Life of Ahmad — Page 182
SUSPICIONS OF CO-RELIGIONISTS as 182 defence. This attitude of his Muslim friends naturally set Ahmad as thinking, and he evidently came to the conclusion that the case was much more serious than he had thought it to be. He was living with God and in God—of this he was absolutely certain. His personal experience of Islam was perfectly genuine. Hence there must be something wrong with his co- religionists; and this was actually the case. They had themselves become bankrupt in spiritual matters. They had strayed from the right path. 39 39 That Muslims were in fact negligent of their religious duties is not disputed. Their ideas were generally corrupted. I quote here two particular instances which came to the notice of Ahmad as in those days: A Maulaw i , Muhammad Imam-ud-D i n by name, who was a retired Mun s if, was labouring under a novel misconception. He thought that the Holy Quran just completed the previous scriptures in so far as it made up their deficiency and supplied further details and that therefore it was necessary to study and act upon the previous scriptures, which were indispensable for all. He was a man full of vanity and wanted Ahmad as to go to him so that he could point out to Ahmad as his mistakes. Ahmad as wrote to him two letters, dated April 28th, 1888, and September 30th, 1889. In these letters he explained to Imam-ud-D i n that the previous scriptures were not preserved in their original form and were very much interpolated and corrupted. The Holy Quran, on the other hand, claimed that it contained all the truths ever revealed to any Prophet. The Hadith also was necessary. With regard to the Torah and the Inj i l he summarised them by saying (Al- Baqarah 2:220) i. e. the evil of the two was greater than their good. Sayyid Ma z har Husain of Allahabad seemed to be a pantheist. So Ahmad as answered him on August 16th, 1888, by writing that creation was distinct and separate from the Creator. One could say that the creation was nothing, but it could not be called God. In his letter, dated August 23rd, 1888, he further pointed out that there was a lot of suffering and also disappointment for man in his life, which was incompatible with the Nature of God. So a weak mortal could not be God.