Ahmadiyyat - The Renaissance of Islam — Page 279
THE RENAISSANCE OF ISLAM 279 of 15 years. Nasiratul Ahmadiyya (Female Helpers of God) comprises all female children between the ages of 7 and 15 years. Each of these associations has its own office bearers and is constantly active in promoting the moral and spiritual values inculcated by Islam. One feature of the training of all sections of the Community, which is thus bound together in affectionate ties of brotherhood and sisterhood, is that all members under the auspices of their particular association carry out without discrimination programmes of manual labour, designed to uphold the dignity of labour. The female sections also carry out programmes designed to stimulate their artistic faculties and to train them in the. various branches of domestic science and household duties. . . From the very beginning of his Khilafat, Khalifatul Masih II was very keen on promoting literacy and education in all sections of the Community. He paid special attention to the education of women. As the result of his directions and the methods that he adopted for the achievement of his purpose in this regard, the average standard of education among the men and women of the Movement is today considerably higher than that prevailing among the sister communities in each region. This is true not only in respect of the branches of the Community in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India but also in the case of the branches of the community in other backward regions, more particularly in Africa. The Madrissah Ahmadiyyah which had been established for religious instruction was raised to the status of Jamiah (Higher Seminary) designed to train scholars to serve as missionaries of Islam in different parts of the world. An Islamic solar calendar was introduced supplementing the current lunar calendar, for facilitating the comparative. study of the histo~y and progress of Islam. The Khalifatul Masih kept reminding the Community of the obligations that lay upon it with regard to the propaga- tion of Islam. For instance, he said: Today the way of promoting the progress of Islam through