Truth About the Split — Page 156
156 accorded the permission. Upon this, the elder brother of the applicant also wrote to Hadrat Khalifatul Masih ra soliciting a similar permission. In reply, Hadrat Khalifatul Masih ra directed that he should first make himself like his younger brother, and then a similar permission would be granted to him. The younger brother did not care even to say his daily prayers. If the permission sought were likely to induce him to be regular in his prayers, there would be no harm done. It is evident from the reply and even from the fact that the elder brother thought it necessary to write such a letter, that the permission granted by Hadrat Khalifatul Masih ra was not of the nature of a fatwa, but a concession allowed to meet the special circumstances of a particular individual. Similarly, it was in view of the weakness of Khwaja Sahib and under the apprehension that withholding of permission might prove too severe a trial for Khwaja Sahib’s faith, that Khalifatul Masih I ra , accorded to Khwaja Sahib permission to pray behind non- Ahmadis. We would never be justified in treating the permission as a general fatwa. It was only a particular direction applied to a particular individual. As for the statement that I criticised the fatwa, it is absolutely without any kind of evidence to support it. For, when there was no fatwa, it is idle to speak of anybody