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Chapter
4:
Mahdi and Messiah
Links
present on this page:
Claim
to Messiahship
|| Recluse
and Soldier
|| Two
Baseless Doctrines
|| Storm
of Opposition
|| Resolution
to Carry Islam Forward
|| Significance
Underlying Claim
|| From
Defence to Attack
|| Dajjal
and Gog and Magog
|| Islamisation
of Europe
||
Claim to
Messiahship
The task before him was a
difficult one. The Muslims had lost that love and zeal for
the spread of Islam which led the earlier sons of Islam to
the distant corners of the world. Many people, however, came
to him and took the pledge. While preparing himself and his
followers for the great conquests, he made an announcement
which fell like a bombshell among the Muslim public - that
Jesus Christ was not alive, as was generally believed by the
Muslims, but that he had died as all other prophets had
died, and that his advent among the Muslims meant the advent
of a mujaddid in his spirit and power; that no Mahdi
would come, as generally thought, to convert unbelievers
with the sword, as this was opposed to the basic teachings
of the Quran, but that the Mahdi’s conquests were to be
spiritual; and that the prophecies relating to the advent of
a Messiah and a Mahdi were fulfilled in his own person. It
was about eighteen months after his call to
bai’a that this announcement was made and it
changed the whole attitude of the Muslim community towards
him. Those very people who hailed him in his capacity of
mujaddid as the saviour of Islam now called him an
impostor, an arch-heretic and Anti-Christ.
Recluse and
Soldier
Ahmad based both his claims,
the claim to mujaddidship and the claim to Messiahship, on
Divine revelation, and it is easy to see that nothing but
the fullest conviction that he was commanded by God could
have led him to adopt a course which, he knew, would bring
him from the height of fame and distinction, to which he had
attained, to the depth of degradation in the eyes of his own
community. If public esteem and fame were the goal of
Ahmad’s aspirations, he had indeed achieved them. He
knew that his departure from an established popular
conception must injure his reputation and turn his very
friends and admirers into foes; but he cared little for
public opinion and even less for fame. He was then an old
man and the fifty-five years of his earlier life show but
one desire - the desire to see Islam triumphant in the world
- and they point to but one aim - the aim to serve the cause
of Islam. His father had often remonstrated with him on
account of his neglect of his worldly concerns and had
exhorted him to look after the family estate, but in vain.
He had not shown the least desire to become a great man in
the world; he did not even care to maintain the position
which his family enjoyed. His love of solitude continued
unabated to the last and the only thing for which he would
come in contact with others was to uphold the dignity of
Islam and to safeguard its honour. He was a recluse all his
life, except when duty called him to fight the battle of
Islam, and then he was a soldier who could wield his weapon
against each and every assailant. The stream of life which
had flowed consistently and constantly in one direction
could not suddenly take a turn in the opposite direction.
The hand of God had undoubtedly been preparing him from
early life to champion the cause of Islam, and he was at
this point Divinely directed to remove, by his claim to
Promised Messiahship and Mahdiship, the two great obstacles
which stood in the way of the propagation of
Islam.
Today any one can see that Islam and
Christianity are the only two religions contending for the
spiritual mastery of the world, all other religions being
limited to one or two countries. At the time when the
Promised Messiah began to work, Islam seemed to have been
utterly vanquished by Christianity, not only by reason of
the temporal ascendancy of Christianity but also because
Christianity was completely master in the field of
propaganda, Islam being almost entirely unrepresented. In
this helpless state, the Muslims had, to a very great
extent, come under the influence of the Christian
propaganda, which, on the one hand, impugned the character
of the Holy Prophet, and, on the other, laid stress on the
superiority of Jesus Christ over the Founder of Islam. In
support of this latter allegation were brought forward
certain erroneous views which had taken root among the
Muslims; for instance, that Jesus Christ was alive in the
heavens while all the other prophets had died, and that he
would reappear in the world when Islam would be in great
distress, and thus that he would, in the real sense, be the
last Prophet and the saviour of Islam. To establish the
superiority of Islam and to open the way for its conquest of
the world, it was necessary not only to clear the character
of the Holy Prophet of those false charges but also to
uproot those erroneous doctrines. Thus, when Mirza Ghulam
Ahmad was commissioned for the great task of leading Islam
to a world-conquest, when the Divine mantle of mujaddidship
fell upon his shoulders and when he began to enlist, through
bai’a, an army of soldiers to fight the
spiritual battle of Islam, God gave him the knowledge that
the prevailing view of the Muslim world relating to Jesus
Christ was erroneous and not supported by the Holy Quran,
that Jesus Christ had died as had all other prophets and
that his prophesied second advent was to be taken in a
metaphorical sense and to mean the advent of a reformer
(mujaddid) with his spirit and power.
