Claims and Teachings - Ahmad The Promised Messiah and Mahdi — Page 251
251 JEHAD OR RELIGIOUS WAR. There is not the least truth in the assertion that it is the time for resorting to the sword and gun for spreading the true religion and righteousness. The sword, far from revealing the beauties and excellences of truth, makes them dubious and throws them into background. Those who hold such views are not the friends of Islam but its deadly foes. They have low motives, mean natures, poor spirits, narrow minds, dull brains and short sight. It is they who open the way to an objection against Islam, the validity of which cannot be questioned. They hold that Islam needs the sword for; its advancement and thus brand its purity and cast a slur upon its holy name. The religion that can easily establish its truth and superiority by sound intellectual arguments, heavenly signs or other reliable testimony, does not need the sword to threaten men and force a confession of its truth from them. Keligion is worth the name only so long as it is in consonance with reason. If it fails to satisfy that requisite, if; it has to make up for its discomfiture in argument by handling the sword, it needs no other argument for its falsification. The sword it wields cuts its own throat before reaching others'. If it be objected that sword was resorted to by early Islam and hence the legality of Jehad,, we say the objection is based upon ignorance of early Islamic circumstances. Islam never allowed the use of the sword for spreading the faith. On the other hand, it strictly prohibits compulsion in matters of faith. It has the plain injunction ^. ^ ) ^y !/) ^ " There shall be no compulsion in religion. " Why was the sword taken in hand then? The circumstances under which this measure had been resorted to have nothing to do with the spread of religion; they