspiciousness, obedience to his Creator and the inner-light of Prophethood that he was never affected by the aforementioned ills of society. He was an embodiment of purity, chastity and piety.

It was under these circumstances that Allah the Almighty commissioned the Holy Prophet^(saw), at the age of 40, to lead mankind in the year of 610AD. When the Holy Prophet^(saw) raised a voice against polytheism and idol-worship and invited the world towards the true and real unity of God, the people of his tribe, and in fact the whole Arab nation, vehemently opposed him. They persecuted him and his followers, but the Holy Prophet^(saw) never wavered and stood firm on his belief in the Oneness of God. Despite having to face intense sufferings and oppression, he steadfastly conveyed the message of God. His followers offered all kinds of sacrifices to nurture the plant of the new faith. They were ready to part company with their near and dear ones and suffered the loss of their assets and possessions for their faith. They were banished from their homes but that failed to move them away even a fraction from their resolve.

The time then came, after thirteen years of persecution, when the Holy Prophet^(saw) and his followers had to migrate from Makkah to Madinah. Even there the opponents did not leave them alone. They wanted to wipe out Islam with force. For this reason Allah permitted the Holy Prophet^(saw) to fight in self-defence in order to establish peace and freedom of conscience. With the help of his followers, the Holy Prophet^(saw) confronted the perpetrators of suffering. Despite being ill-equipped and with an army of small numbers, Allah made him successful, and this was possible only because Allah’s help, support and succour was with the Prophet^(saw).

Only eight years after the migration from Makkah, the Makkans offered their welcome to the Holy Prophet^(saw). At that juncture, he could have taken revenge from the Makkans for their previous inhumanity as he had entered as a victorious man, but he chose to forgive all those persecutors. This very act of forgiveness, pardon and general amnesty has no match in the annals of mankind.

I will enumerate those aspects of the Holy Prophet^(saw)’s life, character and teachings that make him the ‘torchbearer of humanity’ and the unifier of world nations.

Tauheed – The unique Oneness of God

To create a unity in thoughts and actions, it was essential that a full and real unity of God be accepted and internalised. If all of us have the same Creator, Master, Provider and Nourisher and the Guide, as is the case, then despite our differences in specific beliefs, we can come to a common platform. For this very reason, the Holy Prophet^(saw) has laid stress on the unity of God and proclaimed, “There is none worthy of worship except Allah”. “Say Allah is One And He has no partner.” So, the Holy Prophet^(saw) invited all nations of the world in this Qur’anic language:

Say, ‘O People of the Book! Come to a word equal between us and you – that we worship none but Allah, and that we associate no partner with Him, and that some of us take not others for Lords beside Allah’… (Ch3:V65)

The acceptance of this invitation in real earnest would result in the elimination of our differences and our mutual hatred and contempt; resentment and bitterness would dissipate. The Islamic concept of God as Rabbul ‘Alameen (Lord of all the worlds) that the Holy Prophet^(saw) presented and promoted before the world, is that our God is not the Nourisher of Muslims only, or of Hindus, Christians or Buddhists only, but the Nourisher of all of us, irrespective of our affiliations and our nomenclatures. Even the one who denies His existence also benefits from the attributes of Allah. This concept of unity of God and His being the Sustainer of all of us is the foundation stone on which the edifice of universal unity and brotherhood can and should be constructed.

Universal Prophethood

It must be remembered that before the advent of the Holy Prophet^(saw), all prophets, apostles and reformers were sent to specific nations and were confined to certain areas. None of them were given a universal mission, and in fact, none of them made a universal claim. It is the distinction of the Holy Prophet of Islam^(saw) that this message was not confined to the Quraish, or to the Makkans or to the Arabs alone, but was meant for all mankind and all nations. He claimed in the Qur’an:

Say, ‘O mankind! truly I am a Messenger to you all… (Ch7:V.159)

Thus he invited all nations of the world to the one centre and thus became a harbinger for the unity in their thoughts and actions.

Freedom of Conscience

Freedom of conscience is the fundamental birthright of every human being. In this contemporary age, after years of experimentation, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. In its section 18, this birthright has been accepted as the cornerstone of human discourse. But, its foundation was actually laid over 1400 years ago, when the Prophet of Islam^(saw) presented the teaching of the individual and collective right of every person to differ on matters of thought, opinion, attitudes and beliefs. This difference, however, cannot be imposed on others with force, as this would amount to preventing freedom of conscience and shedding the blood of humanity.

The Holy Qur’an declares forthrightly:

There should be no compulsion in religion. Surely, right has become distinct from wrong… (Ch.2:V.257)

Also it says,

And say, ‘It is the truth from your Lord; wherefore let him who will, believe, and let him who will, disbelieve’… (Ch.18:V.30)

These teachings are testimony to the freedom of conscience preached by the Prophet of Islam.

Equality for all

A factor that dismantles the unity of nations is the absence of equality between them. The Holy Prophet of Islam^(saw) played a leading role in doing away with and erasing the racial, colour and caste-based distinctions that existed between various people of the time, and presented before the world an unmatched charter of equality. He gave shape to this charter by the following Qur’anic injunctions:

O mankind, We have created you from a male and a female; and We have made you into tribes and sub-tribes that you may recognise one another. Verily, the most honourable among you, in the sight of Allah, is he who is the most righteous among you… (Ch.49:V.14)

This Qur’anic principle of equality was exemplified by the Prophet^(saw) on the occasion of his last sermon. His sermon can be summarised in these words: You are one brotherhood. All people are equal according to Islam. The Arab possesses no superiority over a non-Arab, nor does a non-Arab over an Arab. A white man is no way superior to black man, nor for that matter, a black man to a white man, but only to the extent which a person exhibits righteousness and effort to attain it. According to Islam, there is no distinction in the reward one earns on the basis of colour or progeny.

Establishment of justice

The establishment of peace requires the implementation of fairness and absolute justice; otherwise the resultant severe repercussions can destroy nations with dreadful consequences. The Holy Prophet^(saw) has therefore stressed that all, irrespective of their status, should be treated with absolute justice. The Qur’anic teaching is very clear on this subject:

Verily, Allah enjoins justice, and the doing of good to others; and giving like kindred… (Ch.16:V.91)

The required standard of justice is:

O ye who believe! be steadfast in the cause of Allah, bearing witness in equity; and let not a people’s enmity incite you to act otherwise than with justice. Be always just, that is nearer to righteousness… (Ch.5:V.9)

The Holy Prophet^(saw) is reported to have said that previous nations had been destroyed as they punished the weak segment of the society and let go those who were in high social status.

Respect for the Founders of all faiths

To achieve unity among nations of the world, the Holy Prophet^(saw) has given us a golden rule of respecting and venerating the Founders and holy men of various faiths. If we do not follow this golden rule, it has the potential of creating mutual enmity and ill-will, which destroys the peace of the society and results in bloodshed.

The Holy Prophet^(saw) promoted this Qur’anic teaching to put an end to these in-fights as:

…there is a Guide for every people. (Ch.13:V.8)

and

…there is no people to whom a Warner has not been sent. (Ch.35:V.25)

Because all God-sent apostles were imbued with the light of the same One God, it is incumbent on us to respect them in equal measure. So one who truly believes in the Holy Prophet^(saw) will consider the respect of other founders of faiths as a part of his faith.

During the lifetime of the Prophet^(saw) a Jew and an Arab were quarrelling over the superiority of their respective Prophets. The Jew’s sentiments were hurt by the way the Muslim made his claim. When the Jew complained to the Holy Prophet^(saw), he admonished the Muslim’s behaviour, “Do not exalt me above Moses” he said. This was the high standard of tolerance and courtesy the Holy Prophet^(saw) required from his followers.

Tolerance

The Holy Prophet^(saw) not only left us with a teaching of respecting other founders of faiths and apostles, but also taught us not to cast aspersions and malign their beliefs and principles:

…And revile not those whom they call upon beside Allah, lest they, out of spite, revile Allah in their ignorance… (Ch.6:V.109)

There is a well-known incident of great religious tolerance shown by the Holy Prophet^(saw) in his life. He permitted a Christian delegation from Najran to perform their religious service in his mosque in Madinah. World history has yet to produce this kind of respect and tolerance for the faith of others.

Against cruelty to animals

The Prophet^(saw) admonished against the cruel treatment of animals and instructed that they be treated with kindness, for they are also God’s creation. ‘Abdullah bin Mas‘ud relates:

“While we were in the course of a journey along with the Holy Prophet^(saw) we saw two young doves in a nest and we caught them. They were still very small. When their mother returned to the nest, not finding her little ones in it, she began to fly wildly round and round. When the Holy Prophet^(saw) arrived at the spot he observed the dove and said, “If any one of you has caught its young ones he must release them at once to comfort it.”” (Abu Daw’ud)

On one occasion, the Holy Prophet^(saw) observed somebody branding a donkey on its face. When asked why he was doing this, the person told the Prophet^(saw) that this was the practice followed by the Romans for identifying animals. The Prophet^(saw) said that animals should not be branded on their face, it being a sensitive part of the human body. If branding was necessary, then it should be performed on the animal’s haunch, a less sensitive part of the animal’s body.

Last, but by no means least, is how the universal teacher, the Holy Prophet^(saw) of Islam, revolutionised the way the world looked upon women.

Women’s Rights

Before the advent of the Prophet Muhammad Al-Mustafa^(saw), the status of women was deplorable. Through his teachings, this status was uplifted to an extremely venerable place in the society. This is attributed to the Holy Prophet^(saw), as we read in the Qur’an:

…And they (the women) have rights similar to those (of men) over them in equity. (Ch.2:V.229)

…and consort with them in kindness… (Ch.4:V.20)

In the Traditions of Bukhari, there is a specific saying of the Prophet^(saw) to the effect that one who treats his wife in an excellent manner is very close to his God. In the cultural arena, the Holy Prophet^(saw) allotted the same rights to women as those of men, keeping in view their respective God-given characteristics. Islam was the first religion that provided women with the right of inheritance. In the matter of inheritance she receives a specified share from the assets of her relatives. She is the full owner of her wealth and savings, and is free to do with her property or money as she pleases. And, of course, in the spiritual sense men and women are declared of equal status as set forth in the Qur’an:

…‘I will allow not the work of any worker from among you, whether male or female, to be lost. You are from one another… (Ch.3:V.196)

The Holy Prophet^(saw) was so sensitive of women’s feelings that once, when he was leading prayers, he heard a child crying and finished the prayers quickly. Afterwards he explained that, upon hearing the cry of the child, he thought that the child’s mother must also have been troubled; hence he concluded the service so that she could attend to the child. He would always advise those who had to leave on journey to try and return home as soon as possible so that their wives and children would not feel the pains of separation for too long. He placed great stress on kindness to women, and would often say that if a father took it upon himself to educate his daughters and care for their upbringing, God would save him from the hell-fire. He said:

“Woman has been created from a rib and the most crooked part of the rib is the uppermost. If you try to straighten it you will break it and if you leave it alone it will remain crooked. So treat women kindly.”

