Ahmadiyyat - The Renaissance of Islam — Page 252
252 AHMADIYY AT Islam, was on sale at the Imperial Institute and on one occasion, when he was visiting the Institute, a clergyman who had the book in his hand came up to greet him and said: I obtained this book of yours yesterday and started reading it after dinner. I became so deeply interested that I went on reading it through the night and by the time I had to come down to breakfast I had finished reading it. I have been fascinated by it. While the Khalifatul Masih and his party were still in London news arrived of the tragic death by stoning of Naimatullah Khan, a young Afghan, who had studied re- ligion at Qadian and had returned to his own country after finishing his course of studies. He was only 19 years of age and life spread out before his imagination in attractive and alluring colours. His outstanding quality, however, was devotion to his faith. On his way back to his country he stopped at Peshawar for a short while, where his host asked him one evening: 'Naimatullah, you know that since the martyrdom of Sahibzada Syed'Abdul Latif Sahib, more than a dozen of our people have been stoned to death in Afghanis- tan under the orders of the Amir. Should you be confronted with the same contingency, how will you behave?' His reply was: Sir, if I said anything just now in answer to your question, my response would lack reality. I do not know and, therefore, cannot say what my reaction to the situation would be. I hope and pray that God of his grace and mercy will bestow upon me the strength and firmness that would enable me to react to the situation as the Sahibzada Sahib reacted. But I am a weak human being and all I can say at the moment is that I shall continue to supplicate for God's grace and mercy. When he arrived in Kabul he was arrested and confined in a cell like a dangerous criminal and was charged with apos- tacy from Islam. He rejected every suggestion made to him that he should repudiate the Messiah of Qadian but like all his. predecessors in that situation, he remained firm in his faith, in the full consciousness that he could do so only at the cost of