The Promised Messiah and Mahdi — Page 165
THE PROMISED MESSIAH AND MAHDI. OBJECTION NO. 7:. Members of the Ahmadiyya Community do not join the prayer services (Salaat or Namaz) of the non-Ahmadi, nor do they. participate in the funeral prayers for a non-Ahmadi. For this reason they are not Muslims. . ANSWER:. This question has been adequately answered by Imam B. A. . Rafiq, former missionary to England and Imam of London Mosque. . We quote him below: "In approaching this question it is necessary to keep in mind its history. It is well known and cannot be denied that it was the nonAhmadis and their divines who debarred the Ahmadis from joining their Prayer services and even forbade their entry into their mosques. . If an Ahmadi was found saying his prayers in a mosque of the nonAhmadis, he was beaten up and often the floor of the mosque where an Ahmadi might have said his prayers was washed and thus the mosque was purified from the pollution which, according to them, had been inflicted upon the mosque by the entry of an Ahmadi into it. The. Ahmadis were regarded as a pollution. It was in this situation that the. Founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement directed his followers to arrange to hold their prayer services separately and thus avoid all occasion of disorderliness in mosques. It is worthy of note that no non-Ahmadi has ever been stopped from joining the prayer services of. Ahmadis or from saying his prayers separately in an Ahmadi mosque. . It was not till 1900, eleven years after the foundation of the. Movement, that the Ahmadis were directed not to join the prayer services of the non-Ahmadis. Non-Ahmadi divines had throughout this period continued the condemnation of the Ahmadis as non-Muslims and outside the pale of Islam. It will thus be realized that the nonAhmadis first forbade the entry of Ahmadis into their mosques and then charged them with failure to join the prayer services. " "The same was the situation with regard to the funeral services and burial of deceased Ahmadis. Numerous declarations were made by non-Ahmadi divines that non-Ahmadis should not join the funeral prayers of an Ahmadi and should not permit an Ahmadi to 165