In the Service of Islam
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GOG, MAGOG AND ANTI-CHRIST
IT CANNOT be over-emphasized that the nineteenth century CE was the time of unprecedented attacks on Islam by the Christian missionaries and orientalists. This was the direct result of the imperialism and colonialism of the Western powers. To perpetuate their hold on their colonies and overseas possessions, the Western powers decided to convert their subject nations to their own religion (Christianity). They met with no serious opposition in areas where there were no major non-Christian religions among the subject races, for instance in Africa, Australia, and the Americas. As for Asia, religions other than Islam posed no problem as they were already polytheistic like Christianity. Besides their believing in more than one God, they had raised their prophets (like Buddha, Krishna, Ramchandra, Zoroaster) to divinity as in Christianity.
But in Islam, there was strict tauheed (Unity of God), and its Prophet, Muhammad, (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) had not been raised to divinity. So Christian missionaries and proselytizers sensed the biggest danger from Islam because of its strict monotheism-which is evident in the universe, which has now been proved by science to be one creation ruled by uniform laws. Besides, monotheism appeals to human reason and heart, which cries out in distress to only one God. Islam thus became the target of the attack of the Western proselytizers, who had to camouflage the weakness of their three-gods-in-one concept.
Besides, the West had a history of hostility to, and resentment against, Islam, because:
(a) The Muslims were the only non-Christian power to conquer and hold for centuries parts of Europe. The bitterness of defeat and subjugation could not be forgotten, particularly as Islam had even then won converts-although not many, as the Muslim rulers had unfortunately neglected their duty to convey to others the beauty and true guidance of the religion with which they were entrusted by Allah.
(b) Muslims also ruled for centuries over the sacred places of Christianity and Judaism, particularly Jerusalem. The Crusades conducted to win back those places had a chequered career, the Muslims eventually retaining control over them. The propaganda carried out against Islam and the Muslims to rouse the Christians of Europe to finance and to fight the Crusades was most virulent and completely false. The failure of the Crusades left permanent scars on the hearts of the people of Europe.
Added to the above background was the problem faced by the Christian missionaries and proselytizers in the nineteenth century CE when they set out to convert, among others, the Muslim subject races, namely that they had no answer to the strict monotheism of Islam which appeals to men's hearts and heads.
But instead of rebutting the monotheism or other actual teachings of Islam, they tried to destroy the faith of the Muslims in their religion by attacking what was, in fact, the misrepresented form of certain of its teachings, and to weaken their devotion to the Holy Prophet Muhammad by carrying out a character assassination based on a completely distorted picture of some aspects of his life. The two most prominent points selected by the Christian missionaries to attack Islam are the wars permitted in it (allowed only in self-defense but misrepresented as spreading religion by the sword) and the institutions of divorce and polygamy (allowed as remedial measures for certain matrimonial situations, but misconstrued as being for sex indulgence). On the same counts, they assailed the character of the Holy Prophet who had (as the perfect exemplar of his teachings) in fact conducted only defensive wars, and had observed polygamy mainly for the humanitarian purposes (of providing shelter and home for unprotected women) for which Islam allows this measure.
Since Islam was the sole target as a religion, it came under very severe attack-in fact the worst in its history after the time of the Holy Prophet. What made matters worse was that:
(a) The Muslim Ulema of the time were by and large completely supine before this virulent attack, and
(b) The Western rulers were directly or indirectly helping the Christian proselytizers by luring the wretched subjects with educational and medical facilities, jobs, land etc.
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Sahib had no favours or benefits to give away. But he had a heart aching and weeping at the sad plight of Islam and the Muslims, who had not only lost their kingdoms to the Western powers but were now also losing their faith and their religion-which was much worse. Like all men of God, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Sahib turned to the Source of all power (Allah) and cried his heart out to Him in prayer, particularly in the second half of his nights. And in day-time he exerted all his energies and resources in the defense of Islam, as testified by others, for instance in the quotation cited earlier in Chapter 1.
His Handicaps
To understand what follows, it has to be borne in mind that Jesus Christ is held in high esteem in Islam, and among Muslims, as one of the great prophets of Allah. And the Bible, i.e. both the New Testament (Injeel) and the Old Testament (Torah), is accepted in Islam, and among Muslims, as comprising revealed books of Allah, although these are now unfortunately lost in the sense that their originals are not extant and their translations, much corrupted by human hands, vary considerably. The only difference in the Islamic attitude and the Christian attitude towards Jesus Christ is that Islam does not recognize him to be God or Son of God.
