Reply to a Mockery — Page 45
Response to the booklet entitled Ilh a m i Girgit 45 the background, but he also takes one sentence out of context and mischievously uses it, ignoring the rest of the paragraph. If one were to read the whole paragraph, one would realise that Maulaw i Sahib is using this one sentence to exploit the people’s emotions. In the above excerpt, it is not the person of Hadrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad that is being discussed. It is the status of the Imam Mahdi that is being referred. Maulaw i Sahib’s elders believe that the Promised Messiah and Imam Mahdi would be a caliph of the Holy Prophet Muhammad s as and would have the rank of a Prophet. Therefore, comparing the rank of a Caliph of the Holy Prophet s as and a Prophet of God with anyone else is invalid and amounts to creating mischief. The famous scholar of Ahl-e-Hadith, Naw a b Sidd i q Hasan Khan, gives the following quote from the writings of Hadrat Imam Muhammad Ibn Sir i n rta : َ ْر ٌ مِن ْ اَبِی ْ بَكْر ٍ و َّ عُمَر ي َ ْفَۃ ٌ خ ي ٰذِہ ِ الُْمَّۃِخَلِ ه ْ َكُوْن ُ فِی ي There will be a Caliph in this Ummah who will be greater than Abu-Bakr ra and Umar ra. ( Ā th a rul-Qiy a mah f i H ijajil- Kir a mah , Naw a b Sidd i q H a s an Khan, p. 386, Dar Matba‘ Shahjahan, Bhopal) This ideology is fully accepted by the Deobandis. As for the saints of the past, their understanding of the status of the Promised Mahdi is reflected in the following statement of Hadrat P i r a n-e-P i r rta: ٍ َّۃ ِ تَابِعًا لِمُحَمَّد ي َكُوْن ُ فِی الَْحْكَام ِ الشَّرْعِ ي ُ َجِیْء ُ فِی ْ اٰخِر ِ الزَّمَان ِ فَاِنَّہ ي اَلْمَھْدِی ُّ الَّذِی