Mahzarnama (The Memorandum) — Page iii
iii ا ِ ِﺴْﻢ ﺑ ِﷲ ِْﻴﻢ ﱠﺣ اﻟﺮ ِ ﱠﺣْﻤ ٰﻦ اﻟﺮ ِ In the Name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful INTRODUCTION ahzarnama — the Memorandum—is an important historical document which was presented by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at in 1974, to the Special Committee of the National Assembly of Pakistan, comprising the entire house. The purpose of this document was to establish that the members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at are Muslims and to explain its basic tenets, as well as refute the baseless allegations levelled against it. It was declared at the outset that, according to Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at, no Assembly or court in this world had any right to determine, or specify, the religion of any individual or a community; because this can be done only by God who knows the innermost thoughts of our hearts. Similarly, an impassioned warning was also put on record to the effect that this Assembly might become instrumental in creating dissention among the ranks of the followers of the Holy Prophet sa Muhammad sa by declaring Ahmadis to be non-Muslim, because this act would set such a wrong and horrible precedent which might engulf other sects in the future. The backdrop of this sad episode was a preconceived scheme (for the details of which there is no room here) of the then government. Due to the dictates of political expediency, it declared Ahmadis to be outside the pail of Islam, in order to win support of the extremist Muslim clerics. Since a large number of these hardline clerics had already penetrated the ranks of the official Government Opposition, which, also fully supported the M