The personality, character, actions and sayings of the Holy Prophet^(saw) are such that if they are adopted by the civilised world in real earnest, this world can become a peaceful place and complex problems can be solved easily. A great writer of the English world, George Bernard Shaw, said:

“He must be called the Saviour of humanity. I believe, if a man like him were to assume the dictatorship of modern world, he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring it the much needed peace and happiness.”

What an immense tribute to the Holy Prophet Muhammad^(saw)! For a Muslim, the Holy Prophet^(saw) is the ideal model to be imitated and the wisdom of the Holy Qur’an is reflected in his deeds and statements that we must strive to follow.

A foreword from a recent book and film ‘Jesus in India: King of Wisdom’ on the life of Jesus(as) and his travels in India. Whilst there are a vast amount of concepts and sources covered and it is hard to draw definitive conclusions, the spirit of research and discovery is commendable and will lead to new enquiry in this field. It asks whether Jesus(as) was in India during the unrecorded eighteen years (between twelve and thirty years of his age) before his emergence in Palestine. The Promised Messiah(as), however, clarified that Jesus(as) went in search of the lost sheep of Israel, and died a natural death in India.

Reproduced with the permission of the author.
Jesus in India: King of Wisdom, Edward T. Martin, Yellow Hat Publishing, USA, 2008

FOREWORD

By Paul Davids

The film that this book describes was chosen by the Sundance Channel for a national U.S. television broadcast as its Christmas documentary for 2008, with a prime time airing December 22nd and a repeat broadcast the day after Christmas and on the day of New Year’s Eve. Additionally, the International Television Division of NBC Universal offers the film for broadcasts around the world.

This is both wonderful and remarkable, because “Jesus in India” is admittedly a controversial film. However, we are privileged to live (especially in the United States) in an era when controversy has become a virtue, and debate and the clash of ideas have emerged as a time-honored tradition.

People no longer hide from ideas. If they do not like them, they chew them up, spit them out, stomp on them, shout about them and then move on to other ideas. But sometimes ideas plant a seed, take hold and blossom, re-shaping both popular and traditional culture.

The verdict is not yet in for “Jesus in India” as a concept and theory and new direction in religious thought. But if you fail to accept the challenge of considering it, you will be depriving yourself of knowledge of an extraordinary puzzle. This remarkable puzzle, which involves eighteen lost years or “Hidden Years” in the life of Jesus, may well turn out to be a cornerstone for understanding many enigmas about Christianity – like the long-ignored missing but somehow obvious clue in a mystery that remains unsolved. Or perhaps somehow it will eventually be proven a dead end by indisputable dating of documents, DNA testing and other scientific tests and tools. Either way, none of us will be the worse for the truly incredible journey to inquire and discover.

New concepts of the actual, historic person of Jesus of Nazareth are emerging from historic studies of texts discovered since the 1940s in the Holy Land and Egypt, including the ancient gospels of the so-called Gnostic Christians that were found in Nag Hammadi, Egypt.

Even Pope Benedict the 16th has written a book called Jesus of Nazareth which acknowledges evolving understandings of the life and meaning of Jesus based on new findings in the modern era.

However, what the Pope does not talk about, which you will learn much about here, is that there is purportedly one particular ancient text about Jesus, long believed to have been seen and studied by a few select scholars and explorers at the Hemis Monastery in Ladakh, India, high in the Himalayas. This text may tell us true things about the Missing Years in the life of the historic Jesus not described in the New Testament and has been translated from Tibetan at least twice.

The questions today are: where is the Tibetan version, and where is the most ancient version of it, purportedly originally written in the Pali language, and how old is it, really?

Does it, as it purports, fill in actual and accurate details of the life of young Jesus, between the ages of twelve and thirty, that are missing from the New Testament?

The author of the book you are about to read is Edward T. Martin, who has long had the wish – his greatest wish – to hold in his hands the manuscript said to exist at the Hemis Monastery at 14,000 foot elevation, near Tibet.

Edward Martin is by any definition an adventurer who has visited almost sixty countries and climbed about a dozen mountains. He is an English teacher from Lampasas, Texas, where he was raised as a member of the Church of Christ but ran afoul of popular opinion in the church organisation. The offence he committed was that as a young Bible student he noticed one omission in the New Testament – those Missing Years — that he thought to be rather serious, and he began asking far too many questions for those in his small town.

Edward T. Martin’s first book, King of Travelers: Jesus’ Lost Years in India, inspired our film “Jesus in India.” A revised and updated version has recently been published by Yellow Hat Publishing and is available at:

www.jesus-in-india-the-movie.com

and from New Leaf Distributing Company and other sources as well. It will jolt you and challenge much of what you have always taken for granted about the origins of Christianity, but it is not a prerequisite for reading this book.

This book is the story of an adventure in which I participated as a film producer and director, travelling with Edward T. Martin and producer Anil Kumar Urmil and a dedicated crew of Hindus, Muslims, and Christians over 4000 miles in India in search of answers to ancient mysteries. I then continued travelling to continue filming in several other countries, including Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States.

In India, we confronted all kinds of dangers, from terrorism to inhospitable climates, floods, impassable roads and arduous train travel during India’s summer monsoon, which was like being roasted alive in an oven. (You’ll find that Ed makes many references to the excessive heat during our travels.) But we diligently searched for the answers to the Biblical questions that have robbed Edward T. Martin of many nights of sleep in his five decades of life.

Not only has Ed Martin pointed out many times that information about Jesus between ages twelve and thirty is missing from the New Testament, but two prominent Catholic scholars whom I interviewed at Georgetown University confirmed it as well. Both Professor Alan C. Mitchell and Professor Anthony Tambasco, of the Georgetown Department of Divinity, acknowledge that Catholics call that period of Jesus’ life either the “Missing Years” or the “Hidden Years,” and that mainstream Christianity cannot offer any information about those years except to speculate that Jesus was growing up in Judea with Joseph and Mary.

In the motion picture business, which has been my profession for three decades, we call the problem of the Missing Years a “jump cut.” In the Bible, one moment young Jesus is twelve years old and speaking with the Jewish doctors of the law in the temple in Jerusalem. And then suddenly, on the next page, he’s thirty years old being baptized at the River Jordan by his cousin, John the Baptist. Only one sentence in the Gospel of Luke (2:52) connects the years, and it says:  “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and man.” End of story.

But for Edward T. Martin, it was not the end of the story; it was the beginning of his own personal quest that has pre-occupied him for most of his life, and which has now absorbed me for several years while making the film “Jesus in India.”

We found some remarkable information, in some very amazing places. And there are reasons to take what these sources tell us quite seriously. But let’s go further than the issue of the so-called “Missing Years” or “Hidden Years.” The very provocative question Christianity has avoided discussing since its inception is this:  Is it possible that Jesus physically survived the crucifixion?

Until recent years, to even ask the question was considered blasphemy or heresy, and so parts of this investigation may still seem heretical to some. Christianity takes the Biblical accounts literally and states unequivocally that Jesus did die – and then He was resurrected and met with the Apostles, instructing them to preach the Gospel throughout the world. Then after a period of days, the “official story” asserts that he ascended to heaven to sit at the right hand of God, and that Jesus will return again – the Second Coming – to bring judgment upon all mankind in the Final Days.

Edward T. Martin no longer believes the “official story,” but he believes there are many elements of historical fact in the New Testament concerning Jesus. In fact, he has tentatively concluded that the “official story” may have been a sort of “cover story,” not unlike cover stories which may have been used to hide the fact that John Wilkes Booth probably did not really die after assassinating Lincoln, although it was made to appear that Booth did. Reports that Booth escaped and travelled to London by a ship departing San Francisco (the last possible place he would be expected to board to get to England), and that he even appeared on the stage again in London, are either nonsense or fact. People are free to reach either conclusion. But for those who look, there are clues to be followed, and there is testimony and evidence.

Medical science has advanced a long way in two thousand years, and today we know that the line between life and death is sometimes impossible to define. There have been many cases, in two thousand years, of people thought to be dead and nearly consigned to their graves, who were not dead at all and survived to tell their tales of “near death experiences.”

Author Edward T. Martin takes as fact that Jesus did appear before his Apostles following the crucifixion. But he asks whether Jesus’ actual survival could be a logical explanation for those sightings of Him, an explanation that does not depend upon the supernatural. Although he accepts that even Jesus’ survival, under those circumstances, should be regarded as a great miracle, justifying the celebration of Easter, Ed searches for evidence that Jesus escaped the Roman Empire and had a continuing life in the east.

In the film, I sought many opinions other than those of Edward T. Martin. Five prominent Catholics weigh in on those questions, as well as a fundamentalist Christian preacher, Hindu priests, the Shankaracharya of the Hindu religion (one of the four ultimate ecclesiastical authorities on Hinduism, whose authority in the Hindu world is similar to that of the Pope in Catholicism), Buddhist monks in the Himalayas, a young Muslim scholar in London, a Jewish rabbi and many others. The Catholics appearing in the film include the late Monsignor Corrado Balducci, who was Apostolic Nuncio of John Paul II, Professors Alan C. Mitchell and Anthony Tambasco of Georgetown University, Michael Hesemann, who is a Vatican-accredited journalist, and Father Baptiste, who is the Catholic Bishop of Bareilly in India. Best-selling author Professor Elaine Pagels of Princeton University, who wrote Beyond Belief: The Gospel of Thomas and many other books, also made an important contribution to this film, conceding that: “We cannot rule out that Jesus may have travelled to India.”

The Christian faithful (who pick up this book or who want to watch the DVD of the documentary feature motion picture, “Jesus in India”) need not fear that it is a one-sided diatribe, because it certainly is not. In fact, our assistant director on the film, Mr. N. T. Binny of Mumbai (whom everyone calls just “Binny”), is a devout “Thomas Christian” who said his prayers very early every morning while working on the film and who frequently reminded us that, although he could accept the evidence that Jesus possibly did journey to India as a young man, he believes the speculation about the crucifixion and its aftermath is unfounded. Jesus was resurrected and ascended to heaven, according to Binny. Nevertheless, Binny’s curiosity was certainly piqued by the trail of inquiry, and he devoted every possible effort to helping us complete each phase of the production. He does not agree with some of Edward T. Martin’s conclusions, but he believes it has taken a courage to pull back the veil and look at these issues.

