Maulana Muhammad Ali Urges Special Prayers Every Friday:
(The Light, 8^th May 1946, front page)

For the last three weeks Maulana Muhammad Ali, Head of the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement, has been offering special prayers at the Friday congregational prayer for the success of Mr. Jinnah's talks with the Cabinet Mission.

Exhorting the congregation last Friday, May 3, to humbly beseech the Almighty to protect the Muslims of India at this critical juncture in the history of Islam in this country, the Maulana made it plain that Pakistan is a life and death issue, not only for the existence of Muslims but at the same time for the survival of Islam itself as a faith and culture. Of all the world of Islam, said the Maulana, the Indian Muslims were the only people who yet believed in the possibilities of Islam as a religion to play a role in the re-shaping of the world. In every other Muslim land, including Egypt, the cultural centre of Islam, and Turkey and Afghanistan, the politically independent States of Islam, the very idea of tabligh or the propagation of faith was extinct.

'Pakistan or Perish' was no mere political slogan, observed the Maulana. It was a real and grave danger. If the Muslims failed to survive as a free people, they perish and along with them perishes the idea of Islam as a vital force of life.