The Light
January 2015
January
International rgan of the Centre for the worldwide Ahmadiyya An umans Ishaat Islam The
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Islamic organisation upholding the finality of prophethood.
Webcasting on the world’s first real-time Islamic service at www.virtualmosque.co.uk Editors: Shahid Aziz Mustaq Ali Contents: The Call of the Messiah Muhammad (s) V
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By Prof K. S. Ramakrishna Rao Jews in early Islam
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By Z A Rehman
ن ْحالرَّ ْ ی م حم ْ ْس م ْ ٰ ِباہللْالرَّ م The Call of the Messiah by Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the Promised Messiah and Mahdi (Ayyam us Sulah, continued from last month.)
Another Quranic Prophecy Reverting to our former discussion regarding the advent of the Promised Messiah, we put forth and assert that there is not only one prophecy in the Holy Quran which we have dealt with and discussed in the foregoing pages, but there is yet another prophecy which speaks of his coming in clear and manifest terms. It reads thus:
ْ ْ َ َ ْ ُ ْ َ ْ ُ ْ ً ْ ُ َ ْ َّ ُ ْ ْ َ َ َ ْ ََّ َ ُ م َ َّ ی َ ُ ث َ ِف ْ ْ ُ اْل ِم ُ ُین ْرس َوْل َ ِم َن ْھم ی ْت َل َوا َع ْلی َِھ ْ ٰھوال َِذ ُ َی َّب ْع ن م ا و ان ک ن ا و ۃ م ک ح ال و اب ت ک ال م ھ م ل ع ی و م َ ُ َ ِ ْ ْ ُ َ ِ ْ َ ََّ َ ْ ِ ُ ْ َ ْ ِ َ َ ْ ِ ُ َ َای ْ ِت ِہ َو یز ْ ِکی َ ِھ ض ُال ٍل م ِبی ٍن واخ ِر ین ِمنھم لما یلحقوا ِب ِھم وھو َ ْ قْ َب ِل ْ لُ ِف ْ ی الع ِز یز الح ِکی ُم
The sum and substance of this verse is: God is He who raised His Messenger at such a time when the people had become denuded and deprived of knowledge and wisdom, and the light and learning of religion which brings human soul to the point of perfection and complete-
ness, had vanished away altogether and people had sunk into evil-doing and error, i.e. they had fallen away far from God and His straight path; it was at such a time that the Most High God sent His messenger, the unlettered (Ummi) Prophet, who purified their souls, and imbued them with the Divine knowledge of Book and wisdom, i.e. guided them, by means of signs and wonders, to the stage of perfect belief, and illuminated their hearts with the light of Godrealization. The Divine Words, then, go on to say that there is yet another group of people who will make their appearance during the last age; and they, too, will at first be in a state of darkness and distraction, bereft of knowledge wisdom and faith; but the Most High God will, then, dye and tone them in the colour of the Holy Prophet's Companions, i.e. whatever the Companions beheld and saw, will also be shown unto them so that their faith and sincerity will also become like that of the Companions. In an authentic tradition the Holy Prophet is reported to have said, while expounding the significance of this verse placing his hand on the shoulder of Salman the Persian,
ْ َ َ ْ ُ ُ َ ُ َ َ َ َ َ ُ ً ََّ َ ُ ُ َ ْ ْ َ َ ْ َ لوکان ِاْلیمان معلقا ِبالثر َّیا لنا لہ رجل ِمن فارس i.e. if faith will have ascended even to the high heaven, a man of the Persian descent will bring it back. It was an indication of the fact that a man of the Persian descent will be born in the
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last age, i.e. during the time of which it is written that the holy Quran will be lifted up into heaven. This is the time which is the age of the Promised Messiah, and this man of the Persian descent is the same person who has been called the Promised Messiah; for, the attack launched by the Cross for the breaking of which the Promised Messiah was to come, has been directed against faith; and all these signs have been stated to refer to the time of attack by the Cross, saying, that it will produce a very pernicious effect upon people’s faith. This is the same invasion which, in the other words, has been called the attack of dajjal. It is mentioned in the signs that many an ignorant people, at the time of this attack, will turn away from the One Pure God, and the love of faith of many will cool down and freeze and the most important task of the Promised Messiah will be the revival and restoration of faith, for the attack will be directed against faith. The hadith which speaks of the man of the Persian descent shows clearly that the man of the Persian descent will be raised for the restoration of faith. If, therefore, the time of the Promised Messiah and the man of the Persian descent is also the same, and the work, too, is the same, viz. the reestablishment of faith, it proves conclusively that the Promised Messiah isْ the ََّ َ ْ ofُ ْ theَ ْ Perُ َ ْ َ man َ َ sian descent, and the verse واخ ِر ین ِمنھم لما یلحقوا makes a reference to his Jamaat. The meaning of the verse is that there are only two groups who obtained guidance and wisdom after having been completely in error, and witnessed the signs and blessings of the holy Prophet: one, the Companions of the Holy Prophet who before his advent, were in perfect darkness, and then, by the mercy and grace of the most High God they found the Prophet's time, beheld his miracles, and made an observation of prophecies, and belief wrought such a tremendous change in