Two
Baseless Doctrines
The two matters were so
closely correlated that in the solution of the one lay the
solution of the other. If Jesus was dead, his personal
second advent was impossible, and that prophecy could be
interpreted only in the same way as Jesus himself
interpreted the prophecy of the second advent of Elijah. The
false conception that Jesus was alive in heaven was,
however, so deep-rooted in the Muslim mind that they would
listen to no arguments which militated against this
long-cherished belief, even though they were based on the
absolute authority of the Holy Quran and the Hadith. They
were not in a mood to think that, in the very fitness of
things, this exactly should be the mission of the
mujaddid of this age. Christianity, practically the
only adversary of Islam and the most formidable, had this
one main prop to support its whole structure of doctrines
and dogmas - Jesus sitting with God in heaven. To pull this
main prop down would mean the crumbling of the whole like a
house of cards, and this work had to be done to open the way
for the conquests of Islam in the West.
Coupled with the wrong notion that
Jesus Christ was alive in heaven and would come down, there
was another equally unfounded conception, and equally
detrimental to the cause of Islam, namely that the Mahdi
would appear just at the same time and would wage war to
enforce Islam at the point of sword. Already Islam had been
misrepresented in the West as having been established by
means of the sword, and the doctrine of a Mahdi coming to
wage war to establish the superiority of Islam only lent
further support to the misrepresentations of the Christian
West, causing the hatred against Islam to become deeper and
deeper day by day. That false notion also had to be cut at
the very roots. "There is no compulsion in religion"
(2:256), was a clear principle established by the Holy
Quran, and there was not a single instance in which the Holy
Prophet brought the pressure of the sword to bear on any one
individual, let alone a whole nation, to compel the
embracing of Islam. "Fight against those who fight against
you" (2:190), was the only permission that Islam gave in the
matter of fighting, and even the Holy Prophet, to say
nothing of the Mahdi, could not go against the Holy Quran.
The Mahdi (lit., the guided one), was only another
name for the Messiah - such was the announcement made by
Ahmad, and in support of this was quoted the Prophet’s
hadith : "There is no Mahdi but the Messiah." (Ibn Majah,
Ch. Shiddat al-Zaman)
Storm of
Opposition
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad had thus,
in the very cause of Islam, to combat the idea that, for its
conquests, Islam stood in need either of Jesus Christ or the
sword. He emphasised that men endowed with great gifts, even
men like the Messiah, could rise among its followers, and
that the spiritual power of Islam was greater than all the
swords of the world; but Mulla mentality was too narrow for
these broad views. Led by Maulvi Muhammad Husain, the Ahl
Hadith leader, who had only six years before acclaimed
Ahmad as one of the greatest sons of Islam, and as one who
had rendered unique service to the cause of Islam by his
powerful arguments and by the heavenly signs which he had
shown to his opponents, the ‘Ulama now declared
him to be an arch-heretic. Some of them even went so far as
to declare that he and his followers could not enter mosques
or be buried in Muslim graveyards, that their property could
be taken away with impunity and that their marriages were
void. The storm of opposition that followed those
fatwas can better be imagined than described, but all
this opposition did not make Ahmad swerve an inch from the
position which he had taken. The most hostile critics have
nothing but praise for his courage in the face of the
bitterest opposition, even of attempts at physical violence.
