An Elementary Study of Islam — Page 4
4 address you on the fundamental teachings of Islam. Before I came, I was advised that I should speak on the basics of Islam so that the students who are not well versed in this subject and who have only an elementary knowledge should be able to understand. That surprised me indeed. It surprised me in the first place because I was expecting university students to have fared better. Secondly, I was surprised because Spain has a long history of contact with Islam. Yet for it to have lost that contact so completely as to have erased even the faintest impression, is astonishing indeed! Here I am today to introduce to you the basic teachings of Islam. When I visited Spain in 1982 to inaugurate a mosque built by the Ahmadiyya Community, which incidentally was the first mosque to be built here after a break of five hundred years, many eyebrows were raised. During my press conference I was repeatedly confronted with the same questions as to why we should come to Spain. What was the purpose? Was there any sinister motive attached to this exercise? Haven’t we had enough of Islam? Should we take it to be a new form of the invasion of Spain? My reply to all such questions was, ‘Yes, I have come to invade Spain, but not with the intention of winning territories by the sword, but to win hearts with a message of love and persuasion. ’ That reply still holds good. We as a community in Islam are not built on the same pattern as the commonly perceived image of Islam on the reflecting mirror of the so-called fundamentalists. Today therefore, I will endeavour to present Islam to you not with reference to the Muslim behaviour in different countries, but with reference only to the basic teachings of Islam found in the divine book, the Holy Quran, and the conduct and traditions of the Holy Founder sa of Islam.