Fazl-e-Umar — Page 174
Fazle Umar 174 when the reading was finished a deep sigh was heard to go up as if the audience had been released from a spell, and everybody attempted to rush to the dais to shake hands with the Khalifatul Masih, or at least approach close to him. The address received a very good press also. The book, Ahmadiyyat or The True Islam , by Hadhrat Khalifatul Masih II [ra] 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. ” T H E A F G HA n M A RT y R S 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 religion at Qadian and had returned to his own country after finishing his 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 Afghanistan 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