Ahmadiyyat or The True Islam — Page 343
343 service of religion. Their example is like that of the blessed companions of the Holy Prophet sa concerning whom the Holy Quran says: 'Some of them have fulfilled the object of their lives and the desire of their hearts, and the others are waiting for the same. ' 172 There have been two occasions in Afghanistan when Ahmadis were called upon to lay down their lives for the pleasure of their Lord and they did so with unparalleled devotion and cheerfulness. I have said 'two occasions,' and I mean thereby only such occasions on which the Ahmadis concerned were called upon by their persecutors to renounce Ahmadiyyat and thus save themselves but they refused to do so and stuck fast to the faith which God had granted them through the Promised Messiah as. The number of Ahmadis who have given up their lives in Afghanistan and have allowed themselves to be ruthlessly butchered for their religion runs into nearly a dozen. It may be observed that the number of martyrs which may be claimed by a community is determined by many factors, one of them being the number of opportunities of this particular kind of sacrifice afforded to the community. It would serve but little purpose if, in order to gauge the spirit of sacrifice in a particular community, we were to look only to the number of martyrs it has produced without taking into considera- 172 Al-A h z a b, 33:24.