Flowers for the Women Wearing Veils - Volume I — Page 481
! ! 481 part, the y have organized themselves within India. Lik ewise, the Lajna can never be successful until it appoints permanent workers in its office. It is absolutely wrong to believe that they can be successful in this task without employing women as permanent staff. Perhaps women c ould have become organized five years earlier had the National office permanently appointed clerks to regularly correspond with women who live outside [of Qadian]. Therefore, I urge the National Lajna Ima’illah to develop a scheme for their work by January 1945 and to designate such female clerks whose responsibility it would be to correspond with women in other places on a daily basis. Where the addresses [of the women] are unknown to them , they should obtain the addresses of the male secretaries [of the local Jama'ats] through Sadr Anjuman Ahmadiyya and request information on the local women. Subsequently, they should correspond with them to establish a Lajna. In this way, when Lajna Ima’illah is established in every place, the y can make their needs known to the National Lajna and attention can be given to their reformation and training. If in a certain place there is no woman with knowledge of the Holy Qur’ān , the women can write to the National Lajna requesting the appointment of an instructor to teach them the Holy Qur’ān. If at another place there is no woman who is learned in Urdu, women can write to the Nationa l Lajna so that arrangements can be made for someone to teach them Urdu , enabling them to read the Ahmadiyya Jama'at ’s periodicals and the Promised Messiah ’s as books. Hence, the Lajna of those areas will correspond with the National Lajna to express their needs. It will be the National Lajna ’s responsibility to endeavor to meet these needs. Thus, our work cannot progress until the issue s concerning women ’s moral training are re solved. A woman is an extremely valuable diamond, but if she does not have proper moral training, her worth is not even equal to that of cheap glass because a piece of glass is still of som e use, but a woman who lacks good education and moral training and who is unable to serve her faith is worthless. A nation can never improve until its individuals are reformed, for a nation is a collection of individuals. Thus , the National Lajna Ima’illah must accomplish a great task , which is this : to en sure that the women of the Jama'at are capable of reading religious matters , and that they are able to study and