How to be Free from Sin — Page 14
14 people of the Frontier who think that this act of 'piety' will make them deserving of Paradise and all its bounties. The Muslims should be ashamed that people of other faiths no longer feel secure in their vicinity, and expect the worst from them. I have encountered many people who show fear on account of this latent belief of the Muslims. An Englishman came to visit Qadian on 20 th November, 1901, or thereabout. Many of my followers were with me at the time and we were engaged in religious discourse. He stood there for some time until we courteously invited him to join us. He then introduced himself as an English tourist who had also been to Arabia, and expressed his de- sire to take some photographs of my Jam a ‘at. We assented to his request and afterwards asked him to stay with us for a few days. But he seemed reluctant and said that he had heard of many Christians being mercilessly killed at the hands of Muslims, and even related a few in- cidents that he had witnessed in Baghdad. But we explained to him that our Jam a ‘at, known as the Ahmadi sect, is strongly averse to such beliefs and abhors the per- petrators of these crimes, and our major service to mankind lies in trying to root out such beliefs. This satis- fied him and he spent the night in our company. The purpose of narrating this incident is to show that these beliefs, which run counter to the true teachings of Islam, have distorted its image in the eyes of people of other faiths, and have caused them to harbour mistrust and hatred against the Muslims. They only expect human sympathy from Muslims who are not of the religious bent