The Devotion of Life — Page 268
268 try to generate thousands, yet alone hundreds, of such people. If the idea of their rarity was demystified, which cannot be achieved unless we have thousands of their successors among us, then the Community would never think on the lines that so and so has passed away, what will happen now?” “Consider that in the Holy Qur’an Allah the Exalted declares, “Vie, then, with each other in good works” ( 2:149). If in accordance with this Commandment of the Holy Qur’an we had the desire to vie with each other, if each one of us had kept the spirit of this longing alive, then today each one of us would have been among the best experts in hadith , among the best in Commentary of the Holy Qur’an, among the best religious scholars and no one would have entertained the thought ‘what will happen to the Community now?’ It is not a matter of peril for us that Hadrat Khalifatul Masih I ra , who was a great scholar, died; Hadrat Maulvi Abdul Kareem Sahib ra , who was a great scholar, died; Hadrat Maulvi Burhan Uddin Sahib ra , who was a great scholar, died; Hafiz Roshan Ali Sahib ra , who was a great scholar, died; Hadrat Qazi Ameer Hussein Sahib ra , who was a great scholar, died, or Hadrat Mir Muhammad Ishaq Sahib ra , who was a great scholar died. Rather, for us the perilous matter is that if the Community dies in a communal sense we do not find one scholar to replace another scholar in our Community!” (Report: Majlis-e-Mushawarat 1944)