The Essence of Islam – Volume III — Page 347
Repeated Challenges 347 same individually. If I am false in my claim, your prayers are bound to be heard. Indeed, you have been praying against me already. But remember, even if you continue to pray thus until your tongues are bruised, and you go on bewailing in your prostrations until your noses are rubbed out, and your tears wipe out your eyelashes, and the weeping reduces your vision, and your brains are so affected that you begin to suffer from epilepsy or melancholia, still your prayers will not be heard; for I have come from God, and anyone who curses me will himself be afflicted with such a curse, though he may not be aware of it. He who enters into a prayer duel with me and supplicates that the one among us who is false may die in the lifetime of the other, will come to the same end which overtook Ghulām Dastgir of Qaşur. . . . . No one can die on earth unless his death is decreed in heaven. My soul is inspired with the same truth with which the soul of Abraham as was inspired. I have a relationship with God like that of Abrahamas. My secret is known to God alone. My opponents ruin themselves in vain. I am not the plant that can be uprooted by their hands. If their predecessors and their successors, and their living and their dead, were all to come together and pray for my ruin, my God would convert their prayers into curses and would fling them back upon them. Do you not see that hundreds of wise people from among you continue to join my Jama'at? There is uproar in heaven and God's angels are pulling pure hearts in our direction. Can man obstruct this Movement that is proceeding in heaven? Try to obstruct it if you think you have the strength. Use all the cunning and deceit that the opponents of the Prophets employed against them in the past, and leave nothing untried. Use your utmost