Flowers for the Women Wearing Veils - Volume I — Page 303
! ! 303 Addres s at the Inauguration of the FA Class Delivered by Hazrat Mirza Bashir - ud - D in Mahmud Ahmad, Khalifat - ul - Masih II ra In 1925, my intention to prioritize religious education was based upon the principle that women may thus be able to receive religious education whilst they are pursuing secular education. I prioritized the religious education [at an earlier age] with the view that religious education is not so interesting or appealing [as certain aspects of secular education] and therefore it is difficult to acquire religious education at a later stage in li fe. In this way, after women acquire som e degree of religious education , they may then pursue an Eng lish education also. Since this [ English education ] is more appealing, there should be no problem in acquiring it later. First, we began with Arabic classes for the girls. At that time, people in and outside of Qadian criticized this, in particular the P ai gha mi [Lahori Jama’at] section ridiculed it. However, by the grace of God Almighty , not only in Punjab, but in the whole of India , this is the first instance of our girls passing the Maulv i Fa z l exam [a degree in Islamic education] in such large numbers. I believe the number of our girls who passed the exam this year is greater than the number of girls in all of India, who have passed the Maulv i Fa z l exam in the past years. After this, as they were eligible to take higher education classes in the girls’ school. H igher education classes were established with the help of high school teachers. By God’s grace, this was also a success and this year , seven stud ents successfully passed their entrance exam. This in itself , is unprecedented , as never before have seven Muslim girls from one school been successful in the same year. S ince we have continuously advocate d the education of women in our Jama'at, several girls from outside of Qadian have also passed the e ntrance exam with commendable scores. In fact, one Ahmadi girl has achieved second position among the girls and thirteenth or fourteenth position among boys. My intention is that their education should advance in this manner , until we have so many women graduates , that we can place female staff in the school and establish a college as well. The