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them that nothing but soul, as it were, was left of them; second, the Jamaat of the Promised Messiah who are, according to the verse quoted above, like the Prophet’s Companions, for this group also, like the Companions, have beheld the holy Prophet’s miracles, and obtained guidance after having been in darkness ََّ َ ْ ُ error; َ َ the fact that in ْ ُ َ ْ َ and ْ َ ْ and the verse واخ ِر ین ِمنھم لما یلحقواthis ْ group َ َ ُ ْ َ ْ has been given a share of the wealth of م ھ ن م ن ی ر اخ ِ ِ و ْ ُ َ ْ َ ََّ َ لما یلحقوا, i.e. of the blessing of being the like of the companions, points in the same direction, that just as the Companions (God be pleased with them) beheld the Prophet’s miracles, and saw the fulfillment of prophecies, in the same way will do the people of this group, and the intervening period will not be given, in a perfect way, a share of this blessing. It has, accordingly, come to pass in these days that the door of the Prophet’s miracles, after 1300 years, has again opened, and people have perceived with their own eyes that the eclipse, according to the hadith in Dar Qutni and Fatawa lbn-i-Hajar, did take place in the month of Ramadan, i.e. the double eclipse of the sun and the moon did occur in the month of Ramadan; and just as it was stated in the hadith, exactly in the same manner, the moon was eclipsed on the first of its appointed nights, and the sun on the middle of its appointed days, at such a time when the man who claimed to be Mehdi, was on the stage; and this situation never took place ever since the creation of heaven and earth, for no human being has, up to this day, been able to adduce its example from the page of history. It was a miracle of the Holy Prophet which people perceived with their own eyes. Then the star Dhu Sanain which, it was said, would rise in the time of Mehdi and the Promised Messiah, was seen by thousands of people rising in the sky. Likewise the fire of Java was seen by millions of people. The spreading of plague and the stopping of Hajj have also been noticed by all eyes. The invention
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of the railway train and the abandonment of camels; all these were the Holy Prophet’s miracles which have been witnessed in the same way in this age as the Companions had seen miracles in their own time. And it was for this reason that the Most High God accosted this last group with the term mi hum to indicate that in the matter of beholding miracles they will also be like the Companions. Just ponder over and think who has, during the last 1300 years, found such a time of the broad and open way of prophethood? Our Jamaat which has been created in this era bears, in many respects, a close resemblance to the Prophet’s Companions. They behold the signs and miracles much in the same way as did the Companions. They obtain light and faith from the ever fresh and new signs and support of the Most High God, as was done by the Companions. They are bearing patiently, in the way of God, the opponents’ railery and ridicule, curses and abuses, torment and torture of different kinds, foul and filthy language etc. as was suffered and sustained by the Companions. By means of God’s open and manifest signs, heavenly help, and teaching of wisdom, they are, after the manner of the Companions, acquiring a pure life. There are many among them who like the Companions, weep and
sob in prayer, and moisten the carpet with their tears. Many of them have true dreams and are blessed with Divine revelation, like the Companions. Among them there are also such persons who spend for this movement their hard earned wealth, merely for the sake of God’s pleasure, as did the Companions of the Holy Prophet. Many you will find among them who always remember death, are sympathetic and compassionate, and walk, like the Companions, in the path of righteousness and fear of God. These are God’s people whom He supports
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and sustains Himself, and purifies their hearts from day to day, and fills their minds with the wisdoms of faith, and draws them towards Himself by means of heavenly signs as He used to draw the Companions. In short, all those َ ْ َ are َ found in ْ ُ ْ signs this jamaat which the term واخ ِر ین ِمنھمstands for and signifies. And absolutely necessary it was so that the Word spoken by the Most High God should be fulfilled.
