Life of Ahmad — Page 592
PLAGUE as 592 'The gist of the address was to the effect that Government was actuated solely by dictates of humanity in its measures for the suppression of the disease; that those measures are necessary, that stories that Government desires to poison the people are both lies and foolish and should not be believed for a moment by anybody with pretensions of being sensible, and that for females to put aside purdah in so far as to come out of the house into the open for segregation purposes with the face properly veiled is no violation of the principles of Islam in time of imminent danger such as a visitation by the hand of God. ' A detailed report of the meeting was published by the editor of Al- H akam , Qadian, in September 1898. It was entitled Al-Indh a r. The attitude of Ahmad as towards the plague was so reasonable that no sane person could possibly find fault with it, but corruption and wickedness vitiate human reason and cause moral and spiritual blindness. The objection which the Paisa Akhb a r raised in this connection was really a symptom of the real disease from which unbelieving people generally suffer. If the plague was a visitation from God, all precautionary measures and medicines could be of no avail; and if the cause of the pestilence lay in the physical world, moral and spiritual reform and prayer could not remove it. So Ahmad as thought fit to throw light on the subject by writing a book entitled Ayy a mu s