Flowers for the Women Wearing Veils - Volume I — Page 498
! ! 498 Praise of the W ork of Qadian’s Ahmadi Women and an Expression of Approval Delivered by Hazrat Mirza Bashir - ud - D in Mahmud Ahmad, Khalifat - ul - Masih II ra Febr uar y 15, 1942 In a Friday sermon, Hazrat Khalifat - ul - Masih ra stated: Compared to men, women have exhibited an excellent example of sacrifice. Granted, that due to their lack of knowledge in mathematics, they have made mistakes, bu t I was able to pick those out in a timely manner and I directed them as to how they could rem ove those mistakes. Accordingly, th ey labored with diligence and hard work. I believe that if men show the same spirit our women have shown, we will be as victorious as we were hundreds of years earlier. If the men develop the same sort of fervor and passion the women have demons trated, then our day of victory is very near. Women have worked with such fervor, that now some of their appearances are virtually unrecognizable. They did not care to eat. They did not care to rest , and they worked so hard that I believe that some of them lost three sair [half a kilo], some have lost four sair , and yet others five sair. Compared to them, men have worked very little. Those who have observed them, re presentatives of the opposition , and polling officers have been greatly impressed by our women ’s sacrifices. The women, who came to help the polling officers on behalf of the government, were so impressed that they said, “We do not understand what kind of Jama'at this is. How did this spirit of self - sacrifice develop ?” There were pregnant women whose labor pains had already begun , who came to vote. Some came to vote who were in such extreme pain, that they fainted right after casting their votes. There were some who had given birth only twelve hours earlier and arrived lying upon stretcher s , simply to cast their votes. If there were only one such incident it could be co nstrued as an exception, however here we had more than a dozen women who came to vote during childbirth pains, or who had given birth only a few hours earlier. Then