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Chapter
13:
The Ahmadiyya Movement
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The
Ahmadiyya Movement As The West Sees
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Well-organised,
Intellectual Movement
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The
Ahmadiyya Movement As The West Sees It
I will bring to a close this
short study of the life of the founder of the Ahmadiyya
movement by considering two more questions - Was he mad? Was
he insincere? I have read a book recently written by an
anonymous Shi’a writer which ends with the considered
view that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was a madman. A madman could
not build a house or design a plan of the building of a
house, and yet we are asked in all seriousness to accept it
as a fact that the man who founded a movement and built up
such an important community as the Ahmadiyya, was a madman.
To call such a man mad is nothing but madness. I give a few
brief quotations from recent Western writers showing what
the Ahmadiyya movement is:
"They are a very remarkable
group in modern Islam, the only group that has purely
missionary aims. They are marked by a devotion, zeal and
sacrifice that call for genuine admiration . . . Their
founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad must have powerful
personality." (The Moslem World, vol. xxi, p.
170)
"Their mental energy is
concentrated on painting Islam as upholder of broad,
social and moral ideals." (Ibid)
"Their vindication and defence of
Islam is accepted by many educated Muslims as the form in
which they can remain intellectually loyal to Islam."
(Op. cit., vol. xxi, p. 171)
"The Ahmadis are at present the
most active propagandists of Islam in the world."
(Indian Islam, p. 217)
"The movement initiated by Mirza
Ghulam Ahmad occupies a unique position in relation to
both the orthodox party and the rationalistic reformers
represented by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and his Neo-Mutazilite
followers. Ahmad himself declaimed bitterly against the
professional Mullas of Islam who kept people in darkness,
who had allowed Islam to die of formalism, who had not
prevented the division into sects . . . At the same time
he could not tolerate the rationalising expositors of
Islam such as Syed Amir Ali and Prof. S. Khuda Bakhsh,
who were beginning to throw doubt on the Quran, as a
perfect work of Divine revelation." (Indian Islam,
p. 222)
"Here we find the newest and most
aggressive forms of propaganda against Christianity which
have ever originated, and from here a world-wide
programme of Muslim Foreign Missions is being maintained
and financed. (Op. cit., p. 229)
"This religious movement through
its own dynamic force has attracted wide attention and
secured followers all over the world." (Whither
Islam?, p. 214)
"What is of more interest to the
outside world than the beliefs of either branch and their
relations with the orthodox is the vigorous life and the
fervent missionising character of the movement." (Op.
cit., p. 217)
"The doctrine of the Ahmadiyya is
of a highly ethical character, and it directs itself
particularly towards the intellectuals." (Whither
Islam?, p. 288)
"How movements like the Ahmadiyya
with its strong ethical powers and its no doubt deep
religious feelings are able to exercise a certain
influence beyond what are so far considered to be the
frontiers of Muslim territory." (Op. cit., p.
309)
"To it also belongs the credit for
the development of a modern Moslem apologetic which . . .
is far from negligible." (Op. cit., p.
353)
"The movement resolved itself
mainly into liberal Islam with the peculiarity that it
has definitely propagandist spirit and feels confident
that it can make an appeal to Western nations, an appeal
which has already been made with some measure of
success." (Islam at the Cross-roads, p.
99)
Well-organised,
Intellectual Movement
Can any sane person for a
moment entertain the idea that a madman could bring to life
such a strongly-organised, vigorous and rational
movement?
The second question is - was he
insincere? Here again I ask the reader to consider if an
insincere man could produce such devoted and sincere
followers? Insincerity could give birth only to insincerity,
and it is the height of folly to call a man insincere who
gathers about himself not only devoted and sincere but also
intelligent men who are admittedly the best Muslim
missionaries today, and who are leading an admittedly
intellectual movement. Moreover, the whole course of
Ahmad’s life from early youth shows that he was devoted
to the cause of the propagation of Islam. Again, an
insincere man could not but have some ulterior motive, but
the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement cannot be shown to
have any such motive. After all, what did he gain by this
so-called insincerity? He was at the height of his fame when
he laid claim to Promised Messiahship, and he sacrificed by
this claim the reputation which he had built for himself
during half a century. An insincere man would have done his
best to retain the fame which he had acquired and the honour
in which he was held. Nor did he make any estate for
himself. On the other hand, when he was informed that his
end was nigh, he at once constituted a society to which he
entrusted complete control of management and of finances. He
did not care for the acquisition of either wealth or honour,
and sincerity marks every step that he took for the building
up of the cause of the propagation of Islam, even every word
that he wrote. If such a man could be insincere, truly the
world must have become devoid of sincere men!
THE
END
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