Ahmadiyyat - The Renaissance of Islam — Page 347
THE REN AISSANCE OF ISLAM 347 fatul Masih concerning the centenary celebrations which he made in December 1973. Time after time the plans that they had devised for the purpose of arresting the progress of the Movement had been frustrated, by the grace and mercy of God, and from each trial the Movement had emerged in greater strength and reinvigorated in spirit. Rather than learn a lesson from their repeated experiences their bitterness and hostility towards the Movement had continued to mount and the announcement of the centenary celebrations put them in a mood of desperation. In the middle of 1974 they devised a plan which was aimed at provoking anger and rancour against the Ahmadiyya Cominunity which unfor- tunately succeeded only too well in its immediate purpose. An incident was staged at the Rabwah railway station, which was so managed that a party of students who belonged to an organization bitterly hostile to the Movement succeeded in provoking a number of Ahmadis, who happened to be present at the railway station when the train carrying the students arrived, into a conflict in which slight injuries were inflicted on some of the students in the party. At the next stop of the train preparations had already been made to receive the students as heroes who had suffered grievous injuries in the cause of Islam at the hands of the members of the Movement. Fiery speeches were made and the incident was painted in lurid colours. The utterly false and misleading accounts of the incident were further embroidered in the press next morn- ing, with the addition of such false, fictitious and horrifying details as that the students had been cruelly maimed, that some of them had their tongues cut out and that others had their genitals cut off. This sent a wave of horror throughout the province and all sorts of premeditated atrocities were let loose against the members of the Movement~ ;In the inquiry subsequently conducted by aJudge of the Lahore High Court into the incident, it was established by the medical evidence produced that all the injuries alleged to have been received by some of the students were simple bruises and scars and not a single one of them was grievous. For reason'S undisclosed the report of the inquiry has not