Without resolving the questions raised in this book and in the film, which may never be resolved, we found that the trail of inquiry took us to Srinagar, to a specific grave believed by Ahmadiyya Muslims to be the final resting place of the historical Jesus Christ. We went there aware that political conflict and violence in the area made the visit dangerous – and made filming at the tomb in a Muslim district where the locals were angry at any intrusions and did not welcome visitors – even more dangerous.

The project meant so much to each of us involved in the filming of “Jesus in India” that we went there, in spite of the U.S. Secretary of State’s admonitions for Americans considering such travel, and in spite of warnings at the tomb not to film it or photograph it even from the outside. That warning at the tomb appears as the final photograph of chapter twelve of this book.

Even stalwart believers in Jesus’ resurrection may ask themselves what is so threatening, and to whom, that visitors would be warned not even to take a picture of a certain very ancient grave in northern India! And why does the grave have stone carvings of the feet of the prophet who is buried there, which suggest the wounds and scars of crucifixion? And why do some Christians as well as Ahmadiyya Muslims worship there [Ed. – Ahmadi Muslims do not worship at any grave], pay homage, light candles, shed tears – and why do all the other branches of Islam revere the tomb, protect it and discourage outsiders from approaching? There are three prophets in Islam – Abraham, Jesus and Muhammad [Ed. Muslims believe in hundreds of thousands of Prophets including many others such as Moses^(as) and Krishna^(as)] – and the tomb in question is called by Muslims “The Prophet’s Tomb.” Neither Abraham nor Muhammad is buried there, so who is?

We survived the visit to Srinagar with extraordinary footage for our film. But others in that region, within the very next week, were not so lucky, and sixteen died. Terrorism continues there unabated, and most of it does not reach the western press. As this book is published, Kashmir has descended into bedlam, and many of those who live there are threatened.

My work on the film project did not end when the journey to India with Edward T. Martin was completed. There was still much to do and other travels to make. The filming continued at the Vatican, at Princeton University, Georgetown University, Amherst in Masssachusetts, Lampasas in Texas, London (home of Arif Khan), Florida (home of Suzanne Olsson), and many other places. I am indebted to many people for their contributions to this film. As for my time spent with Professor Elaine Pagels, interviewing her for the film brought me back to Princeton University, my alma mater, several decades after I had graduated as a young psychology student who had a particularly keen interest in making motion pictures.

The result of all of this is that I completed a motion picture about Edward T. Martin’s search, “Jesus in India.”

The search itself, as described by Edward T. Martin in this book, contains elements of both heaven and hell, and in many ways it enlightened us. Yes, we had some ecstatic experiences, seeing and beholding certain things and places holy to Hindus, Christians and Buddhists that are seldom seen by western eyes. Of our travels to about forty locations in India, there is little about it that was easy but there were parts of it that could be said to have been blessed.

I had many reasons for making “Jesus in India,” and the origins came about while I was a student at Princeton University. As an undergraduate student at the close of the 1960s, when it was still an all-male school, I took a course in Mahayana Buddhism, learned about the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi from the Beatles (and their dedication to the teacher known as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and to Transcendental Meditation), and then I happened upon the “book of books” for mystical seekers, Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda.

I was raised as a non-practising Jew by agnostic parents. However, my father was one of the few Jewish professors for forty years at Georgetown University, one of the most prominent Catholic institutions in the U.S. As a result of reading Autobiography of a Yogi, while in college I attended services of Yogananda’s Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) in a private home about ten miles from Princeton.

I could scarcely have imagined at that time that I would end up studying film in Beverly Hills, at the American Film Institute Center for Advanced Film Studies, or that I would end up living for thirty years in a home atop a hill about half a mile from the Mount Washington “Mother Center” of Yogananda’s Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles, CA. Nor could I have imagined then that Yogananda’s writings, so filled as they are with devout belief in many seemingly “supernatural” realities, including the resurrection of Christ, would continue to hold a fascination for me and involve me throughout my life, including his teachings of Kriya Yoga.

My fellow producer on this project, who I invited to join me on this adventure, likewise was raised with ambiguous and conflicting religious realities. Anil Kumar Urmil was raised in Goa, India, the son of a Hindu father and a Catholic mother, both from India. He knew much about the travels of St. Thomas in India and had long heard tales about the travels of Jesus there. In making this film, he wanted to know more about whether he should believe the legends he had always heard, whether they had foundation in fact, or whether those stories should be regarded as myths.

Sometimes the answers we seek in life are not given to us. We must become a seeker to find them. We may never find them. But without the effort, without daring to try, there is never any result. The results of our questioning and our search for answers are offered with literary flair and considerable insight here by Edward T. Martin.

You will find not just what he feels we learned about the “King of Wisdom,” as some have described Jesus in regard to his purported travels in India, but you will see the humour, heartaches and foibles of the author, who in some respects is just a very ordinary fellow who likes nothing more at the end of the day than to take off his leather cowboy boots and unwind.

As a matter of fact, everyone who sees our film has a good laugh when Ed confesses how he first reacted when he heard the evidence that Mother Mary is buried in Pakistan and the mortal remains of Jesus are in a tomb in Kashmir.

“When I heard that, I needed another drink,” he confessed.

As controversial as some aspects may prove to be, we gained confidence that we must have done something right when noted critic Pete Hammond wrote that “‘Jesus in India’ is a fascinating and profound film, a deeply spiritual journey certain to make you think and question in ways you never have before.”

Edward T. Martin has done a wonderful job of taking you along with us to India and beyond. And so we both invite you to join us for the pages that follow, hoping you will experience and that you will learn, as we did, some absolutely fascinating things about the life of Jesus of Nazareth you didn’t know before. As the Gospel of St. John says, “There are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”

Unfortunately, contemporary events have shown that in certain European countries this ideal of ‘freedom of religion’ is not being adhered to properly. Some recent laws against religions are quite oppressive, intolerant in comparison with the standards of the Declaration. In parts of Europe, religion is being suppressed by a wave of what has been described by some as oppressive secularism; Muslim headscarves banned in France, an attempt to ban crosses from schools in Italy, and now the Swiss ban on the construction of minarets.

When a Danish newspaper printed debasing cartoons of the Holy Prophet^(saw), voices all over Europe stood up in defence of ‘freedom of expression’, and, to rub the point home, the cartoons were re-published in several newspapers. When Muslims, or followers of other religions, want to express themselves, through minarets etc. those same voices do not defend free expression by religious followers; instead, they are content for such freedoms to be curbed.

In Switzerland, one of the arguments put forward is that certain Muslim countries do not allow Churches and Synagogues etc. to be built. As this publication has proved time and again, such ‘Muslim’ countries are not representative of the true tolerant teachings of Islam – the Holy Prophet^(saw) even welcomed a Christian delegation to pray in the mosque and granted other religious followers full rights of worship and complete freedom of religion. This begs the question that if some Muslim countries have abandoned the noble principles of Islam, should Europe abandon its noble principles of liberty and freedom also?

The European ideals of liberty and freedom for all, which took thousands of years to establish, must not be forgotten. These privileges must be granted to all peoples, no matter what their religious denomination is. It is likely that we have not seen the end of unfair measures against religious fraternities; rather this is probably only the beginning of a wave of discriminatory measures directed against religions, and in particular Islam. Credit must be given, however, to a large section of the European Press that voiced serious dismay over the Swiss minaret ban, and to a significant section of the European population who have voiced their opposition to these measures. It is hoped that the voices of the vast majority of open-minded and liberal Europeans rise above the minority of right-wing bigots.

Continuation of an extract from Victory of Islam, an English rendering of the Urdu Fath-e-Islam, written by the Promised Messiah and Mahdi, Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad(as).

If faith evaporates to the Pleiades, this Persian will bring it down to earth

This is the prophecy of the Holy Prophet^(saw). Its meaning has been made clear to me by divine revelation. All its details have been made manifest. The meaning is that the Messiah son of Mary was a restorer of faith who appeared 1400 years after Moses^(as); at a time when the Jews had become very weak in faith, when they had come to suffer from evils of various kinds, all symptoms of this one malady viz., weakness of faith. So, now about 1400 years after the Holy Prophet^(saw)’s advent, this Ummah [Muslim community] also has come to suffer from the same evils from which the Jews had come to suffer in their time in order that the prophecy may be fulfilled which had been made about them. So, for the Ummah also, a Messiah similar to the first Messiah has been raised to restore to them their faith. God Almighty has done this out of his Infinite power and mercy: The Messiah that was to come has come. Accept him if you will.

Those who have ears to hear let them hear. This is the work of God Almighty, wondrous in people’s eyes. If there be those who will reject, then remember, true claimants have been rejected before. John or Elijah son of Zachariah^(as) was rejected by the Jews and yet the Messiah had witnessed to his truth, saying it was he who had been raised to heaven and whose second coming from heaven had been foretold in the holy books. God’s speech is full of metaphors. It is common for someone, similar to someone else in power, character, and capacity, to be named after this other. One similar to ‘Umar, the Farooq, is ‘Umar Farooq according to Him.

You read the Hadith, which says, “If this Ummah were to have Muhaddathin to whom God speaks then such a Muhaddath would be ‘Umar?” Would you say that, therefore, Muhaddathiyyah is over after ‘Umar? No! The meaning of this Hadith is that whoever in spirit and power is like ‘Umar, will be a Muhaddath when the time for his advent comes. It was in this sense that this humble one once received the revelation: “You have been endowed with the character of ‘Umar.”

This humble one is similar in character to other holy ones. The subject is described in detail in my [book], Barahin-i-Ahmadiyyah. But the similarity to Jesus Christ^(as) is more pronounced.

Because of this similarity, this humble one has been sent in the name of Jesus Christ^(as), so that the belief connected with the Cross may be banished. I have been sent to break the Cross, to kill the swine. I have come from heaven with angels on my right and left; angels whom God will send, nay, is already sending into willing hearts and this, to help complete my mission. Even if I speak or write nothing, even then the angels who have descended with me will carry on their work. They have maces in their hands, given to them so that they may break the cross and break the idol of man-worship. Maybe the ignorant will ask, what does it mean – this descent of angels from heaven? Let them know it is the custom of God that when a prophet or apostle or saint descends from heaven to reform and restore a people to faith, then angels also descend with him, in his company.