For that reason, certain beliefs prevalent among Muslims in the nineteenth century were to prove a great handicap to Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Sahib in his efforts to counteract the Christian onslaught against Islam. Those beliefs, taken from the Christian creed for the reason given later, invested Jesus Christ with the attributes of divinity-the basic difference between Islam and Christianity as shown above. Chief among those wrong beliefs prevalent among Muslims were that:
(a) Jesus Christ did not die but was taken to heaven with his physical body, where he is still alive.
(b) He will descend again among Muslims to save them from religious dangers which were to beset them towards the end of mankind's existence on this earth, and which had in fact manifested themselves in the nineteenth century CE
The above beliefs were taken from the Christian creed of the Ascension and Second Advent of Jesus Christ because of the literal interpretation of the prophecies of the Holy Prophet Muhammad that 'Isa ibn-Maryam (the Promised Messiah) would appear towards the end to save Islam and the Muslims when they were in dire distress.
The Christian proselytizers exploited these beliefs, favourable to them, by quoting from the Holy Qur'an that:
(i) No human being or prophet could ascend to heaven with his physical body
(ii) The prophets, having physical bodies like other human beings, needed to eat food (which Jesus was doing without after his Ascension to heaven).
For instance, the verses of the Holy Qur'an quoted were as follows.
(a) When the Holy Prophet Muhammad was challenged by his opponents (as reported in the Holy Qur'an) thus: 'Or thou ascend to heaven, and we will not believe in thy ascent to heaven unless thou bringest to us a book which we can read,' he was told by Allah to say in reply: 'Glory be to my Lord! I am nothing but a human being and a Messenger' (17:93).
According to this verse of the Holy Qur'an no human being, not even a Messenger of Allah, could ascend to heaven with his physical body. That being so, if Jesus Christ did ascend to heaven with his physical body as believed by the Muslims, he was more than a human being and more than a Messenger of Allah. And that could only be God or Son of God, as believed by the Christians. It can be easily seen how fatal this wrong belief of the Muslims was to themselves and to their religion.
(b) Again, the Holy Qur'an says about the prophets: 'And We did not give them bodies which did not eat food, nor could they abide (last long)' (21:8).
Thus, if Jesus Christ has been sitting in heaven with his physical body and without any physical food for the last two thousand years, and without any change for the worse coming over him, not to speak of the long-overdue death, then he must be more than a prophet. And that could only be God or Son of God as the Christians believed.
Another deadly blow to Islam and the Muslims!
The Ulema of the time had no answer to these telling arguments of the Christian missionaries who drove home their advantage with the following argument addressed to the Muslims: 'If Jesus Christ is going to save you when you are down and out (religiously and spiritually) why not believe in him now, as he is the Saviour according to the Christian faith too?' As the godhood of Jesus Christ (if he was alive with his physical body) was provable from the quotations of the Holy Qur'an given above, and as his superiority over the Prophet Muhammad, who was after all only a human being, although a prophet, was also provable by the same line of argument, the Muslims fell for the Christian propaganda easily. Added to the poison spread by the all-out attack on Islam was the point that Christianity was the religion of the glamorous rulers from the West, whose favours could be counted upon if their religion was accepted.
It is tragic that those who fell before the Christian onslaught included some Ulema (!), members of the nobility, the highly regarded Sayyids (who claimed to be the descendants of the Holy Prophet Muhammad), members of the gentry, barristers, lawyers, Government officials and members of the intelligentsia of Islam. Their numbers ran into hundreds of thousands.
These catastrophic times for Islam and the Muslims had been prophesied by the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) and he had also prophesied how the Christian onslaught would be met and crushed by the Promised Messiah; but more of that later.
In the meanwhile the lone warrior of Islam was Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Sahib, as testified by even some of the non-Ahmadi Ulema and leaders (whose testimonials will follow later in this book, apart from the one quoted earlier from the pen of Maulvi Muhammad Hussain Batalvi that the Mirza Sahib was conducting a lone defense of Islam with all his strength, his pen, his tongue, his wealth, and all he could give in this unequal war); but he was handicapped by the weakness of the Muslims, own beliefs about Jesus Christ, which made the Israelite prophet divine even according to the Holy Qur'an, as shown above, and by his resulting superiority over the Holy Prophet Muhammad. Seeing the ground slipping from under the feet of Islam and the Muslims, Hazrat Mirza cried in distress to Allah, shedding tears of blood, as it were, and his heart melting away in his sorrow over the sad plight of Islam and the Muslims. He gives vent to his feelings in several verses of Urdu and Persian, only two of which are translated below:
'Who is weeping so much that even heaven is weeping with him?'
