Where Did Jesus Die? — Page xi
About the Author xi his knowledge. Shams replied that these are the teachings of the Mahdi. Astonished, the scholar then turned around to face the audience and said that this man is the Ibn Abbas of our generation. Maulana Shams later returned to India in 1931; he married and had two children. He was appointed the Secretary of the All- India Kashmir Committee, of which the Second Khalifah ra was elected President and Sir Muhammad Iqbal was a member. He was then dispatched to England in 1936 to be the Imam of the London Mosque. As he did not know much English, he made an arrangement with a man in England to learn English from him in exchange for lessons in Arabic. Despite this initial language barrier, approximately sixty British citizens accepted Ahmadiyyat. He authored this book while in London and made arrangements to print 100,000 flyers of Jesus’ tomb in India and distribute them among the British with the help of other missionaries who were sent to London for training. When World War II broke out and the Germans launched bombing raids over England, Shams announced that God would protect His house and anyone who enters it. As a result, approxi- mately twenty families moved into the Ahmadiyya mission house next to Fazl Mosque. Although many buildings surrounding the vicinity of the Mosque had been destroyed, Fazl Mosque was left unharmed. Two bombs fell into the Mosque’s courtyard, but they failed to detonate, and were later disarmed by the British military authorities. In 1946, after ten years of separation from his wife and two children—a sacrifice he willingly accepted for the spread of Islam Ahmadiyyat in Europe—Maulana Shams was called back to the Ahmadiyya Headquarters in Qadian to serve in various capacities.