Muhammad (pbuh) Part V Prof. K. S. Ramakrishna Rao, (Head of the Dept. of Philosophy, Govt. College for Women. University of Mysore, Mandya-571401 (Karnatika, India). Re-printed from “Islam and Modern age”, Hydrabad, March 1978. (continued from The Light December 2014) “Looking at the circumstances of the time and unbounded reverence of his followers” says a western writer “the most miraculous thing about Mohammad is, that he never claimed the power of working miracles.” Miracles were performed but not to propagate his faith and were attributed entirely to God and his inscrutable ways. He would plainly say that he was a man like others. He had no treasures of earth or heaven. Nor did he claim to know the secrets of that lie in womb of future. All this was in an age when miracles were supposed to be ordinary occurrences, at the beck and call of the commonest saint, when the whole atmosphere was surcharged with supernaturalism in Arabia and outside Arabia. He turned the attention of his followers towards the study of nature and its laws, to understand them and appreciate the Glory of God. The Quran says, “God did not create the heavens and the earth and all that is between them in play. He did not create them all but with the truth. But most men do not know.” The world is not illusion, nor without purpose. It has been created with the truth. The number of
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verses inviting close observation of nature are several times more than those that relate to prayer, fasting, pilgrimage etc. all put together. The Muslim under its influence began to observe nature closely and this gave birth to the scientific spirit of the observation and experiment which was unknown to the Greeks. While the Muslim Botanist Ibn Baitar wrote on Botany after collecting plants from all parts of the world, described by Myer in his Gesch. der Botanikaa-s, a monument of industry, while Al Byruni traveled for forty years to collect mineralogical specimens, and Muslim Astronomers made some observations extending even over twelve years, Aristotle wrote on Physics without performing a single experiment, wrote on natural history, carelessly stating without taking the trouble to ascertain the most verifiable fact that men have more teeth than animal. Galen, the greatest authority on classical anatomy informed that the lower jaw consists of two bones, a statement which is accepted unchallenged for centuries till Abdul Lateef takes the trouble to examine a human skeleton. After enumerating several such instances, Robert Priffault concludes in his well known book The making of humanity, “The debt of our science to the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries or revolutionary theories. Science owes a great more to Arabs culture; it owes its existence.” The same writer says “The Greeks systematized, generalized and theorized but patient ways of investigation, the accumulation of positive knowledge, the minute methods of science, detailed and prolonged observation, experimental inquiry, were altogether alien to Greek temperament. What we call science arose in Europe as result of new methods of investigation, of the method of experiment, observation, measurement, of the development of Mathematics in form unknown to the Greeks. That spirit and these methods,” concludes the same author, “were introduced into the European world by Arabs.” It is the same practical character of the teaching of Prophet Mohammad that gave birth to the scientific spirit, that has also sanctified the daily labors and the so called mundane affairs. The Quran says that God has created man to worship him but the word worship has a connotation of its own. God’s worship is not confined to prayer alone, but every act that is done with the purpose of winning approval of God
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and is for the benefit of the humanity comes under its purview. Islam sanctifies life and all its pursuits provided they are performed with honesty, justice and pure intents. It obliterates the age-long distinction between the sacred and profane. The Quran says if you eat clean things and thank God for it, it is an act of worship. It is saying of the prophet of Islam that Morsel of food that one places in the mouth of his wife is an act of virtue to be rewarded by God. Another tradition of the Prophet says “He who is satisfying the desire of his heart will be rewarded by God provided the methods adopted are permissible.” A person was listening to him exclaimed ‘O Prophet of God, he is answering the calls of passions, is only satisfying the craving of his heart. Forthwith came the reply, “Had he adopted an awful method for the satisfaction of his urge, he would have been punished; then why should he not be rewarded for following the right course.” This new conception of religion that it should also devote itself to the betterment of this life rather than concern itself exclusively with super mundane affairs, has led to a new orientation of moral values. Its abiding influence on the common relations of mankind in the affairs of every day life, its deep power over the masses, its regulation of their conception of rights and duty, its suitability and adaptability to the ignorant savage and the wise philosopher are characteristic features of the teaching of the Prophet of Islam. But it should be most carefully borne in mind this stress on good actions is not the sacri-
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fice correctness of faith. While there are various school of thought, one praising faith at the expense of deeds, another exhausting various acts to the detriment of correct belief, Islam is based on correct faith and righteous actions. Means are important as the end and ends are as important as the means. It is an organic Unity. Together they live and thrive. Separate them and both decay and die. In Islam faith can not be divorced from the action. Right knowledge should be transferred into right action to produce the right results. How often the words came in Quran — Those who believe and do good thing, they alone shall enter paradise. Again and again, not less than fifty times these words are repeated as if too much stress can not be laid on them. Contemplation is encouraged but mere contemplation is not the goal. Those who believe and do nothing can not exist in Islam. These who believe and do wrong are inconceivable. Divine law is the law of effort and not of ideals. It chalks out for the men the path of eternal progress from knowledge to action and from action to satisfaction.
But what is the correct faith from which right action spontaneously proceeds resulting in complete satisfaction. Here the central doctrine of Islam is the Unity of God. There is no God but God is the pivot from which hangs the whole teaching and practice of Islam. He is unique not only as regards his divine being but also as regards his divine attributes. As regards the attributes of God, Islam adopts here as in other things too, the law of golden mean. It avoids on the one hand, the view of God which divests the divine being of every attribute and rejects, on the other, the view which likens him to things material. The Quran says, On the one hand, there is nothing which is like him, on the other , it affirms that he is Seeing, Hearing, Knowing. He is the King who is without a stain of fault or deficiency, the mighty ship of His power floats upon the ocean of justice and equity. He is the Beneficent, the Merciful. He is the Guardian over all. Islam does not stop with this positive statement. It adds further which is its most special characteristic, the negative aspects of problem. There is also no one else who is guardian over everything. He is the meander of every breakage, and no one else is the meander of any breakage. He is the restorer of every loss and no one else is the restorer of any loss what-so-over. There is no God but one God, above any need, the maker of bodies, creator of souls, the Lord of the day of judgment, and in short, in the words of Quran, to him belong all excellent qualities. Regarding the position of man in relation to the Universe, the Quran says: “God has made subservient to you whatever is on the earth or in universe. You are destined to rule over the Universe.” But in relation to God, the Quran says: “O man God has bestowed on you excellent faculties and has created life and death to put you to test in order to see whose actions are good and who has deviated from the right path.” In spite of free will which he enjoys, to some extent, every man is born under certain circumstances and continues to live under certain circumstances beyond his control. With regard to
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this God says, according to Islam, it is my will to create any man under condition that seem best to me. cosmic plans finite mortals can not fully comprehend. But I will certainly test you in prosperity as well in adversity, in health as well as in sickness, in heights as well as in depths. My ways of testing differ from man to man, from hour to hour. In adversity do not despair and do resort to unlawful means. It is but a passing phase. In prosperity do not forget God. God-gifts are given only as trusts. You are always on trial, every moment on test. In this sphere of life there is not to reason why, there is but to do and die. If you live in accordance with God; and if you die, die in the path of God. You may call it fatalism. but this type of fatalism is a condition of vigorous increasing effort, keeping you ever on the alert. Do not consider this temporal life on earth as the end of human existence. There is a life after death and it is eternal. Life after death is only a connection link, a door that opens up hidden reality of life. Every action in life however insignificant, produces a lasting effect. It is correctly recorded somehow. Some of the ways of God are known to you, but many of his ways are hidden from you. What is hidden in you and from you in this world will be unrolled and laid open before you in the next. The virtuous will enjoy the blessing of God which the eye has not seen, nor has the ear heard, nor has it entered into the hearts of men to conceive of, they will march onward reaching higher and higher stages of evolution. Those who have wasted opportunity in this life shall under the inevitable law, which makes every man taste of what he has done, be subjugated to a course of treatment of the spiritual diseases which they have brought about with their own hands. Beware, it is terrible ordeal. Bodily pain is torture, you can bear somehow. Spiritual pain is hell, you will find it almost unbearable. Fight in this life itself the tendencies of the spirit prone to evil, tempting to lead you into iniquitous ways. Reach the next stage when
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the self-accusing sprit in your conscience is awakened and the soul is anxious to attain moral excellence and revolt against disobedience. This will lead you to the final stage of the soul at rest, contented with God, finding its happiness and delight in him alone. The soul no more stumbles. The stage of struggle passes away. Truth is victorious and falsehood lays down its arms. All complexes will then be resolved. Your house will not be divided against itself. Your personality will get integrated round the central core of submission to the will of God and complete surrender to his divine purpose. All hidden energies will then be released. The soul then will have peace. God will then address you: “O thou soul that art at rest, and restest fully contented with thy Lord return to thy Lord. He pleased with thee and thou pleased with him; So enter among my servants and enter into my paradise.� This is the final goal for man; to become, on the one hand, the master of the universe and on the other, to see that his soul finds rest in his Lord, that not only his Lord will be pleased with him but that he is also pleased with his Lord. Contentment, complete contentment, satisfaction, complete satisfaction, peace, complete peace. The love of God is his food at this stage and he drinks deep at the fountain of life. Sorrow and defeat do not overwhelm him and success does not find him in vain and exulting. The western nations are only trying to become the master of the Universe. But their souls have not found peace and rest. Thomas Carlyle, struck by this philosophy of life writes “and then also Islam-that we must submit to God; that our whole strength lies in resigned submission to Him, whatsoever he does to us, the thing he sends to us, even if death and worse than death, shall be good, shall be best; we resign our-
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selves to God.” The same author continues “If this be Islam, says Goethe, do we not all live in Islam?” Carlyle himself answers this question of Goethe and says “Yes, all of us that have any moral life, we all live so. This is yet the highest wisdom that heaven has revealed to our earth.”