Thus wrote Dr. Griswold:
"His persistency in affirming
his claims in the face of the most intense and bitter
opposition is magnificent. He is willing to suffer on
behalf of his claims." (H.A. Walter, The Ahmadiyya
Movement, p. 21)
Resolution
to Carry Islam Forward
As I have stated, the
opposition came not from one quarter but from all sides. All
sects of Islam denounced him, just as they had all praised
him before, while the Christians and the Arya Samajists,
against whom he had been fighting in the cause of Islam for
so long a time, were only too glad to join hands with the
Muslims. In spite of all, Ahmad stood adamant. No abuse, no
denunciation, no persecution, no threat of murder disturbed
for a single moment the equilibrium of his mind or caused
him to entertain for an instant the idea of relinquishing in
despair the cause which he had so long upheld. Nay, in the
midst of a widespread and bitter opposition on all sides, he
reaffirmed with still greater force his resolution to carry
the message of Islam to the farthest ends of the world, and
his conviction that Islam would triumph became greater. It
is the unique spectacle of a soldier carrying on the fight
single-handed while the powerful forces of opposition were
arrayed before his face, and he was being hit in the back by
the very people for whom he was fighting. The claim to
Promised Messiahship was advanced in three books which
appeared one after another at short intervals. In the first
of these he writes:
"Do not wonder that Almighty
God has in this time of need and in the days of this deep
darkness sent down a heavenly light and, having chosen a
servant of His for the good of mankind in general, He has
sent him to make uppermost the religion of Islam and to
spread the light brought by the best of His
creatures*
and to strengthen the cause of the Muslims and to purify
their internal condition." (Fath Islam, p.
7)
[*Note:
"the best of His creatures"
refers to the Holy Prophet Muhammad.]
And again:
"And the truth will win
and the freshness and light of Islam which characterised
it in the earlier days will be restored and that sun will
rise again as it arose first in the full resplendence of
its light. But it is necessary that heaven should
withhold its rising till our hearts bleed with labour and
hard work and we sacrifice all comforts for its
appearance and submit ourselves to all kinds of disgrace
for the honour of Islam. The life of Islam demands a
sacrifice from us, and what is that? That we die in this
way." (Fath Islam, p. 16)
Significance
Underlying Claim
Apart from the narrow-minded
Mulla who could not grasp the significance underlying
Ahmad’s claim to Promised Messiahship, even the
educated Muslim thinks that this claim brought nothing but
schism in the house of Islam. It is true that much of
Ahmad’s time was taken up, after 1891, with controversy
against the orthodox, and it became bitter too at times, but
the internal struggle never made him lose sight of his real
objective, which had indeed become more marked and definite.
As to internal dissensions, they were already there; in
fact, the Muslims had lost all objectives except fighting
amongst themselves on the minutest points of difference.
Therefore, they had no eye for the higher issues involved in
Hazrat Ahmad’s claim, but spent their whole force in
carrying on a struggle about minor differences. Moreover,
the great cause of Islam - its onward march in the world -
had nothing to lose from the claim to Promised Messiahship;
Jesus’ death added only one more to the numerous
prophets who, including the Holy Prophet Muhammad, had all
died; but to Christianity it meant the death of its central
figure, with whose death collapsed the whole structure of
its dogmas. Nay, the cause of Islam gained immeasurable
strength therefrom; for, as long as the Muslim believed that
Jesus was alive in heaven and that he would make his descent
at some future time to bring about the triumph of Islam, his
mentality remained one of fond dreams never to be realised,
and that was largely the reason why the Muslim had lost the
zeal and energy of the earlier days for carrying forward the
message of Islam. Islam’s triumph was, he believed,
bound up with the coming of Jesus Christ and of Imam Mahdi,
and he had nothing to do but to wait and see. Such was the
hidden process of thought which made him quite inactive.
That the Messiah who was to come had already appeared was an
idea which shifted the responsibility to his own shoulders;
nay, it brought back to him the zeal to carry forward the
message of Islam. If the Messiah had come, the time had also
arrived for the world conquest of Islam. This was the great
mental revolution achieved among those who accepted Ahmad as
the Messiah; a mere handful of men, but carrying the message
of Islam to the farthest ends of the world, while the
millions of the orthodox are either idle or occupied with
their internal dissensions.
