A Critical Review of the Pamphlet, 'Fateh-e-Qadian' — Page 123
Appreciation of Flowers 123 Our state is nothing like the pious and pure condition of Ghul a m Ahmad. He is not of the world but of Heaven. He is not a man but an angel. ( Tadhkiratul-Mahd i , vol. 2, p. 33) His first marriage took place when he was 15 and his second marriage when he was around 50 years of age, but neither of the two marriages affected his seclusion, level of study and devotion to God. This was the time when English rule was at its height and the Christian missionaries were preaching with the utmost vigour. They had established Biblical Societies everywhere and published hundreds of books against Islam and against the founder of Islam and they distributed tens of millions of pamphlets free. The speed of their progress can be judged by the fact that in 1851 the number of [native Protestant] Christians in India [and Burma] was around 91,000 but in 1881 this number increased to over 490,000 63. On the other hand, the movements of the Aryas and Brahmu Samajists were in their prime and were making Islam the targets of their criticism. It was as though Islam was surrounded by the enemy. The singular aim of all these movements was to annihilate Islam and make the truth of the Holy Quran and the truth of the Founder of Islam appear doubtful in the eyes of the world. Aryas did not believe in any Divine revelation after the Vedas. The Brahmu Samajists were rejecting the revelation outright. They believed that intellect by itself was sufficient for salvation. Influenced by the misleading philosophy of the West and impressed by the apparent material progress of the Christian countries, the 63 ‘The Indian Empire: it’s people, history and products’, by W. W. Hunter, published by Trübner and Co. , London, 1886, p. 263. [Publishers]