Why Islam is my choice — Page 40
40 to the mosque. I also became aware that the religious environment was full of hate and rage by one sect against the other. Although I did not had much religious knowledge, I was aware of the general beliefs of the Muslims. Among them one being that of Jesus Christ having physically ascended to the heavens and the other that there could not be another prophet until the Day of Judgment. Being a Muslim by name, I ascribed to both these beliefs. Mr. Mu ṣṭ af ā had explained to me some of the A ḥ madiyyah beliefs including the beliefs of the A ḥ madiyyah Muslim Jam ā ‘at of Qadian. My religious knowledge mostly remained limited to what I heard from others or Mr. Mu ṣṭ af ā. Since I was not so much interested in religion, I never bothered to explore or enhance my own knowledge about it. My family had meanwhile moved to Zahidan in Iran where my stepfather was assigned to the post of the Vice Consul in the British Indian Consulate. During the summer vacation, I would either visit my family in Iran, or with my stepbrother to his ancestral village Surkh Dheri near Mardan (now in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan). A few times I accompanied Mr. Mu ṣṭ af ā to his village near Sargodha. After fmishing the high school, I joined Islamia College, Lahore, and lived in their hostel (or dormitory). There I noticed that students sometimes used to engage in an informal religious dialogue. I was also, for the first time exposed to the Christian teachings. Young Christian girls with bibles in their hands used to visit us in our dorms and tried to preach and convert the students to Christianity. I do not remember if they had any success but to this day I have been amazed as to how would someone let these girls go about so freely into the young men’s rooms and preach religion to them. I wrote a detailed article on these episodes which was published in Al-Furq ā n, Rabwah, some years ago. Before my graduation from the college, I once visited