Commonsense About Ahmadiyyat — Page 3
desirelessness gives peace and tranquillity of mind promised in the Quran, but not to the extent of Hindu sannyasis. In this way in the course of years I have been modelling my life according to. God's commands and prohibitions embodied in the Quran, or the Five Pillars of Islam: prayer, zakat, fasting, pilgrimage and jihad or strivings. . The more I read the more Islam inside the Quran made sense to me, but Islam in practice out in the Muslim world made me dissatisfied. It seemed Muslims had separated themselves from. Islam. To what the Quran says nobody pays any heed. It looked as if the Muslim world was anti-Quran. The core of Islam-the religion of obedience to God-is the belief in God, the Hereafter and righteous living in this world; surrounded by the Sharia (law of Islam) to bring out this principle effectively. The Muslims are far from that; they are not ruled by Sharia law any more; they are like non-Muslims, and naturally their plight is worse than ever. . Large numbers of them have alleviated their wants by running out of their 'Islamic' countries and settling in un-Islamic lands, where they rejoice in living as imitation Westerners. The Muslim world with its 40 nation-states is frantically trying to be modern, nationalist, socialist, communist, democratic and secularist, except being Islamic. This has created rampant disunity, so that individuals are flying at each other's throats, and Muslim states are either fiercely jihading against each other, or are on the verge of it. This spectacle is not a shining eaxmple for the non-Muslim world to take to Islam. The Muslim nation or Umma is fragmented and there is not a central authority as of pristine Islam to keep *holding the rope of Allah', as commanded by God in the Quran. . Then came Ayatulla Khomeini's Islamic Republic of Iran, which declared that both Western and Communist civilisations were rebellious traitors to God. This sounded promising for a time. . . . This is what I had in my mind before I came to know Ahmadiyyat. . One day in February 1980 in Birmingham Central Library noticed a book called TADHKIRAH, described as 'English translation of the dreams, visions and verbal revelations vouchsafed to the Promised Messiah, on whom be peace', by Muhammad 3