Ahmadiyyat - The Renaissance of Islam — Page 103
THE RENAISSANCE OF ISLAM 1°3 tunity of expounding the truth on the basis of the Holy Quran, the Christian scriptures and human reason. While exposing the baselessness of the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus, he always took care to point out that, according to the teaching of the Holy Quran, he himself believed in Jesus as a true Prophet of God and revered him as such. The Christian missionaries on their part were not only aggressively occupied with propounding the doctrines of the Church and inviting people to their acceptance, but carried on an offensive, scurrilous and abusive campaign against Islam, the Holy Quran and the Holy Prophet of Islam, on whom be peace. By the begining of 1893 the Christian mission had gained a footing in Jandiala, a small village in the Amritsar district. This roused the local Muslims to rally together in the defence of Islam and they began to ask questions and raise objections in the open-air meetings that the Christians held in the village from time to time. The mission authorities began to feel uneasy at this reaction on the part of the local Muslims and conveyed their apprehensions to the Rev Dr Henry Martyn Clark, medical missionary in charge of the Amritsar district, who wrote a letter to one of the Muslims of Jandiala, in which he suggested that a public debate might be arranged between accredited representatives of the two faiths, so that a final decision could be taken on. their relative merits and it might be determined which of them was true. When this letter was received by the addressee he approached Ahmad in a letter, dated I I April 1893, with the request that Ahmad might be pleased to represent the Muslims in the proposed debate. Upon this a certain amount of correspondence was exchanged between Ahmad and Dr Henry Martyn Clark through which an agreement was reached upon the holding of the debate at Amritsar from 22 May to 3 June 1893. In this debate Ahmad was to represent the Muslims and Mr Abdullah Athim, a retired civil servant, was to represent the Christian Mission. The venue of the debate was the bungalow of Dr Henry Martyn Clark at Amritsar. The subjects of the debate were to be the truth of