Invitation to Ahmadiyyat — Page 49
49 the word l a kin (but) is employed to clarify the previous statement. Every Muslim knows that the doubt arises because of the verse: 44 ُرَتْبَاْلا َوُھ َّنِا َكَئِناَش Surely, it is your enemy who is without issue (not you). Whereas in the former verse Allah says that the Holy Prophet s as would not have male offspring. To remove this apparent discrep - ancy, the Holy Quran uses the conjunction ‘but’ and says that even though he is not the father of any men among you, he can - not be said to be ‘without issue’, for he is the Prophet of Allah and shall have a spiritual progeny in countless numbers. It goes further and says that not only is he the spiritual father of countless believers, he is also the Seal of Prophets, so that, henceforth, only through his validation would anyone be able to attain the status of prophethood. He will thus be the father, not just of men, but of Prophets. In this wise, the verse doesn’t close the door to the aforementioned kind of prophethood but renders it wide open. The verse, however, does close the door to any prophethood that brings a new Shariah or is received directly without the interme - diary of the Holy Prophet s as , for that would be a denial of the Holy Prophet’s spiritual fatherhood. It is also said that since the Holy Prophet s as said, ‘I am the last of the Prophets,’ 45 and, ‘There is no prophet after me,’ 46 it follows from this that no Prophet can come after him. It is unfortunate that while these people focus on the words ‘last of Prophets’, they do not look at the words, ‘And my mosque is the last of mosques,’ 47 that follow in the same Hadith recorded in S a hih al-Muslim. If the words, ‘I am the last of the Prophets,’ mean that no kind of