The Heavenly Decree — Page vii
vii FOREWORD is the first English rendering of A sm a n i Fai s lah (Urdu) written by the Promised Messiah and Mahdi as in 1891. In this book the Promised Messiah as primarily addressed Miy an Nadh i r H usain of Dehli and Maulaw i Muhammad H usain of Batala, who were the two foremost, the bitterest and the most vituperative of all of his opponents. In fact, it was Miy an Nadh i r H usain who first issued the fatwa of kufr (unbelief) or heresy against the Promised Messiah as , which opened the floodgates of the same fatwa given by numerous other Ulema. The grounds on which the fatwa was based were that the Promised Messiah as had claimed that according to the Holy Quran and Authentic Ah a d i th Hadrat Mas ih ibni Maryam as , after he was saved from the Cross, died a natural death, and was not living somewhere in heaven and would return to the world in latter days—as believed by the Muslim and Christian clergy and laity—and that the prophecy of his Second Coming would be fulfilled by a person who would be like Mas ih ibni Maryam as in his nature, but would be born in the Ummah of the Holy Prophet sa. Miy an Nadh i r H usain refused to enter into a debate with the Promised Messiah as on these issues on the lame excuse that as the Promised Messiah as was not a Muslim, there was no point in having a debate with him on this, or for that matter, on any other issue. Consequently, the Promised Messiah as invited, in this