These angels enter human hearts willing and ready. They draw them to virtue and keep drawing them, until unbelief and misguidance disappear and the dawn of belief and righteousness shows its face. As indeed God Almighty Himself says in the Holy Qur’an:

In it – the Night of Power – descend angels and a New Spirit, all by the command of their Lord and charged with every kind of affair. Peace it is, peace – till the rising of the dawn. (Ch.97:Vs.5-6)

The descent from Heaven, that is to say of angels and the Holy Spirit, takes place only when a great human – an elect – draped in vicegerency and blessed with divine revelation, descends upon this earth. The Holy Spirit is specially charged to work for this man. And the angels descend upon willing hearts all over the world. Then wherever there are men of goodwill and ability, the light emitted by this  man [(Vicegerent)] descends. The whole world is then under the influence of a pervasive light. Angels enter men’s hearts and set them in the right direction. Love of the One God begins to attract. Simple and straight hearts become charged with the love of and search for truth. The weak are endowed with strength. Everywhere a wind of wholesome change begins to blow. The cause of the reformer beings to prosper? A hidden hand moves men to righteousness. Whole nations begin to feel the push, so much so that the ignorant among men begin to think the world has taken a turn towards the right, all on its own. In reality the change is the work of angels who descend from Heaven along with the vicegerent of God, and lend special strength for the acceptance and understanding of truth. They awaken those who were asleep and alert those who were lost. They give hearing to the deaf, quicken those who were dead, and raise the entombed out of their graves. Then do men suddenly open their eyes and begin to perceive and understand what was hidden from them before. The angels who help the Vicegerent are not beings apart from the Vicegerent. They are the light that shines on his face. They are the many signs and symptoms of his courage and will. This light, that is, these signs and symptoms, draw towards themselves by their magnetic quality men suited to the change. Physical distance may or may not separate them; the men drawn may be friends or complete strangers.

In short the stir towards a new conscience, a new enthusiasm for truth that marks the change, come of the influence emanating from the angels, who descend along with the Vicegerent. It may be the people of Asia or Europe or America. It is angels who move them. This is the law of God. You will find no change in it and it is so easy and simple to grasp. It will be your misfortune if you heed it not. This humble one has come from God with Truth. You will see signs of Truth on all sides. Time is not far, nay it is very near, when you will see angels in troops descend from heaven, moving men in Asia, in Europe and in America.

You know from the Qur’an that angels must descend along with the Vicegerent so that they may turn men’s minds towards the truth. It is better, therefore, that you wait for the appearance of this sign. If no angels descend, and no visible sign of their influence, not a general but a more than ordinary movement towards the truth, takes place, then you may think no one has come from heaven. But if all this comes to pass, beware lest by rejecting the truth you become a people rebellious in the sight of God.

There is a second sign. It is the sign of the bounties of God reserved for His favoured servants: Of these, this humble one has received a large and special portion, and this others may not claim. If you doubt it, then come and contest it openly. Take it for certain that you will never be bold enough to contest it. You have tongues but no heart, you have bodies but no life, eyes but no light. May God endow you with light that you may see.

A third sign is that the Holy Prophet^(saw) has mentioned me, this humble one, in his recorded utterances – in the Sihah, for instance. You claim to believe in the Holy Prophet^(saw), but you pay no heed to what he has said. Do you not thus reject the Holy Prophet^(saw) himself? Maybe this comes of your unconscious hostility to him. Your thinking encourages a rejection of the Holy Prophet^(saw)’s utterances, not their affirmation.

Many among you will now write Fatwas [(edicts)] of Kufr [(disbelief)]. Many would have proceeded to assassinate were that possible. It so happens that this Government is different. It is not run by a people easy to provoke, or poor in understanding or tolerance. It does not encourage ‘Jewish’ ways, ‘Jewish’ thinking. True, this Government knows little about true beliefs – their beauties and blessings. But it is many times better than the Government of Herod with whom the Messiah son of Mary had to deal. It is also better than present-day Muslim Governments in providing for security and welfare services, for freedom, for civil rights, for education, for justice through courts and control and punishment of delinquents. There is a significant parallel here. Out of divine wisdom, Jesus^(as) was not sent in the time of Jewish supremacy and under Jewish suzerainty. Similar care has been observed by God in the case of this humble one.

If, therefore, there are disbelievers today who dismiss me with derision, there is nothing to be sorry about, for, disbelievers of earlier times meted out to their prophets treatment much worse than this. The Messiah son of Mary was derided and mocked. His own brother, born of the same mother, conspired to have him imprisoned as an insane person. His enemies attempted several times to murder him. He was stoned and spat upon and, of course, put on the cross and, as they thought, put to an end. Yet he survived, his bones had not been broken and a secret believer and well-meaning citizen rescued him. He was raised to heaven after he had lived the remaining years of his life. His followers, companions and friends also proved weak. One of them deserted him for a bribe of thirty rupees, another cursed him, openly pointing at him. The rest, who also professed loyalty, disappeared. They had come to have doubts of various kinds about the Messiah. But he was true in his claim. Therefore, God restored to life his mission after he had died. The resurrection of Jesus^(as) as entertained by Christians, is not physical. It is not a resurrection of his person. It is a resurrection of his creed. It was the creed that was resurrected. Similarly did God give me the glad tidings: “I will give you a new life after death.” God also said that the near ones of God come to life again after their death. And He said: “I will show Myself as by lightning. I will show My power by raising you.”

My second life foretold here means the life of my mission and objectives. But there are not many who would understand these secrets. To do so would be to challenge God. True, there are men steeped in darkness or in thoughts of their own. They will not accept. But the time is near when God will make plain to them their error. God has said:

“A warner came into the world but the world accepted him not. God, however, will accept him and manifest his truth by mighty signs.”

These words proceed not from the mouth of man. They are God’s words, words of the Mighty Lord Himself. The mighty attacks mentioned in this prophecy are near.

But these attacks are not by physical weapons, not swords or guns. These are spiritual weapons, which will come as help from God. A battle with the ‘Jews’ of our time will ensue. And who are these ‘Jews’? They are worshippers of external forms who have acquired complete resemblance with the Israelites of yore. The sword of heaven will cut them up, the ‘Jewish’ ways will be destroyed. All those who resemble the Anti-Christ, those who love this world over-much and who have only one eye, having lost the eye for spiritual truth, all of them will be destroyed by the sword of solid, unanswerable arguments. Truth will prevail. A bright new day will dawn again for Islam, as it did before. The sun of Islam will rise in full glory, as it did before. But this will not happen at once. It is imperative that this should not happen until we have proved our worth by devoted hard work, by offering our life-blood, by sacrificing our rest and peace and by accepting all indignities for the dignity of Islam.

The new life of Islam demands a great sacrifice from us. What is this sacrifice? It is our lives: on this sacrifice now depends the life of Islam, the life of Muslims, the manifestation of God in our time. Sacrifice is of the essence of Islam. And this is the Islam that God wants to restore. To bring about this great transformation, it was necessary that God Himself should establish a workshop, adequate and efficient in all respects. So, He Who is Most Wise, Most Powerful, let this workshop come into being by sending this humble one to undertake the work of reforming mankind. This workshop He had divided into several branches, all devoted to the dissemination of truth, the propagation of Islam. Of these branches, one branch is concerned with the preparation of books – one of the tasks assigned to this humble one. To perform this task I have been gifted with special knowledge; knowledge which is not within man’s capacity, which can be acquired only by the Help of God, which comes not through human effort but through the Holy Spirit. Instruction by the Holy Spirit has dissolved our difficulties.

A second branch of this workshop is concerned with the publication of leaflets which, also under divine command and for the satisfaction and conviction of all concerned, has already been undertaken. More than 20,000 leaflets on Islamic truths and arguments have been published. The process is continuing according to the need in the future.

The third branch of this Divine workshop relates to visitors and inquirers, those who choose to travel and come to me in search of truth or for other purposes: they have heard of this workshop and so they come to me. This branch of the work also keeps growing. The pressure of visitors no doubt varies. Not much on certain days, but very much on other days. During the last seven years there could have been about 60,000 or more visitors. God alone knows what I was able to do: talking to those who were eager to listen, helping solve their difficulties and encouraging them in different ways.

Talking to people and answering their questions sometime proves more useful than reaching them through books and leaflets. The method makes for speedy and effective communication. That is why prophets have relied on this method. Prophets have had their revealed teaching recorded and published, so as to reach all and sundry. Whatever else they had to give was in the form of speeches made by them on different occasions and adapted to those occasions. What they received as revelation from God was certainly written down and circulated with special care. But the general custom of prophets has always been to speak to those who would listen and speak appropriately. They keep the needs of their audiences in view. They do not speak like the speakers of today, who speak to show how learned they are, or who speak to delude simple folks into accepting all their bad logic and sophistries – making their own passage to hell so much the easier. No, not thus, but rather in a simple and sincere manner, prophets have communicated whatever happened to move their own hearts. Their speeches are pure and holy, suiting the occasion and fitting the needs of listeners. Nor do they speak only to entertain and amuse. Their approach is the approach of those who find spiritually sick persons around them and who then proceed to counsel these listeners suffering delusions of various kinds. In that case they try to remove these delusions by powerful arguments. Always choosing words economically, putting more meaning in fewer words. This is what this humble one also keeps doing. Visitors and inquirers have their needs and their spiritual ailments. Speeches are adapted accordingly in keeping with their abilities.

“Nothing now is left with the Mirzais after the demise of [Hadhrat] Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. The Movement has lost its head, and the person, who has become the head, only knows the Holy Qur’an and he will only be reading and lecturing on the Holy Qur’an in the mosque.” (Quoted from The Way of the Righteous, S. H. Ahmad, p122, 1908)

I am reminded of the precarious condition of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at immediately after the demise of Hadhrat Ahmad, the Promised Messiah^(as). Indeed, those were critical days when hearts and minds were sorely tested in ways we can hardly imagine as the architect, engineer and captain of the Holy Ark known as the Ahmadiyya Jama’at had passed on and left a sudden void of leadership. This situation led Mirza Hairat, the editor of the Curzon Gazette, to make the bold prediction quoted above. With obvious satisfaction and anticipation, he felt that Jama’at Ahmadiyya was destined to fall apart and doomed to fail because now at the helm of the ship was an elderly man, Hadhrat Maulawi Haakim Nur-ud-Din^(ra), whose sole passion, interest and ability was to teach the Holy Qur’an.

