Fazl-e-Umar — Page 132
Fazle Umar 132 was my life which I could offer and my hands which I could work to the bone, but I was helpless to produce the thing I did not possess. The dire need of the Community was for a newspaper to rouse it, to charge it with electricity, to shake it into life, to make it pitch its aims high. But no such paper existed, and to wish for one was like wishing for the moon: neither one was possible nor the other. However, my anguish of mind bore fruit and a gleam of hope showed itself. ” 88 Thus with financial backing from Hadhrat Amma Jan [ra_ha] , his own wife and Nawab Muhammad Ali Khan, Hadhrat Mian sahib launched his weekly which, as a journal, was an unqualified success from the moment of its birth. The policy and the aim of the Al Fazl was the spirit of the vow Hadhrat Mian sahib had taken on the death of the Promised Messiah [as]. That was a stupendous vow and he took it when he was only an inexperienced youth. He took it too when he was under the stress of an unusual emotion. But all through his subsequent life he had shown that he took that leap knowing full well what lay at the end of it, and never turned back or let his purpose be weakened by difficulties. The work which the Al Fazl assumed was in its own words, “to clarify the posi- tion of the Promised Messiah [as] ; to impress upon the Community that he alone was its master and guide, the importance of whose mission could not be minimised without depriving Ahmadiyyat and Islam of all that was alive in it”. 89 The first issue was published on 19 June 1913. Subsequently it became a daily and has now been for almost a century the official organ of the Movement. T H E P A IG HA M - I - S U L H The leadership of the dissentients was concentrated in Lahore. As the health of Hadhrat Khalifatul Masih [ra] continued at best indifferent, and then began to suffer a decline, the dissentient group began active preparations to meet the inevitable crisis.