Flowers for the Women Wearing Veils - Volume I — Page 286
! ! 286 distinguished fr om the bad. The Holy Qur’ān has straightaway addressed this question. W ith the advent of every prophet, disorder has been created in the earth, for which the proph ets were held responsible. As with earlier prophets, it was commonly said during the time of the Holy Prophet Muhammad sa , that he created rift s between one brother and the other brother. Now , at the time of the Promised Messiah as , people claim the same thing , that he is the fo under of discord. T here were already seventy - two sects, and he has now made Ahmadis the seventy - third facti on. They assert that the divisions should have decreased , but on the contrary , one more has been added. Perhaps those of you, who are non - Ahmadi, also feel the same way. T herefore, let me first clarify this issue. The first question is that of bloodshed and disorder. Keep in mind, in regard to this, the Holy Qur’ān has described the situation [ which previously existed ] before the advent of a prophet in these words : ا ۡﻟ َﺒ ۡﺤ ِﺮ َو ا ۡﻟ َِّرب ِيف ا ۡﻟ َﻔ َﺴ ﺎ ُد َﻇ َﻬ َﺮ “ Corruption has appeared on land and sea … ” (Holy Qur’ān , Ch. 30: V. 42) In other words , there was disorder in the land and at sea a nd this is what always occurs. Now, we should examine whether only one sect existed in this world before the arrival of the Promised Messiah as , or was this dissension already present? Did the Shi ‘ ites and the Hanafis a lready exist before this or no t ? Were disputes not already present over rituals such as the Eleventh [a ceremony], Am ī n Bil - J ahar [saying Am īn loudly], and Rafa‘Yadain [raising hands during Salāt ] , and so on? If you ponder over this, you will realize that before this, there existed great disorder, to which there was no limit. On e is embarrassed simpl y by hearing of it. In Afghanistan, the fingers of hundreds of people were mutilated, only because they raised the index finger during Tashahhud in Attahayaat [a section of the Salāt ] and according to the Hanafi school of thought , this voided the Salāt. A friend narrated that once a person from Ahl - e - Hadith [a Muslim sect] went to offer Salāt in congregation with Hanafis in their mosque. H e