Invitation to Ahmadiyyat — Page 36
36 Mahdi are separate individuals because it contradicts the words, ‘There is no Mahdi except I s a. ’ A believer ought to carefully look at the saying of his Master and remove any apparent discrepancies through deliberation. The Holy Prophet s as says that the Mahdi would appear before the Messiah and then the Messiah would join the Mahdi and his followers in prayer. However, on the other hand, he also says that the Messiah himself will be the Mahdi. Are we now to reject these seemingly contradictory sayings or is it our duty to ponder them and see if there is a way to reconcile them? Even with the least bit of deliberation, one can realize that the only way to reconcile the two statements is to consider the words ‘There is no Mahdi except ‘Isa’ as clarification for the other state - ment which seems to indicate that the Messiah and Mahdi are two separate individuals. ‘There is no Mahdi except ‘Isa’ makes it clear that the aforementioned statement is metaphorical. It only means that an individual from the Holy Prophet’s ummah would be appointed for the reformation of the world but he would ini - tially not be given the status of Prophet; later on, however, the prophecy about the advent of the Messiah would also be fulfilled in his person and he would claim to be ‘ I s a. The Hadith, there - fore, speaks of the manifestation of the two spiritual stations. He would initially come with the claim of general reformation and only later claim Messiah-hood. Such metaphors are common in prophecies, without them they can be impossible to understand. If these Traditions are not interpreted in this way, then we are left with one of two alternatives, both being extremely perilous. The first is to say that the Hadith ‘There is no Mahdi except ‘Isa’ is not true. The second is to posit that the Hadith does not mean that the Messiah and the Mahdi are the same person, rather it