How Muslims treated the Jews? (Part 2 ) Z A Rehman Now, we look at how they were treated in the age of Islamic empires. Many non-Muslim historians and chroniclers attest to the way in which Muslims treated non-believing subjects of the Islamic empires, including the Jewish community. Leon Poliakov writes that Jews enjoyed great privileges and their communities prospered much in the Islamic State. He states that there was no legislation or social barriers preventing Jews from conducting commercial activities within the Muslim lands in contrast to elsewhere at the time. Commercial and craft guilds did not exist like those in Europe. He further adds that Jewish people under Islamic rule were not excluded from any specific profession and many Jews migrated to areas newly conquered by Muslims and established communities there.[1] Many examples of how Muslims defended Jewish citizens in this period of Islamic empires can be given. The great ‘Sheikh of Islam’ Ibn Taimiyya personally interceded for the release of Christian and Jewish prisoners. After the demolition of Syria at the hands of the Tatars, Ibn Taimiyya approached their leader for release of their captives. The Tartar leader agreed to release the Muslim prisoners, but Ibn Taimiyya protested: “We will only be satisfied if all the Jewish and Christian prisoners are released as well. They are people of the covenant. We do not abandon a prisoner whether from our own people or from those under a covenant.” He persisted until the Tartars released all of them.[2]
Salāh al-Dīn and the Crusaders Under the Crusader Christian rule of Jerusa-
lem, there was a ban on Jewish settlement in the Holy Land. When Salah al-Dīn liberated Jerusalem, he overturned the ban and allowed the Jews to return. During the course of the following years, parts of the Holy Land shifted between Muslim and Christian control; each time the Christians conquered any city, the Jews were expelled, and restored when the Muslims reconquered it. The Jewish historian, Nissim Rejwan states “It is interesting to note here that, as far as Palestine is concerned, the right of Jews to “return” to live in this small area of land was accepted by all successive Muslim rulers from the Muslim conquest to the end of the nineteenth century, when Zionist settlement there became entangled in European foreign policy.” [3]
Andalusia, Spain Perhaps the greatest legacy that exemplified the tolerance shown by Muslims towards the Jews was in Umayyid Islamic Spain, al-Andalus, ¬from the 8th Century onwards. Here, Jews had perhaps flourished more than in any other time in their history since their exile from the Holy Land at the hands of the Romans.
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Before the Umayyid rule however, life for the large Jewish community in Spain was extremely oppressive under the Christian Visigoths. Under the Third and Sixth Councils of Toledo (589-638 CE), Jews were to be forcibly converted to Christianity, and laws were passed such that if any Jew refused to convert, he or she would be lashed 100 times, have all their possessions confiscated and be banished from the land.[4]
gave rise to the Jewish ‘Golden Age’, particularly after 912, during the reign of ‘Abd al-Rahman III and his son, al-Hakam II. Jewish economic expansion was unparalleled. During ‘Abd alRahman’s term of power, the scholar Moses ben Enoch was appointed rabbi of Cordoba, and as a consequence al-Andalus became the international centre of Rabbinical studies. (References in the last instalments in the next issue)
The conquest of Spain by the Muslim Mujahidīn led by the young general, Tariq b. Ziyad, freed the major Spanish population of Jews from Christian Visigothic oppression and tyranny; they were seen as saviours by the Jews who had in fact fought alongside them.[5] The Jews in Spain were soon fully integrated into the Islamic State and given great autonomy to conduct their state of affairs. They had the privilege of being consulted on important matters. They were sometimes deputed to embassies in foreign countries and their valuable opinions were sought on the administrative affairs of the state.
Source: www.islam21c.com
Within a century of their activity, the Umayyids with assistance of the Jews, had developed a civilization based in Cordoba that surpassed that of any in Europe and the state was the most populous, cultured, and industrious land of all Europe, remaining so for centuries. The historian Martin Hume states: “Side by side with the new rulers lived the Christians and Jews in peace. The latter rich with commerce and industry were content to let the memory of their oppression by the priestridden Goths sleep.”[6] Most of the Jews in the world were now inhabitants of a single Islamic State and thus, for the first time since the beginning of their diaspora, the Muslim state in Spain brought Jews into a single cultural, economic, and political system which
Notes: [1] Poliakov (1974), pg.68-71 and Cohen, Mark R. “The Neo-Lachrymose Conception of Jewish-Arab History.” Tikkun 6.3 (1991), 58. [2] Qaradawi, Yusuf, ‘Ghayr al-Muslimeen filMujtama’ al-Islami,’ p. 10 [3]Israel’s Place in the Middle East: A Pluralistic Perspective, by Nissim Rejwan, p.40] [4] The Restoration of the Jews: The Crisis of All Nations; to which is Now By James Bicheno. [5] Stanley Lane Poole, ‘The Moors in Spain’. [6] Hume, Martin A. S. The Spanish People: Their Origin, Growth and Influence. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1901.
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