What a gross error of judgment of the character and ability of Hadhrat Maulawi Nur-ud-Din^(ra) and what a poor assessment of the value of God’s Word, the Holy Qur’an. The fact is, as revealed to the Promised Messiah^(as)“all good is in the Qur’an”, everything we need – every bounty and every blessing, every source of help, strength and guidance and every means of progress and success – is in the Holy Qur’an. This is exactly what the Holy Prophet Muhammad^(saw) believed and relied upon from the beginning of his prophethood. He would inform people:

…‘I am only a man like yourselves, but I have received the revelation… (Ch.18:V.111)

In other words, the one great distinction that separated him from everyone else was being the direct recipient of the Holy Qur’an; he practised, preached and as his beloved consort, Hadhrat ‘A`ishah^(ra) would say, “his character was the Qur’an”, he embodied it.

The very first word of the Qur’anic revelation was a powerful and profound command, “Iqra’…”, meaning, read, recite, compile and convey. The word “Qur’an” is derived from the same Arabic root. Thus the first word and command of the Holy Qur’an indicated the purpose of its revelation, and the plan by which the religion of Islam would spread in the world. The faith would spread in a twofold manner: one, by men and women reciting and reading the Holy Qur’an and relaying its message to others, and two, by writing implements such as the pen and similar inventions to compile the scripture into a book and distribute and convey it far and wide. Allah says:

Convey! And thy Lord is Most Generous, Who taught man by the pen, taught man what he knew not. (Ch.96:Vs.4–6)

Nowadays there are so many new devices to communicate and convey information, that the rapid advancement in this field boggles the mind. There are small, pocket-sized gadgets, like PDAs, MP3 players, IPods and Kindle, to download, store and access unbelievable amounts of digitised material; easily allowing one to put the entire text of the Holy Qur’an on these devices if so desired. You can imagine what people would have thought if the Holy Prophet^(saw) had pulled one of these devices from his pocket and stated that it will transmit all of his revelations and oral traditions in a human voice or a book format to places around the world!

They may have thought it was sheer madness. But looking back, we smile and laugh at their complete ignorance. When God says, ‘Be!’ the means are created to bring that command into being. These devices, as well as the internet, computers, fax machines, radios, televisions, satellite systems, telephones and mobile phones have not been created just to educate, communicate and stimulate the human mind through music, movies and games. No, the development of these machines, technologies and systems is part of the Divine scheme to enable the beautiful message of the Holy Qur’an to easily reach every habitation, every home and every human heart. It also fulfils a Qur’anic prophecy that during the Latter Days, in the time of the Promised Messiah, means will be created to spread books and knowledge extensively, especially the Book of God and the knowledge of Islam. Allah says,

And when books are spread abroad. (Ch.81:V.11)

Therefore, every time we use or see this modern technology, we are literally seeing the manifestation of God’s command and the fulfilment of a Qur’anic prophecy. Regarding the spread of the Holy Qur’an and other literature, the Promised Messiah^(as) has said:

‘It has been disclosed to me that this word “Qur’an” carries in itself a great prediction. This “Qur’an” is really the only Book worth studying, and in the future it shall be read very widely and many other books shall also be read in its accompaniment.’

Stepping back in time, during the era of the early history of Islam, allows us to review how this blessed scripture reached us prior to this age of technology. That was a time when things were written on leather, bark of tree and rough parchment, and high literacy was uncommon and even the Holy Prophet^(saw) as we know could not read or write. So it was the human voice that was the main mode of communication and the Arabs took great pride in their poets and storytellers. But none of their compositions could compete with the inherent beauty and magnetic appeal of the Holy Qur’an. After listening to a few verses of the Holy Qur’an for the first time, Khalid ibn ‘Uqbah became totally captivated and said,

“I swear by God that this text has a sweetness of its own and a unique freshness. Its roots are well-watered and its branches are laden with fruits. No man can ever compose anything like it.”

Lubaid Amiri, a famous Arab poet of the time, concurred. When on one occasion Hadhrat ‘Umar^(ra) requested him to read out some of his poetry, he said, “since I have come to know the Holy Qur’an, I have lost all taste for my own poetry.”

Nothing could challenge the majesty and appeal of the Holy Qur’an in that era of classical Arabic, the purest and finest form of the language. It was inimitable. One of the false prophets, who appeared during the lifetime of the Holy Prophet^(saw) was named Musailimah. He claimed that an angel named Rahman brought him revelation. After his death in a battle which he waged against the Muslims, Hadhrat Abu Bakr^(ra), wanted to know what prompted people to give him allegiance. So he enquired from his followers about his main teachings. They said, “here is a sample of his revelation”, and then recited,

“O frog! Holy are you, for you do not prevent the drinker, nor do you make the water dirty. Half the world belongs to us and the other half to the Qur’aish. But the Qur’aish are a cruel people.”

Appalled and astonished at hearing this recitation, Hadhrat Abu Bakr^(ra) commented,

“Holy is Allah! You are to be pitied. Is this the Divine Word? It lacks the sublime nature of Divinity. To what depths had he dragged you?”

Accordingly, Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad^(as) said:

‘If one carries out a research till the Day of Judgment, into the qualities and wonders of a fly, they would not come to an end. Then are not the wonders and qualities of the Holy Qur’an even as many as those of a fly? Without doubt those wonders are in excess of the total wonders of the whole of creation and to deny them would be to deny the Divine origin of the Holy Qur’an for there is nothing in the world which proceeds from God Almighty and does not comprise unlimited wonders.’ (Izalah-i-Auham; Ruhani Khaza’in, Vol.3, pp.675-681)

‘How then could man’s word ever compete with the Word of God Who is the Lord of, Might and Power, while man is most insignificant and the difference between the two is ever apparent’;

 

‘Man cannot even create the leg of a tiny insect; how could it possibly be easy for him to create the Light of Truth?’ (Faza’il Qur’an Majeed, Durr-i-Sameen, Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam^(as), the Promised Messiah and Mahdi)

The comments of the Promised Messiah^(as) and Hadhrat Abu Bakr^(ra) should ring loud in the ears of those who would attempt to falsely claim to be a recipient of Divine revelation or to compose a book that supposedly rivals the Holy Qur’an in beauty, style, content and spiritual effect. No one can contest or challenge God’s true Holy Word. As Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad mentioned in a Friday Sermon, this applies particularly to the group of Arab evangelists who claim to have accepted the Holy Qur’an’s challenge and produced a book like it. Reading that book gives one the same sense of Hadhrat Abu Bakr^(ra) to pity them for thinking that their little flicker of human imagination can compare to the brilliant and radiant Word of the Lord and Light of Heavens and Earth.

The Promised Messiah^(as) wrote in one Urdu couplet:

‘O Christians! Come this way; see the light of the True God, and find the true path.

Can you show us in the Gospels the numberless qualities present in the Qur’an?’ (Ruhani Khaza’in, Vol.1, p.298)

The Holy Qur’an possesses beauties that go beyond its composition as well. The Holy Prophet^(saw) once said that “he who does not recite the Holy Qur’an melodiously is not one of us.” (Abu Dawud). When recited in this manner, the Holy Qur’an immediately strikes a chord in the souls of pure-hearted listeners. Man is constructed from “dry-ringing clay” according to the Holy Qur’an. He is built to receive and respond to God’s Word, and whenever man hears the Holy Qur’an, the highly charged, spiritual vibrations of this blessed and holy word reverberate through every fibre of his being, rivet his attention, and reawaken his dormant spiritual senses. Owing to this, the Makkan leaders used to complain about Hadhrat Abu Bakr^(ra) reciting the Holy Qur’an openly in his courtyard. He would weep loudly and would recite so passionately from the depth of his heart and soul that his voice readily attracted and affected the nearby women, children and weaker members of the society. To prevent him from further influencing people, they demanded that he “pray and recite the Holy Qur’an only inside his house.”

Nonetheless, through the sound of his soul-stirring recitations alone, Hadhrat Abu Bakr^(ra) raised many dead souls to spiritual life and converted many individuals to Islam. Years later, his own daughter, Hadhrat Asma’^(ra) would say that she accepted Islam on her own primarily from listening to her father’s passionate recitations at a tender young age. In Surah Al-Nur of the Holy Qur’an, the chapter of the Divine Light, Allah Almighty ordained to exalt those homes in which His name is remembered and His Book is recited and to fill them with His Light (Ch.24:V.37). The recitation of the Holy Qur’an by children is a source of tremendous blessings for parents too. The Holy Prophet Muhammad^(saw) said:

“Whoever recites the Holy Qur’an and acts according to its command, his parents would be more resplendent on the Day of Judgment than the brightness of the sun in any house in the world.” (Abu Da’ud)

What better way is there to return the inumerable favours and selfless service of parents than to adopt this course suggested by the Holy Prophet^(saw) and earn heavenly blessings for them through the Holy Qur’an? The case of Hadhrat Maulawi Hakeem Nur-ud-Din^(ra), the First Khalifa of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, is interesting to note here. He used to say that he had heard the stirring recitation of his mother while in her womb and had imbibed the love of the Holy Qur’an while nursing her milk. Given his intense love and passion for the Holy Qur’an, it is no wonder that his life mirrored that of Hadhrat Abu Bakr^(ra) so much. While serving as the royal physician to the Raja of Jammu, India, Hadhrat Maulawi Nur-ud-Din^(ra) used to sit with people and explain the verses of the Holy Qur’an so eloquently and so effectively that once a Hindu courtier pleaded, “Would someone stop Hakim Sahib from teaching the Holy Qur’an, or I will become a Muslim.” But that would have been like trying to stop the rain from falling from the sky. Praising Hadhrat Khalifatul Masih I^(ra), the Promised Messiah^(as) wrote:

‘The love, the devotion and the affection of the Holy Qur’an that is found in Hakeem Nur-ud-Din, I simply do not see in any other human being…he speaks of the truth and greatness of the Holy Qur’an, which no one else can express.’ (A’eena-i-Kamaalaat-i-Islam, pp.581–589)

The Holy Qur’an is capable of moving not only the tender hearts of women and children, but also the hardest, stoniest hearts of proud men. It can move mountains, as Allah says:

If we had sent down this Qur’an on a mountain, thou wouldst certainly have seen it humbled and rent asunder for fear of Allah. (Ch.59:V.22)

The pre-Islamic Arabs were an extremely proud people, unyielding to foreign influence and interference. How could a foreigner, whom they called and considered ‘ajnabi’ (inarticulate and unexpressive), ever earn their loyalty, respect and command? Anyone who challenged their authority or pagan ways was put to sword or flight. Jews lived amongst them and Christians dominated in surrounding lands, but neither the Torah nor the Bible ever swayed their minds and hearts. Yet, notwithstanding all of these daunting circumstances, when the Holy Prophet Muhammad^(saw) started preaching to his people, the sublime and powerful message of the Holy Qur’an, it slowly conquered their minds and melted their hearts.

