Truth About the Split — Page 184
184 Maulawi Muhammad Ali’s narrative seeks also to prove that the enlightened members of the Community who still continue as my followers, are opposed to the beliefs held by me. If words used by him, which carry the above sense, are deliberate and intentional, then I cannot but say that he has only attempted to mislead people. For those who are with me agree in my beliefs, and if there is anywhere any stray exception, the case is beyond my knowledge, and such exceptions can in no wise serve as the basis of an argument. I do not, of course, speak of those few men who are openly consorting with Maulawi Muhammad Ali, but who still for considerations of expediency are averse to making a public declaration of the renunciation of this Bai‘at. These men by their conduct have proved themselves hypocrites. But even they are negligibly small in number. Now to those statements which Maulawi Muhammad Ali has made concerning Maulawi Sayyid Muhammad Ahsan. In the first place, I wish to say that the statement made by Maulawi Muhammad Ali that Maulawi Sayyid Muhammad Ahsan is the oldest living Companion of the Promised Messiah as is quite wrong. There are among my followers men still living who entered into the Bai‘at of the Promised Messiah as long before Maulawi Sayyid Muhammad