From
Defence to Attack
In Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s
own work, two changes are clearly witnessed with his claim
to Promised Messiahship. The first is that, as far as the
contest with Christianity was concerned, he had hitherto
been carrying on a defensive war - clearing the Holy Prophet
of the false charges brought against him by the Christian
missionaries; but his new claim involved an aggressive line
of action - the destruction of the very foundations on which
the Church, as distinguished from the Christianity preached
by Christ, was built. Right at the beginning of Fath
Islam, his first pamphlet making the new announcement,
he wrote clearly:
"I . . . bear a strong
resemblance to the nature of the Messiah, and it is owing
to this natural resemblance that I have been sent in the
name of the Messiah, so that the doctrine of the cross
may be shattered to pieces. Therefore, I have been sent
to break the cross and to kill the swine" (p. 17).
Thus the contest between Christianity
and Islam was no longer to be limited to the defence of
Islam; the spiritual forces of Islam had to be gathered
together to attack Christianity itself.
Dajjal and
Gog and Magog
The other change which
resulted from the claim to Promised Messiahship was that it
gave a definite direction to the mission which Ahmad
believed had been entrusted to him, namely to bring about
the triumph of Islam and to lead it on to a world-conquest.
Henceforth, Europe or the Western world became his special
objective, and that new idea was born as a twin to the idea
that he was the Promised Messiah. Both ideas - the idea that
he was the Promised Messiah and the idea that his mission
was to carry the message of Islam to the Western world -
took their birth at one and the same time. It was not a
casual coincidence; the two ideas were closely interrelated.
The advent of the Promised Messiah did not stand alone in
eschatological prophecy; it was essentially combined with
the idea of the appearance of the Anti-Christ
(Dajjal) and of Gog and Magog (Ya’juj wa
Ma’juj). In fact, the Promised Messiah’s first
and foremost work was to be to put an end to the influence
of the Dajjal and of Gog and Magog. Now the prevalent
idea among the Muslims was that the Dajjal was a
one-eyed man who would make his appearance in the latter
days with the treasures of the world at his command, that he
would lay claim to Godhead, carrying even paradise and hell
with him, and that he would traverse the whole earth in
forty days, visiting every habitation of men, inviting them
to accept his divinity and enriching those who followed him,
and that Gog and Magog would be an extraordinary creation of
God, who would spread over the whole earth. The truth, which
had remained hidden for thirteen centuries after the Holy
Prophet Muhammad, flashed upon Ahmad’s mind at the very
time when he was raised to the dignity of Messiahship. This
truth was that the Dajjal and Gog and Magog of the
prophecies were no other than the Christian nations of
Europe and America. In their religious attitude, in
contradicting the teachings of Christ and the teachings of
all the prophets of God, they represented Gog and Magog.
Thus, when announcing his claim to Promised Messiahship,
after discussing at length the prophecies relating to their
appearance, he wrote in Izala Auham, his first great
work on the subject, under the caption, It was necessary
that the Anti-Christ should come forth from the
Church:
"Now this question deserves
to be solved that, as the advent of the Messiah, the son
of Mary, is meant for the Dajjal, if I have come
in the spirit of the Messiah, who is the Dajjal
against me? . . . In the first place, it must be
remembered that literally Dajjal means an
association of liars who mix up truth with falsehood and
who use deceit and underhand means to lead astray the
creation of God . . . If we ponder over . . . the
condition of all those people who have done the work of
Dajjal since the creation of Adam, we do not find
another people who have manifested that characteristic to
the extent to which the Christian missionaries have done.
They have before their eyes an imaginary Messiah who,
they allege, is still living and who claimed to be God;
but the Messiah, son of Mary, never claimed to be God; it
is they who are claiming Divinity on his behalf, and to
make this claim successful, they have resorted to all
kinds of alterations and have made use of all means of
deceit. With the exception of Makka and Madina, there is
no place to which they have not gone . . . They are so
rich that the treasures of the world go along with them
wherever they go . . . And they carry along with them a
kind of paradise and hell. So, whoever is willing to
accept their religion, that paradise is shown to him, and
whoever becomes a severe opponent of them, he is
threatened with hell . . . There is not one sign of the
Dajjal that is not met with in them . . . Hence
those people represent the Dajjal who has come
forth from the Church.
"Now doubts are raised that the
Dajjal must be one-eyed, being blind in the right
eye, that Gog and Magog must appear at the same time . .
. and that the sun must arise from the west at the same
time . . .
