With Love to the Muslims of the World — Page 39
39 ‘Verily, the most honourable among you, in the sight of Allah, is he who is most righteous among you’ (49 : 14) Only those are most honoured in the sight of God who are the most God-fearing. As a logical consequence of the same principle, although Ahmad i s hold in high esteem all the Imams belonging to the Shia sect, this is because of their piety and religious knowledge and not by virtue of their birth and inheritance. Last but not least, the Ahmad i s do not believe in an absent Imam who is believed to be alive and in hiding for the last hundreds of years. The Ahmad i s believe that most probably that Imam came to a mysterious end, but because of the exigencies of the time it was not considered expedient by the Shia leader- ship to make it known to the public. For a while, he might have gone into hiding, but like all human beings he was called back by the Almighty. Therefore, waiting for the same Imam to reappear is like waiting for something which can never happen. To help Shia brethren understand the grievousness of this error, Ahmad i s politely point out that such tales about prophets or saints and other holy personages having disappeared only to return later are common everywhere in the world, in many countries and many religions. Many are believed to have either ascended to heaven, but none has ever reappeared personally anywhere in the world so far. So the Ahmad i s try gently to persuade them to recon-