'O Allah, take urgent notice of him who is making a hue and cry for help in Thine alley, lest a man who has gone crazy, nay, mad, in his grief for Islam, be killed (by adversaries).'
Such cries of anguish and distress in the cause of Islam could not possibly have gone unheeded, for the Holy Qur'an says:
'Or, Who is it Who answers the person besides himself in distress, and removes the evil?' (27:62).
And how well the evil was removed! Revelation came to him from Allah that Jesus Christ had long since died a natural death and that the Promised Messiah whose advent had been prophesied in Islam was to be no other than the man crying his heart out for Islam-Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, no less.
Divine revelation also drew the attention of the recipient to no less than thirty verses of the Holy Qur'an, and several traditions of the Holy Prophet, proving that Jesus Christ was dead and that the Promised Messiah was to be 'a leader of the Muslims from amongst themselves' (Bukhari and Muslim - the most authoritative books of Hadith).
The death of Jesus Christ, thus proved from the Holy Qur'an as well as the Hadith, was to be the death-knell of the Christian onslaught against Islam. If the Christians had howled, it would be understood. But what is surprising is that it was the Muslim Ulema who reacted most violently to this breaking-up of their long-held beliefs about the Promised Messiah. But of that, more later.
This chapter has briefly dealt with the emergence of Gog and Magog (shown in Chapter 7 to be the Western powers and their ascendancy over the whole world) and their trying to perpetuate their world suzerainty by the conversion of the subject races to their religion through missionaries let loose like swarms of locusts (described in the Hadith as Dajjal or Anti-Christ), and the mortal danger they would pose to Islam and the Muslims. Here, the important fact needs to be mentioned that the Holy Qur'an and the Hadith also prophesied the advent of the Promised Messiah ('a leader from amongst the Muslims') to meet the Christian onslaught and to crush Christianity itself into the bargain (described in the Hadith as the breaking of the Cross by the Promised Messiah). And these historical events were all predicted for these very times. So that if the Promised Messiah had not appeared (as a leader from among the Muslims themselves) then the prophecies of the Holy Qur'an and Hadith would not have proved true in their part relating to Islam and the Muslims-the most important part in fact.
We ask the opponents of Ahmadiyyat, in Allah's Name, to answer these questions:
(1) Do the events portrayed very briefly above (the rise of Gog and Magog, their all-out attack on Islam through missionaries, and the last-named's vanquishment at the hands of the Promised Messiah) prove the truth and correctness of the prophecies made 1400 years ago by the Holy Qur'an and the great Prophet of Islam, or do they prove the contrary?
(2) Where is the Promised Messiah (if it was not Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Sahib) who was to appear when Islam and Muslims were to be in mortal danger at the hands of Gog and Magog and Anti-Christ, as came to pass in the nineteenth century CE? How could it be possible that the Holy Qur'an and the great Prophet of Islam were correct in predicting the rise of Gog, Magog and Anti-Christ and the mortal dangers they will pose to Islam and the Muslims, but not, (God forbid) in the simultaneous appearance of the Promised Messiah?
The times and events cried out for that saviour. As Hazrat Mirza Sahib has said:
[Arabic quotation]
('The time was ripe for the Promised Messiah and for no other. If I had not come, somebody else would have come as the Promised Messiah.')
(3) How could Allah, the Supreme Champion of Islam in this hour of mortal peril to His perfect and last religion, instead of sending the saviour in the person of the Promised Messiah as predicted, allow an 'impostor, (as Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Sahib is called by his opponents) to rise and destroy Islam from within?
(4) Does the history and literature of the last one hundred years not prove that the tide did turn against Christianity, and in favour of Islam, and that this was due to the most valuable literature produced by Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Sahib and his followers? Testimony regarding this, from Christians themselves and non-Ahmadi Muslims, is cited later in Chapters 12 and 13.
AHMADIYYAT IN THE SERVICE OF ISLAM by N.A. Faruqui Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha'at Islam, Lahore, Inc. 36911 Walnut Street, Newark California 94560 USA Copyright© by Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha'at Islam Lahore, Inc. 1983. First published in 1983 by the Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha'at Islam Lahore, Inc. (USA) 36911 Walnut Street Newark, California 94560 USA Library of Congress catalog car number: 83-71698 ISBN 0-913321-00-1 All rights reserved. Cover Design: Details of Wall Mosaics in the Mosque of El Bordeyhy (17th century) From Dover Pictorial Archive Series Arabic Art in Color (Dover 1978). Typeset by Linguatype Limited, Slough, Berks, England.
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