Ahmadiyyat - The Renaissance of Islam — Page 16
16 AHMADIYY AT tuberculosis and requested Mirza Ghulam Ahmad to pray for his recovery, which he did and told Lala Mulawa Mal that he had an indication that his prayer was accepted. Lala Mulawa Mal recovered from his illness and died in 1951 at the age of 95. From about 1872 onwards Mirza Ghulam Ahmad began to emerge as a champion of Islam, defending it against the attacks of Christians, Arya Samajists and Bramho Samajists and setting forth the excellence of its teachings in every sphere. He did this by writing articles for publication in newspapers and journals. His earliest article was published in Manshur Muhammadi) which used to be published every ten days from Bangalore, Mysore, South India. In addition to Manshur Muhammadi, he subscribed regularly to Vakil, Safeer Hind, 'Vidya Prakash and Riaz Hind all of which were pub- lished from Amritsar, and Brother Hind (Lahore), Aftab Punjab (Lahore), Wazir Hind (Sialkot), Noor Afshan (Ludhiana) and Ishaatas Sunnah edited by his friend Maulvi Muhammad Husain of Batala. Occasionally he contributed his own arti- cles to some of them. At a later period he also subscribed to Akhbar-i-Aam of Lahore. In his first article published in Manshur Muhammadi of 25 August 1872, he announced that his experience and observa- tion extending over more than a score of years had convinced him that the basis of all goodness in human affairs and relationships was truth and that an easy way of determining the truth of a religion was to discover to what degree it had put forth an effective and emphatic teaching designed to establish its followers firmly on truth. He challenged the. followers of all religions to set forth from their recognized religious books their respective teachings in this behalf. He promised to award a prize ofRs 500 to any non-Muslim who would set forth from his own religious books one-half or even one-third of the teachings in support of truth that he himself would set forth from the recognized and authorita- tive books on Islam. No one came forward to take up the challenge.