Ahmadiyya Movement — Page 63
63 The third factor mentioned above, viz. , the echoing of current ideas, is a device which is employed only by the exponents and advocates of a false religion, and its employment was not, therefore, permissible in the case of the Promised Messiah, who was a true prophet of God. On the contrary he refuted, on the one hand, all ideas that were calculated to convert religion into a bundle of superstitions and, on the other, combated all harmful tendencies born of new materialistic culture. It was no common task to bring men to believe in an Ever-Living God Whose attributes are being constantly manifested to the world, to make them believe in miracles, to convince them of the existence of angels and of the acceptance of prayer, to demonstrate to them the possibility of verbal revelation, to explain to their satisfac- tion Islamic teachings concerning the life after death, and to present to the world the rules of Islamic culture; but the Prom- ised Messiah (on whom be peace) carried out this task with courage and perseverance and was not in any way influenced by the consideration that these ideas were unacceptable to the loves of modern culture. The fourth factor in the propagation of a religion is the com- manding position occupied by its founder, and in this respect also the Promised Messiah possessed no special advantage. He did not belong to a family which possessed any religious influ- ence. He was a member of a respectable but a lay family. He was not a Syed, that is to say, a descendant of the Holy Prophet (on whom be peace and the blessings of God) who are looked up to with respect by the Sunnis and are held in special veneration by the Shias, both of whom believe that the Promised One or the Messenger of the Latter Days would appear from among the Syeds. His success cannot, therefore, be attributed to his con- nection with a priestly family, or with a family on whom the re- ligious hopes of the community were centered. He had not been educated in any center of learning, so as to have derived any advantage from its intellectual traditions, nor was he the fol-