Ahmadiyyat or The True Islam — Page 34
34 different religions can keep under lock and key, for as soon as an idea is discovered or a thought is expressed it becomes common property and it is open to everybody to adopt it as his own. Hence if no means are devised to test whether a particular idea belongs to the particular religion to which it is ascribed or has been borrowed from others, it will be impossible to contrast the teach- ings of different religions in order to arrive at a definite conclusion as to the truth of a religion. On the contrary the result will be very undesirable, for people will run away with the idea that all religions are alike, whereas in fact a particular truth may be the property of a par- ticular religion and others may merely be borrowers from it. The holy founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement had devised a plan which he used always to follow on such occasions, and the adoption of which would obvi- ate the difficulty indicated above. That plan is that the advocates of each religion should support all that they ascribe to their religion by reference to the scriptures of that religion, that is, the revealed book on which that religion is based, or by reference to the explanations offered by the recipient of the revelation himself. This would remove all risk of confusion and mis- understanding, and would clearly show which religion is perfect and which has merely borrowed from others. As this is not a condition which has been laid down by the conveners of this conference (although I hope that on all such occasions in future it will not be lost sight of, so that people may be able easily to judge of the merits of different religions) the representatives of other religions will probably not be able to keep it in view, but I shall