Examples of this abound in Islamic history, some of them well-known. Hadhrat ‘Umar^(ra), a bold and fearless man, left his home in the morning determined to kill the Holy Prophet^(saw) and returned back at night ready to die for him. Samamah ibn ‘Asal despised the Holy Prophet^(saw) and detested going near Madinah. But in the brief span of two days, he went from being a bitter enemy of Islam to becoming one of the blessed Companions of the Holy Prophet^(saw). Asad ibn Zararah, an influential chief of Madinah, one day planned to expel Masaab bin Umair, the first missionary of Islam, from the city. Yet a short time later he accepted Islam at his very hand. Jubair ibn Mut’im, a Makkan disbeliever, stood nearby casually and impassively observing the Holy Prophet^(saw) offer Maghrib, sunset Prayer, but before the Prayer concluded he suddenly became so deeply impressed and overwhelmed by fear that he thought his heart would stop.

Even a neighbouring non-Arab king, Ashama Al-Najashi, the Christian Ruler of present day Ethiopia, turned a full 360 degrees from preparing to deport a delegation of Muslim refugees to granting them full asylum and publicly affirming their views about Jesus^(as). In all of these cases, what was the common, decisive factor to produce these remarkable transformations? It was the first-hand and first-time experience of hearing the recitation of passages of the Holy Qur’an. The message of the Holy Qur’an was simply irresistible, even to men who have the greatest pride, passion and position.

The marvellous capacity of the Holy Qur’an to transform people unexpectedly and dramatically is not relegated just to the past. The legacy continues to this day in lands far distant from the place of its origin. One striking account was that of the British journalist, Yvonne Ridley. On an undercover assignment, she donned a Burqa and attempted to sneak into Afghanistan in 2001, only to be captured by the Taliban. Discussing her ordeal, she said, “I was horrible to my captors. I spat at them and was rude and refused to eat.” She was not going to be cowed into submission and silence like so many women in that nation. Fearing for her life, the world exhaled a collective sigh of relief when she gained freedom eleven days later only to gasp in complete surprise and shock when she announced after some time her conversion to Islam. What happened? How could a highly educated, Western woman of all people enter the stronghold of the Taliban with their penchant for extremism and oppression of women, endure captivity and return home to embrace Islam? Some surmised that she must be a victim of Stockholm’s Syndrome – the traumatic experiences cause her to identify and bond with her captors. No; she was competent and mentally balanced. But she was also determined to fulfil a solemn promise to one of the captors that she would read the Holy Qur’an upon her release and return home. Once she opened the Holy Book and poured over its pages, she realised from years of journalistic training on how to decipher information and find the facts that the Taliban’s treatment of women opposed the actual teachings of Islam and that the Holy Qur’an was in her own words, a “Magna Carta for women”. As a result, a hard-nosed female journalist and defiant prisoner of the Taliban became another loving daughter and vocal advocate of Islam. These are the miraculous changes that the Holy Qur’an continues to produce right before our eyes.

With testimonies such as this, who can dare say that the Holy Qur’an is not a grand and glorious Word of God? It is (al-Kitab) the Preserved Book; in fact, it is more than a single book as Allah says:

Therein are the lasting commandments. (Ch.98:V.4)

The Arabic word kutub means ‘books’ and signifies that the Holy Qur’an is a compilation of all the holy books that were scattered throughout the earth. One no longer has to travel far and wide in search of truth and wisdom. The Holy Qur’an contains everything that we need for our moral and spiritual advancement, including every beneficial, universal and eternal principle and precept from the earlier scriptures.

The Holy Qur’an is al-Nur, the Light, described as “Light upon light” (Ch.24:V.36) in the Holy Qur’an. It lifted the Arabs out of the darkness of ignorance and immorality and it continues to light the way for millions of souls around the world to safely tread along the Divine path. Centuries ago, it illuminated the way for Europe to come out of the Dark Ages to an era of Enlightenment and Moorish Muslims educated and inspired Columbus to launch his ships across the Atlantic Ocean and begin the European discovery, exploration and expansion into the New World of the Americas.

Cordoba was the capital of Muslim Spain, and the center for all light and learning in the entire Europe. It was the spark to ignite the scientific revolution which still brightly glows in the discoveries and inventions of today. As Dr. Abdus Salam, the Ahmadi Muslim Nobel Laureate in Physics explained, the Muslims excelled in science based on three premises. First,

“seven hundred and fifty verses of the Holy Qur’an – (almost one eighth of the Book) – exhort believers to study Nature, to reflect, to make the best use of reason in their search for the ultimate and to make the acquiring of knowledge and scientific comprehension part of the community’s life.”

Second,

“there is not a single verse in the Qur’an where natural phenomena are described which contradicts what we know for certain from our discoveries in sciences.”

Third,

“in Islamic history there has been no incident like that of Galileo.”

The Promised Messiah^(as) writes:

‘The more progress and development there is in the physical sciences, the more beauties. and grandeur of the Qur’an shall also come to light.’ (Malfoozaat; Vol.1, p80)

The Holy Qur’an is al-Huda, the Guide, the perfect scripture that guides man to attain the highest ranks righteousness and the highest degree of God-consciousness, as it says:

…it is a guidance for the righteous. (Ch.2:V.3)

It takes him along the most straight and shortest path to God:

This Qur’an guides to the way which is straight. (Ch.21:V.107) or 5:19/17?

And to facilitate the journey, especially when we become worn and weary, it becomes a swift transport to carry us along the way so that we reach our destination safe and sound. What more could man ask and possibly need in terms of guidance?

The Holy Qur’an is al-Ni’mat, the Ultimate Favor, for it completes and perfects the favor of revealed laws and commands which God has graciously sent down to man. The Holy Prophet^(saw) said that he was the last missing brick in the edifice of Divine Guidance, and shortly after delivering his famous Farewell Sermon during his Pilgrimage, he received this last revelation:

…This day have I perfected your religion for you and completed My favor upon you and have chosen for you Islam as religion… (Ch.5:V.4)

Every religion, in essential teachings, is Islam, but none earned the honor and distinction of that name until the Holy Words of God came to completion in the revelation of the Holy Qur’an. Thus it is the greatest gift and favour from God.

The Holy Qur’an is also al-Mutahharah, the Purified, and is the source to purify and cleanse man of the dross and dirt of sin and transgression. Man has no need to resort to strange penances or rituals, and to rely upon a vicarious atonement to be freed from the bondage of sin. The Holy Qur’an opens the door to spiritual purification and redemption. Hadhrat Promised Messiah^(as) has said:

‘The Holy Qur’an can purify man within a week, provided there is no attempt to get away from it in form or spirit.’ (Our Teaching, p26)

This statement gives mankind great hope and encouragement, and no one should feel surprised by it. I have already shared narrations of how the Holy Qur’an radically changed the lives of many individuals, sometimes by just a few verses in a matter of moments, and turned them into pure and pious souls.

By stating that “none shall touch it except the pure”, the Holy Qur’an emphasised the need of maintaining a clean heart, clean mind, and clean body to access its inner mysteries and verities. This revolutionised the concept of cleanliness and hygiene for the Muslims in comparison to other people and nations. For example, the expression, “don’t throw the baby out with the bath water” dates back just a few centuries ago, when some Europeans took very infrequent baths, sometimes only once a year. During the annual bathing routine, everyone in the household turn by turn, starting with the men and ending with the children, took a bath in the same tub of water. By the time they reached the turn of the babies, the water was so filthy and murky that they used this expression as a note of caution, so that the baby does not go unnoticed and inadvertently cast out along with the dirty water. Whether said in truth or jest, the statement shows how far behind the rest of the world was to the teachings of the Holy Qur’an in terms of cleanliness. The Holy Prophet^(saw) enjoined that ‘cleanliness is a part of faith’ and advised Muslims to bath at least once a week, to perform ablutions before each prayer, to apply scents and perfume, and to adopt other measures of hygiene which have only recently become the norm. This is how the Holy Qur’an purifies.

Another name for the Holy Qur’an is al-Dhikr, the Reminder and the Source of honor and fame. Allah Almighty says:

It is nothing but a Reminder unto all the worlds. (Ch.81:28)

The Holy Qur’an is a unique composition that enriches and enthralls every reader and allows everyone to comprehend and connect with its teachings on some level, no matter one’s temperament, aptitude, intelligence, age, gender, race, or origin. It contains passages that enable the reader to personally experience God as if He is speaking directly to the reader at that given moment, and answering the queries of the mind and the concerns of the heart. This makes the Holy Qur’an a living book that helps man to realise and remember that he lives in the presence of God at all times. As it is a “Reminder” for everyone, the Holy Qur’an does not share the past stories and recollections only about men of faith, but also about women of faith, such as Hadhrat Maryam^(ra), Hadhrat Hajirah^(ra) the mother of Moses^(as) and the wife of Pharoah, and of youth, such as Hadhrat Ishmael^(as) and Hadhrat Joseph^(as), who received true dreams and revelation during his childhood. The Holy Qur’an is not a book written by man for men – a charge often levelled by women against holy scriptures – it is God’s Word for all mankind (or womankind or youth-kind, so to speak).

It is the final and perfect law best suited for all mankind. No other scripture so unequivocally and unambiguously makes this claim. Of course, on this point Christians object and contend that the message of Christ was universal as well. But while making these assertions, they also admit that they have yet to achieve the elusive goal of universality and harmony in their own churches. Billy Graham and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., two famous Christian ministers from opposite sides of the colour divide in America, both agreed that:

“11:00 a.m. on Sunday morning is still the most segregated hour in America.”

Perhaps the situation is slightly different here in Europe or other Christian nations, but I highly doubt it. This was never meant to be the task of Christ or the focus of the Bible. God Almighty reserved this grand mission and aim for the Holy Prophet Muhammad^(saw) and the Holy Qur’an. The Promised Messiah^(as) elaborates, saying:

‘The Qur’an was sent down for the purpose of making the human race one flock and one nation. And now conditions have been created in which different peoples shall be united into one great nation…All this has been foretold in the Holy Qur’an which says that it has been sent to all the peoples of the world.’ (Chashma-i‑Ma’rifat, p.68)

No other scripture can compare with the Holy Qur’an in promoting universal harmony, equality and brotherhood. The word “Qur’an” means to read and recite, but it also means to compile and to gather; in this case, to compile universal truths in one book and to gather people around it. To accomplish this objective, the Holy Qur’an repeatedly emphasises the Unity of God and the unity of mankind, thereby synthesising God-consciousness and social consciousness and demolishing all barriers of race, culture, language and nationality. The Holy Qur’an unites us into a large spiritual family with genuine affection and mutual respect for one another stemming and flowing from our common love for Our Creator. This eliminates the friction born of natural differences. In Islam, the 11:00 am Sunday segregation hour never comes. Whenever Muslims gather in mosques for prayers, kings must bow down next to the peasants, blacks next to whites, and the rich next to the poor. Regarding the lofty ideals of Islamic equality, Professor Hurgronje once said:

“The league of nations founded by the prophet of Islam put the principle of international unity of human brotherhood on such universal foundations as to show candle to other nations…the fact is that no nation of the world can show a parallel to what Islam has done to the realisation of the idea of the League of Nations.”

