Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth — Page xvi
PREFACE. T ALL BEGAN in Zurich in 1987 with a suggestion by the late Masud Jhelumi, the then Missionary in charge of the Ahmadiyya Mission Switzerland, to Professor Dr. Karl Henking, Professor of Ethnology, University of. Zurich. He requested the Professor to invite the Head of the. Worldwide Ahmadiyya Muslim Community to deliver a lecture on Islam - a topic on which no religious scholar had ever addressed the University. . The first response by the Professor was rather negative. In his opinion the students of the University were least interested in religion. In fact most took pride in being atheists with scant respect for any religion. After a few days however, the Professor himself suggested to Masud that if the title were changed to Rationality as the main theme, while Revelation could also be added by way of comparison, to show how the two play a role severally in leading to Knowledge and Eternal Truth, perhaps such a topic could attract students. He was proved right by subsequent events. . On Thursday, the 14 June 1987 at 8. 15 p. m. , the proposed lecture was delivered under the title Rationality,. Revelation, Knowledge, Eternal Truth. The students, evidently intrigued by the title, thronged Oule (the great auditorium) which became filled to capacity so that additional arrangements had to be made in another hall with provisions for relaying the proceedings through television screens and loudspeakers. . Incidentally, this was the same auditorium where Sir. Winston Churchill had delivered his historic address on 9. September 1946 entitled Let Europe Arise. It was this xvii