The Light of the Holy Qur'an — Page 77
T H e J O u r NA l—F AT e H M A S IH T H e J O u r NA l—F AT e H M A S IH 77 marrying at] the age of nine, you could not cite any reference from the Torah or the Gospel; you merely mentioned an ordinance of the government. This shows that you no longer believe in the Torah and the Gospel, for you should have otherwise proved the prohibition [of marriage] at the age of nine either from the Torah or the Gospel. Reverend Sir! This indeed is sophistry, that you have cited an ordinance of the government in matters pertaining to revealed scriptures. If your opinion holds that all aspects of the govern- ment’s law are free from error and are similar to revealed Books— nay rather, even superior —then I ask you what treatment this government would have meted out to those Prophets as , had they been living today, who slaughtered hundreds of thousands of suckling infants in breach of British law? And if those who had plucked and eaten the ears of corn from fields belonging to others, were summoned before this government along with the one who gave them permission to do so [i. e. Jesus], what sentence would the government hand down against them? I then ask, if the man who had rushed to eat the fruit of a fig tree—and it is substanti- ated by the Gospel that the fig tree was not his property, but it was another’s property—had perpetrated this act before this govern- ment, what punishment would this government award him? It is also evident from the Gospel that the Messiah killed a great many swine—which, according to Reverend Clark, numbered 2,000— that were the livestock of others. Now, please do explain what its punishment is under the penal code? This much should suffice for the time being. Pen your reply without fail so that many other questions may be posed. Reverend Sir! Your contention that intercourse with a nine