The Holy Qur’an is also al-‘Aziz and al-‘Adheem, the Mighty and Great, that makes great kings fall down before it in prostration, that cracks the hardest hearts and instills fear in the most powerful men. It is al-Majid, the Glorious and al-Karim, the Noble that grants man a dignified and honourable bearing, and it is al-Mubarak, the Blessed, that helps man to live a rich, full and abundantly blessed life. It is referred to as al-Burhan, the Clear Argument and Proof, al-Bayan, the Clear Exposition, al-Hikmah, the Wisdom, al-Haqq the Truth, al-Furqan, the Distinguisher of right from wrong, and through its verses one gains the capacity and ability to speak truth plainly and eloquently and to rebut and refute any allegation or attack against it. The Promised Messiah^(as) instructed us to rely upon the Holy Qur’an as the main source for our dialogues and discussions. He said:

‘This shall be the only book worth reading in its own defence. If you use the Holy Qur’an as your weapon of defence and attack, you are bound to achieve victory. No darkness could ever stand its brilliant light.’ (Malfoozat; Vol.1, p.122)

Given all these wonderful names and special qualities of the Holy Qur’an and many others, it is apparent that the Holy Qur’an is the crown jewel of Divine revelation. Summarising this point, Hadhrat Promised Messiah^(as) wrote:

‘The Holy Qur’an is such a sparkling ruby and such a bright Sun that the rays of its truth and the gleam of its Divine origin are not only evident from one or two aspects, but are quite vivid through its enumerable aspects.’ (Minan­ur‑Rahman: p.1)

The excellence and magnificence of the Holy Qur’an is slowly being recognised everywhere, including here in Europe as well. Several decades ago, George Bernard Shaw wrote:

‘I have prophesied about the faith of Muhammad that it would be acceptable to the Europe of tomorrow as it is beginning to be accepted to the Europe of today.’

That “tomorrow” grows nearer with each passing decade. In these past few years, Prince Charles, next in line to the throne of England, has paid so much glowing tribute to Islam on different occasions that some people have expressed fear and anxiety that he may become the Constantine of Islam, paving the way for an Islamic renaissance in England during his reign. For instance, he once said,

“Islam can teach us today a way of understanding and living in the world which Christianity itself is poorer for having lost.”

Whether he actually plays a prominent role in the spread of Islam or not, the dye is already cast and many Europeans, in Great Britain and elsewhere, are joining the Muslim fold in full conviction and unwavering devotion to the Holy Qur’an. One Polish convert, Dr. Ata’ullah Budgan, who had served the Polish Communist Party as their chief propagandist in the Third World, wrote:

‘My study is vast, but the impression produced by the style of expression of the Holy Qur’an has no parallel and can’t be described in words. I thought as if Allah, the Almighty, was Himself addressing me with all His Blessings and Benedictions, and the Qur’an was going to be revealed on me. I felt pity at the Muslims treating the Qur’an as they do. They go on reading this Book of Allah like novels. They neither ponder over its meaning nor stop at any point to understand its glory.’

Whenever the message of the Holy Qur’an reaches people, whether from the East or West or North or South, this is the impression it indelibly leaves on human hearts because as I have mentioned, it is implanted in the nature of man to appreciate beauty and to receive and respond to God’s Word when he hears it. There is nothing on this earth more beautiful and glorious than the Holy Qur’an. It is an inexhaustible treasure which will continue to disclose more of its hidden beauties with each passing generation – no generation can exhaust its beauty. The Promised Messiah^(as) has said:

‘The clear miracle of the Holy Qur’an which can manifest itself to every people and by presenting which we can silence every one, whether an Indian, or a Persian or a European or an American, is the unlimited treasury of insights and verities and wisdoms, which are expounded in every age according to its need and stand as armed soldiers to refute the thinking of every age. If the Holy Qur’an had been limited in its verities and insights it would not have amounted to a perfect miracle. Beauty of composition is not a matter the miraculous nature of which can be appreciated by every literate and illiterate person. The clear miracle of the Holy Qur’an is the unlimited insights and fine points which it comprises…Bear it in mind that the miracle of unlimited insights and verities which are contained in the Holy Qur’an has accomplished more in every age than has the sword.’ [Izalah-I-Auham; Ruhani Khaza’in, Vol. 3, pp.305-320]

To win the hearts of the Western nations and the rest of the world, there is no need for terrorism, militarism or holy Jihads, one need only present the beauties, verities and unlimited treasures of the Holy Qur’an. It is a perennial miracle. The Holy Prophet^(saw) once said:

‘Before me, every Prophet was given a miracle and I have been given the permanent miracle of the Qur’an till the Hour is established, so I hope that my followers will be more in number than all the other Messengers’ as my miracle will last till the Day of Resurrection, and it is a Glorious Book; when anyone reads it, even if he is a pagan, he is convinced that it is produced by none but by the Creator of the heavens and the earth.’ (Sahih Al-Bukhari, Vol. 1)

This declaration comes from a soul whose voice was so blessed that he once shouted a warning and the commander of the Muslim forces heard his words loudly and clearly although hundreds of miles separated the two. His gaze was so blessed that one night he looked and pointed skyward and the bystanders noticed that the moon had split into two. His hand was so blessed that he merely cast a handful of pebbles and it turned into a ferocious wind and dust storm which whipped against the Makkan army. His mouth was so blessed that he sipped from a vessel and milk began to fill it with such abundance that a group of his companions drank to till their fill. His saliva was so blessed that he rubbed it into the eyes of his noble cousin and companion, Hadhrat ‘Ali^(ra), and healed him of distress. Yet, he did not consider any of these marvelous and miraculous occurrences to be the true sign which he brought from God to open the eyes and hearts of humanity. No, he felt that his sole miracle – a miracle not buried in the narrations of the past and not confined to the Arabs or any people, place or time till Judgment Day – is the Holy Qur’an. This is the real glory, grandeur and greatness of Qur’an.

In his lifetime, through the agency of the Holy Qur’an, the Prophet Muhammad^(saw) lifted his people from the darkness of spiritual ignorance to the heights of Divine knowledge so much so that he declared, “My companions are like the stars, whomsoever you follow you will find guidance.” What greater miracle could there be than the one which lifts the veil from man’s eyes and enables him to not only achieve the purpose for which he was created but also to lead others to that purpose and attain the highest levels of spiritual ranks and degrees in the estimate of God. In short, the Holy Qur’an is Al-Ruh, par excellence, the Living Book that imparts life to others. That is the miracle which he left us as his great legacy to move our hearts and minds, elevate our morals, raise our spiritual consciousness and help us to perceive God through His Glorious attributes and experience His Love, and Grace and Mercy so that we discard our lower selves, our earthly passions and desires, our brutish and beastly behavior, and rise like so many fortunate souls before us to take our place in the spiritual firmament reserved for the righteous and become one of those glittering bright stars.

The miracle of the Holy Qur’an promises honour and distinction to its devotees, not disgrace and defeat. Hadhrat Maulawi Hakim Nur-ud-Din^(ra), the First Khalifa, had an intense love of the Holy Qur’an and an incessant desire to impart its knowledge and instil its love in our hearts as well. He would pray, “O God help me to teach them the Holy Qur’an so that they can understand it” and he would express his sole request to receive the gift of the Holy Qur’an first and foremost upon his resurrection after death so that he may again start reading it and teaching it to others. All Muslims should hope and pray that they may have a leader who has this type and degree of boundless and timeless love for the Holy Qur’an. May Allah forever bless him for his sincere and selfless service of the Holy Qur’an. Based on that love, we can understand why the Promised Messiah^(as) strongly recommended to all his companions to sit with Hadhrat Maulawi Nur-ud-Din^(ra) to learn even a few parts of the Holy Qur’an, and later said:

“How wonderful it would be if everyone in my Community was Nur-ud-Din. However, this can only happen if each heart is filled with the Light of Faith.”

I would say here that Allah granted Hadhrat Maulawi Nur-ud-Din^(ra) this “Light of Faith” because of his love of the Holy Qur’an, and we too can acquire this light only through this blessed book.

The Second Khalifa of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, Hadhrat Mirza Bashir-ud-Din Mahmud Ahmad^(ra) used to respond to enquiries about his education by simply saying, “I know the Holy Qur’an.” It was an understatement, he didn’t just know the Holy Qur’an, he received special Divine help as the ‘Musleh Mau’ud’, the ‘Promised Reformer’, to master it. In his concluding address during the Annual Jalsa of 1944 he stated:

“God of His Grace, appointed angels for my instruction and by this means made me aware of such meanings of the Holy Qur’an as were beyong the imagination of a human being. (He) has appointed me the teacher of the world for teaching the Holy Qur’an in this age.” (The Renaissance of Islam, p.299)

That was all he needed to discuss any subject, tackle any problem and find guidance on any matter. Anyone who has read a portion of his commentary on the Holy Qur’an knows that this was no vain or empty boast.

The Third Khalifa, Hadhrat Mirza Nasir Ahmad^(ra), like the first Khalifa and rightly-guided Khulafa following the Holy Prophet^(saw), had committed the Holy Qur’an to memory, and he steered the ark of Ahmadiyyat through the storms of severe opposition in Pakistan as they constitutionally declared us non-Muslims in 1974. Prior to the declaration, when He appeared before a special committee of the Pakistan National Assembly to state the Jama’ats viewpoints and to respond to questions, he gave such a powerful answers based primarily on verses of the Holy Qur’an that the government sealed the record of the entire proceeding and refused to publish his testimony, even up till now, in order to conceal the verdict of the Holy Qur’an that their declaration was baseless.

