A Conclusive Argument in Favour of Islam — Page 8
Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad 10 Having settled all of these issues, Dr Clark and our brother Maulvi Abdul Karim signed the document, which outlined the conditions of the debate in detail. It was decided that, by 15 May 1893, both parties would publish the conditions of this debate. After this, my friends returned to Qadian. Since Dr Clark himself has named this debate ‘The Holy War’, I wrote to him on 25 April 1893 that I too accept the conditions of the debate, which were accepted by my friends, but it should first be determined how this ‘Holy War’ would affect the two parties. How would it be clearly understood that a certain party had actually been defeated? As years of experience have proven that no matter how clearly one party prevails over the other in terms of rational and scriptural arguments , the latter does not concede its defeat. Rather, they try their utmost to prove their victory by adding explanatory notes to their written documents when the debates are published. Now if this debate is limited to scriptural disputes alone, then an intelligent person can foretell that this debate would not be any different from the previous ones held between the Christian priests and the scholars of Islam. On closer examination the present debate seems to contain nothing new. The Christian clergy will have the same usual objections: