Commonsense About Ahmadiyyat — Page 25
the British District Magistrate of Gurdaspur, Punjab, in August 1897. The charge was that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (the Promised. Messiah) had sent a youth called Abdul Hamid to murder Dr. Clark. Intensive investigations by the Magistrate proved conclusively that Dr Clark had conspired with and trimmed the youth. Hamid to give false evidence, but the youth broke down and spilled the beans. Captain Douglas discharged the defendant honourably and told him that he could prosecute Dr Clark for bringing a false charge against him, and that he, the Magistrate, would give him leave to do so. To the chagrin of the Muslims and. Christians, the Promised Messiah said that he did not want to prosecute Dr Clark in the courts of this world; his case was pending before the Highest Judge in heaven. . As the Reformer, the Promised Messiah's first job was to return to the original form of Islam as existed in the time of the four Righteous Caliphs after the demise of the Holy Prophet, from the chaotic, sprawling Islam of the Muslims, as he found in the fourteenth century Hijra (end of the nineteenth century. AD). . With this in view, under Divine command, he inaugurated the. Ahmadiyyah Movement in Islam in 1889, inviting all and sundry to join in. This entailed taking Ba'iat or making covenant with the Promised Messiah, giving him a pledge to live by practising. Islam: carrying out commands of God, refraining from His prohibitions, and following the practice of the Holy Prophet. This vested central authority in the Promised Messiah, in his Caliphs, which had to be obeyed by every Ahmadi Muslim. Either one is a true Muslim or not at all; there is no halfway about it. Only a tiny minority joined the Movement, which began to grow amidst fierce oppositions and persecution, but which has grown with branches now to the ends of the earth, as God had promised. . This Movement is maintained by the contributions of individual. Ahmadis and not by the petrodollars. The bulk of Muslims remained and still remain outside and opposed to the Ahmadiyyah. Movement. The Promised Messiah had taught the Ahmadis that persuasion and reasoning, with God's help, would bring mankind 25