The Fourth Khalifa of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, Hadhrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad^(ru) tried to prevent the first Gulf War by advising President Saddam Hussein and the Muslim leadership to not shed the blood of fellow Muslims and to settle their disputes through the Holy Qur’an, and not through military action and political intrigue. This was the exact same advice and admonition which Hadhrat ‘A`ishah^(ra) gave when insurgents assassinated Hadhrat ‘Uthman^(ra) and then infiltrated the Muslim ranks during the Khilafat of Hadhrat ‘Ali^(ra) and instigated a war. Hadhrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad^(ru) said:

“I invited them to make a recourse to the teachings of the Holy Qur’an in this regard. The Holy Qur’an says:

If you differ in anything; refer it to Allah and His Messenger. (Ch.4:V.60)

“You should revert to the teachings of the Holy Qur’an and draw the guiding-light from it…Simply put, the teaching is this: whenever two Muslim countries are at war with each other, it is incumbent upon all Muslim countries to collectively put pressure on the party they unanimously believe to be the transgressor… there is no mention of seeking assistance from non-Muslim countries. If this teaching was adhered to, this ever-deepening and dangerous crisis would not have taken this turn.” (Gulf Crisis, pp.46-47)

Tragically, President Hussein and the Muslim leadership paid no heed to the Khalifa’s exhortations and turned away from the Holy Qur’an. Centuries ago, God warned about this time when the Muslims would abandon the Holy Qur’an, and thus would painfully lament:

O My Lord, my people indeed treated this Qur’an as a discarded thing. (Ch.25:V.31)

His words pierce one’s heart, as he asks with utter dismay and disbelief, how could anyone abandon a Book as marvelous and glorious as this particular Word of God, the Holy Qur’an?

Hadhrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad^(ru), Khalifatul Masih IV shared that treasure of the Qur’an with us through his sermons, speeches, question answer sessions, Dars (lessons) of the Holy Qur’an during Ramadhan and later as a regular feature on Muslim Television Ahmadiyya International. In the process he educated and inspired a whole new generation of Muslims as he primarily spoke about contemporary thinking, issues, sciences and discoveries. He demonstrated that the Holy Qur’an is pregnant with hidden knowledge and relevant for every age.

The fifth and current Khalifa of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, from the outset of his Khilafat has drawn attention towards spiritual and moral education through the guidance found in the Holy Qur’an. He speaks consistently and forcefully from Qur’anic teachings on every matter that comes before the world at large. Recently, for instance, Hadhrat Khalifatul Masih V pointed to the Qur’anic teachings on economics that would eliminate the global economic crisis, save humanity from the brink of a disaster such as a World War, and foster a system that provides for everyone’s needs. Addressing the British Parliament on October 22nd, 2008, he said:

“The Holy Qur’an guided us by saying avoid interest because interest is such a curse that it is a danger for domestic, national and international peace… furthermore, we have been cautioned that we are not allowed to enter into the business of interest, with the warning that if you do so, it will be a war against God…God Almighty has said: Come towards peace that can only be guaranteed when there is pure and wholesome trade and when resources are put into usage in a proper and fair manner.”

His overriding advice, however, is for all of us to develop a deep attachment to the Holy Qur’an. He said:

“Everyone of us should analyse as to what extent he loves the Holy Qur’an and obeys its commandments and tries to practice them in his life. There are ways of manifesting love. The most important thing for an Ahmadi is to make it obligatory upon him to recite a minimum of two or three ruku (sections) of the Holy Qur’an regularly. Then taking the next step, he should read it along with translation. By reciting the Holy Qur’an daily along with reading the translation, its beautiful teachings subconsciously filter into the deep layers of the mind.” (Conditions of Bai‘at & Our Responsibilities, p.114)

Following this routine is the simple and clear way for each of us to earn blessings and honors. The Promised Messiah^(as) said:

‘Those who honor this Holy Book shall be honored in Heaven.’ (Our Teaching, p.5)

May Allah have mercy on mankind through the Holy Qur’an and pour its glory and beauty into hearts, minds and souls so that we may become brilliant beacons of light – we become Nuruddins as the Promised Messiah^(as) wished – to guide families and nations and all of mankind out of the wilderness of spiritual darkness along the heavenly path of Islam that leads ever nearer to Allah.

Rev. Stan Brown is an ordained minister in the Methodist Church which he has served in a variety of appointments. He studied theology and philosophy at Leeds and Birmingham Universities and is currently working on a Doctorate at King’s College London. For the last six years Stan has been Chaplain at Kingston University, London, working with and alongside students and staff of many faiths and helping to support the religious groups within the University. He is an active member of the Kingston Inter-Faith Forum and is frequently involved in organising inter-faith events.

Christian worship and Christian prayer are very diverse. Christians use many languages, many sources and many styles. There is, however, one prayer you will find in the hearts and on the lips of Christians everywhere – the “Lord’s Prayer”. This is the form of prayer received directly from the teaching of Jesus.

The prayer is found in two places in the Christian scriptures: the Gospel of Matthew 6:9-13 and in a slightly shorter form in the Gospel of Luke 11:2-4, where it is a response to a request to Jesus from his disciples to “teach us how to pray”. Jesus would almost certainly have first taught the prayer in his spoken language of Aramaic, but the record we have of it in the gospels is in Greek. For Christians the underlying meaning of the prayer is more important than its form in the words of any one language and so the Lord’s Prayer, like the Christian scriptures, is translated into countless languages. To many English speakers, however, the “Lord’s Prayer” is most familiar in the form it was given in 1662 CE by the Book of Common Prayer which had a lasting effect not just on English Christian worship, but on the English language itself.

Here is the prayer in both its traditional English form, and a widely used contemporary English version:

Traditional Form

Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done;
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen.

Contemporary Form

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power,
and the glory are yours
now and for ever.
Amen

The prayer offers us an all-encompassing vision of the majesty of God and invites us to respond with lives that are radically changed through our relationship with Him. This prayer may be set to hauntingly beautiful music in the worship of a great church, or it may be muttered by someone alone, afraid and desperate or one who finds some familiar words of hope in God.

Many years ago I visited an elderly lady in hospital at the very end of her life. Her family and friends were around the bed where she lay seemingly unconscious – without having spoken for many hours. After talking for a while with those around the bed, I took her hand and began to say the Lord’s Prayer. To the astonishment of everyone there, without opening her eyes she joined in the familiar words. She died shortly after and the prayer was probably the last thing she said out loud. This prayer lies very deep in the Christian heart.

Like all great prayers it takes a lifetime of study, reflection and worship to even begin to unpack its meaning, but a few thoughts and comments will at least help to begin that journey:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name

The prayer begins with an address to God Who is heavenly – above, beyond and immeasurably different from us, but at the same time “our Father” – intimate, loving and close to us. This dual relationship with God is at the heart of all Christian spirituality where the closeness and otherness of God are held constantly in balance and tension. The older English form of the prayer can help us here for at the time this was shaped the English language (like the Greek in which the Christian Scriptures were originally written) could distinguish between thou /thy/thine: an intimate form used to address family and friends, and you/ your/yours: a polite form used to address strangers and show respect. God is always addressed in the intimate “thou” form when this older style of English is used. Yet because these words now sound strange and mysterious to us we mix it all up and assume these old words are some special hyper-respectful language used only for God. How wrong we can be!

Within the Hebrew Scriptures which Christians share with Jews, God’s “name” is not just what He is called, but God’s whole character and nature. So God’s “name” and nature ought to be “hallowed” or treated as holy – this is a prayer that the whole of creation will come to give honour to God.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven

Look at the teaching of Jesus as we find in the Gospels of Mark, Luke and Matthew – you will see so much of it is concerned with the coming of God’s “kingdom”, but if God is already King of the Universe, what can this mean? God’s rule is not forced on us, you have only to look around the world to see many and terrible examples of people openly denying God’s ways of love, justice and peace. God may indeed be King, but we need to pray continually that His way of being King – a way of patient love for His children – should be accepted “on earth as it is in heaven”. There was a time when the world’s great political powers used to talk about their “spheres of influence”. We pray that God’s “sphere of influence” – His kingdom on earth – might increase.

Give us this day our daily bread.

There is some doubt how to translate the word rendered here as “this day”. It is an unusual word in the original language, but taken alongside Jesus’ teaching that we should not worry about the future but simply trust it to God the meaning seems to be that we should be content and thankful if we have what we need one day at a time. In a world of huge contrast between wealth and poverty what right do we have to ask God for that which we do not really need? In this simple line of the prayer there is a whole world of challenge to the materialistic lifestyles which are consuming the planet today. Our prayer should help to form us as people who live in a different way content with what we need rather than expecting everything we desire.

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us

Forgiveness and reconciliation are at the heart of Christianity. For Christians “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19). Christians believe that it is the very nature of God to be forgiving, and that this is what God shows us through Jesus. If it is in the nature of God to be forgiving, then it must become part of human nature too. The old word “trespasses” with its sense of crossing a boundary to a place we shouldn’t go could equally well be rendered as “sins” as in the modern English version, or perhaps best of all as “debts”. The stress is less on our need for forgiveness because we have done a whole raft of wrong actions, than on our need to be reconciled to God because we owe Him more love, honour, praise and glory than we are ever able to give.

And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.

Some translators prefer “do not bring us to the time of trial”. The prayer is perhaps not so much that we should be spared any inward feeling of “temptation” but rather that we are not put in places where we are tested beyond what we can stand. When engineers want to know the strength of a material or a structure they may employ either “destructive” or “or non-destructive” testing. Testing to destruction simply means over-loading the structure (or a model of it!) until it breaks and then measuring the load at which it did so. Non-destructive testing employs techniques which allow the engineer to calculate and predict the point at which the material will break – but without actually having to break it. There are places in life to which any of us can come in which our faith in God risks being tested to destruction – places of illness, grief, anger or doubt – the prayer is that God keeps us safe from these frightening places. Evil is very real; terrible things can and do happen even to those who put their faith in God. We might see this as the forces of “evil” in an impersonal way or as “the evil one”- a personal Satan (also a possible translation) but the reality and the danger remain the same.

For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen

These words are not part of the original prayer as Jesus gave it to us and you will not find them in either the Gospels of Matthew or Luke. Technically words like this at the close of a Christian prayer are known as a “doxology” – a formal ending in which glory is given to God. At some point very soon after the time of Jesus, Christians started adding these words to the end of the prayer, probably when they used it in public worship, and there they stuck. Many churches, however, and especially the Roman Catholic Church do not normally add these concluding words.

The Lord’s Prayer sums up Christianity – it speaks of our belief about the nature of God and our relationship with Him, of our need to be reconciled to God and each other, of ways in which our lives and our world are being transformed by the presence and power of God. This is not an easy prayer. Christians say it over and over again, day by day, week by week, but like everything that becomes familiar we probably do not reflect on it as we should, for this is a prayer which asks for the whole world to be changed, and invites those who pray in this form to become a part of that change themselves.