"These doubts would vanish when it
is seen that one-eyed does not mean physically
blind in one eye. God says in the Holy Quran :
‘Whoever is blind in this life shall be blind in the
hereafter’. Does ‘the blind’ here carry
the significance of physical blindness? Nay, it means
spiritual blindness. And the meaning is that the
Dajjal shall be devoid of spiritual wisdom, and
that, though he will make great inventions and show great
wonders as if he were claiming Godhead, yet he will have
no spiritual eye, just as we find today is the case with
the people of Europe and America that they have gone to
the utmost extent in worldly scheming.
"As regards Gog and Magog, it is
unquestionable that these are two prosperous nations of
the world, one of them being the English (Teuton) and the
other the Russians (Slavs). Both these nations are
directing their attacks from a height towards what is
beneath their feet, i.e., they are becoming victorious
with their God-given powers . . . Both these nations are
also mentioned in the Bible.
"As regards the rising of the sun
from the West, we do believe in it; but what has been
shown to me in a vision is this - that the rising of the
sun from the West signifies that the Western world which
has been involved of old in the darkness of unbelief and
error shall be made to shine with the sun of Truth, and
those people shall have their share of Islam. I saw that
I was standing on a pulpit in the city of London and
explaining the truth of Islam in a strongly-argumented
speech in the English language; and, after this, I caught
a large number of birds that were sitting on small trees,
and in colour they were white, and their size was
probably the size of the partridge. So I interpreted this
dream as meaning that, though I may not personally go
there, yet my writings would spread among those people
and many righteous Englishmen would accept the truth. In
reality, the Western countries have, up to this time,
shown very little aptitude for religious truths, as if
spiritual wisdom had in its entirety been granted to
Asia, and material wisdom to Europe and America . . now
Almighty God intends to cast on them the look of mercy."
(Izala Auham, pp. 478-516)
Islamisation
of Europe
One wonders when one finds
that a man who lived in a village, far removed from all
centres of activity, who did not know a word of English,
whose knowledge of Europe was almost negligible, has visions
that he is delivering a speech in English in London and
explaining the truths of Islam to Europeans, and that the
people of Europe will accept Islam. The history of Islam
shows how such visions have materialised before. The great
saint of Ajmer, Khwaja Mu’in al-Din Chishti, saw in a
dream, while in Madina, that he was preaching Islam in
India, and the saint of Qadian sees in a vision that he is
spreading Islam in Europe. India has fulfilled the dream of
the saint of Ajmer, and Europe is undoubtedly on its way to
fulfil the vision of the saint of Qadian.
Amidst all the persecution to which he
was subjected, Hazrat Ahmad’s heart throbbed with but
one desire - the desire to spread Islam in the West - and
that was the message with which he came as the Promised
Messiah. Europe was identical with Dajjal, and
Messiah must overcome the Dajjal. Flames of the fire
of opposition rose high on all sides, but he had an eye on
the goal and he proposed to sit down calmly in the midst of
this fire and write books disclosing the beauties of Islam
and meeting the objections not only of Christian
missionaries but also of those whom materialism was bringing
in its train:
"Then so far as it lies in my
power I intend to broadcast, in all the countries of
Europe and Asia, the knowledge and blessings which the
Holy Spirit of God has granted me . . . It is undoubtedly
true that Europe and America have a large collection of
objections against Islam, inculcated through those
engaged in Mission work, and that their philosophy and
natural sciences give rise to another sort of criticism.
My enquiries have led me to the conclusion that there are
nearly three thousand points which have been raised as
objections against Islam . . . To meet these objections,
a chosen man is needed who should have a river of
knowledge flowing in his vast breast and whose knowledge
should have been specially broadened and deepened by
Divine inspiration . . . So my advice is that . . .
writings of a good type should be sent into these
countries. If my people help me heart and soul I wish to
prepare a commentary of the Holy Quran which should be
sent to them after it has been rendered into the English
language. I cannot refrain from stating clearly that this
is my work, and that no one else can do it as well as I
or he who is an offshoot of mine and thus is included in
me." (Izala Auham, pp. 771-773)
"In this critical time, a man has
been raised up by God and he desires that he may show the
beautiful face of Islam to the whole world and open its
ways to the Western countries." (Op. cit., p.
769)
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