Claims and Teachings - Ahmad The Promised Messiah and Mahdi — Page 222
222 appointed this Government to protect your lives and properties. " I may add that the Government intends to afford every facility to those who are ready to act upon the measures sugges- ted by it, and it is hoped that in such parts of the country as the Frontier Provinces where the lives of those who go out into fields will be in danger, a danger which is doubled in the case of the Ahrnadis on account of the fatwas of heresy and murder aganist them, the Government will if approached properly make sufficient arrangements for safety of lives in addition to the arrangements for safety of property which it intends to make elsewhere. "Some people object saying why they are required to leave their houses and to leave in temporary sheds in the fields. This is a foolish complaint. I know it for certain that even if the Government did not interfere in the case of such terrible disease, those concerned would ultimately be obliged to resort to those very measures which the Government has undertaken for theic wel- fare. For instance, when plague deaths begin to occur in a house, the residents of the house will, when they have seen two or three of them dying, begin to feel anxious for desertion of the house. But if after leaving it they only take their abode in a different quarter of the same town, the result will be that infection will be carried to that quarter. Then they will, no doubt, think of leaving that town for some other place but this even the Islamic law forbids, for it does not allow that when plague rages in a town, the inhabitants of that place should go to some other town. In other words, even the Divine law forbids leaving an infected city to take abode in an uninfected one. What other plan there is, I ask, which under the circumstances we can adopt at such a dangerous time if we are free to adopt it. It is a pity that evil is done in return for goodness and the Government measures and plans are looked upon with suspicion," (Vol. VI R. R. 1907).