Truth Prevails — Page 7
( 7 ) Thus it become absolutely clear, in reason, that in the time of the Promised Messiah, and that of the first Khalifa, Maulvi Mohammad Ali always presented the Promised Messiah as a Prophet. But it is highly regretted that after the election of Hazrat Mirza Mahmud Ahmad as Khalifatul Masih II, Maulvi Mohammad Ali decided to base his opposition to him on a question he thought most useful in commenting a new stand, miscalculated as capable of being excited a very great deal, by an appeal to mass sentiments and emotions. So for the future he took his stand on a belief that the Promised Messiah was not a Nabi , was not a Prophet only a Mojaddid and a Mohaddath. He even went to the length of saying: “As far as I can see, the view that the Promised Messiah was a Prophet is tantamount to pulling up and destroying Islam by the roots. In fact I believe that this view exposes the position of the Promised Messiah to a dangerous attack. If you do not close the door to Prophethood, in my opinion, it is an extremely dangerous path and you make a very dangerous and a fatal error. ” ( Paigham-i- Sulha , Vol. 2 No. 119, April 16, 1915) In this passage, if Maulvi Mohammad Ali means to discredit those who uphold that the Promised Messiah was an independent Nabi , he should be very well aware that there is no difference between us and him, since everybody knows we take him as a zilli Nabi i. e. a Nabi in reflecting the glorious rank and elevation of the Holy Prophet in himself, nothing beyond this. In Chashma-i-Ma’rifat , page 324, the Promised Messiah has classified this position as that of a Nabi , a Prophet. On page 325 of this work, we read: “The word ‘ Nabuwwat ’ or ‘ Risalat ’, Allah has used this expression repeatedly in regard to me, in fact hundreds of times. But this expression means communion with Allah embracing revealed knowledge in regard to plentiful things still wrapped in mystery, or those hidden behind the veil of the future nothing more than this. In converse with other people, a man is free to coin a terminology. The expression under discussion is a term used by the Lord God, in the course of a plentiful converse with which He has been pleased to honour me a converse, a communion, for which the name He uses is ‘ Nabuwwat. ’” Again, Maulvi Mohammad Ali writes: “The kind of Nabuwwat possible in this Ummat , is a Nabuwwat that was most surely conferred on Hazrat Ali” ( Al-Nabuwwat-fil-Islam , page 115) This belief was adopted by Maulvi Mohammad Ali after he had moved from Qadian to Lahore. When he was in Qadian, and when he was editor of the Review of Religions, in his argument with Khawaja Ghulamussqalain, he