Claims and Teachings - Ahmad The Promised Messiah and Mahdi — Page 253
253 lievers, however, could nob test in their homes so long as they heard that the religion they had persecuted was gaining ground in another place. They pursued the Muslims to their new abode, and nothing but their extirpation could satisfy them. What could Islam do under circumstances but defend itself? For what fault were Muslims to be mercilessly butchered and not allowed to protect their lives? Why should not the inveterate persecu- tors have been brought to retribution and just punishment? The Muslim battles were therefore not undertaken for gaining converts but to protect innocent Muslim lives. Can an unbiassed judgment accept the conclusion that Islam was unable to prove its reasonableness as against savage Arabs? Can an unprejudi- ced mind believe that men who had sunk down so low as to worship images and lifeless things and who indulged in every manner of vice, could yeu vanquish the noble religion of Islam on intellectual grounds, and that failure in proof led it to resort to the sword for increasing the number of its followers? Those who have advanced such objections against Islam have been guilty of grave injustice, in as much as they have concealed the true state of facts. It is, however, true that the Musalman Maulvis and the Christian Missionaries are equally to blame for this unjust charge against Islam. The ignorant Maulvis while pretending to sup- port Islam have by their repeated inculcations, ingrafted the false doctrine of Jehad upon the minds of the unenlightened public who were misled by \>\\Q fatwas of the Maulvis on the one side and the objections of the Christian Missionaries, whom they took for learned men, on the other. The doctrine of Jehad being thus supported by the evidence of two opposing witnesses, its validity could not be questioned by the masses. Had the Missionaries taken a different course and with true honesty declared that the