Truth Prevails — Page 23
( 23 ) Lord for the honour conferred on me in this composite title, which seems to imply the lash of a whip for the Christians, that they raise the son of Mary to Godhead, while our Holy Prophet Mohammad is a Prophet of such extraordinary eminence that a man of his Ummat could rise to become a Nabi , and be called Isa even though he is an Ummati. ” ( Zamima Barahin-i-Ahmadiyya , Part V, page 184) Thus we find that the Hadith La Nabia Ba’di (There is no Prophet after me), and other reports in the Hadith, which appear to stand as a bar against the advent of any other Prophet in the future; in the eyes of the Promised Messiah they do not place any insurmountable barrier in the way of an Ummati Nabi being raised among Muslims, because an Ummati Nabi is never a Nabi alone; he is also an Ummati as well. Both names, an Ummati and a Nabi , apply to him, in a collective sense, so to say; and no Hadith exists which would exclude the possibility of an Ummati Nabi , at some future time. Quite to the contrary, in fact Reports exist which light up the possibility and probability, of the advent of an Ummati Nabi among the Muslims. With reference to the Quranic verse ‘But an Apostle of God, and the Seal of Prophets’ and the Hadith ‘There is no Prophet after me’, the Promised Messiah writes: “If it is urged that the Holy Prophet Mohammad being Khataman Nabiyin , how could any Prophet come after him? The answer is of course no Nabi can come, neither an old one or new, in the sense in which you bring down from heaven Hazrat Isa towards the later times, and the way you accept him, at the time of his second advent, when for forty years he would be receiving wahyi of Prophethood, excelling the Holy Prophet Mohammad in the duration of the period during which he would be receiving wahyi as a Prophet, this is the doctrine you believe in. Now this doctrine, the way it is held, involves a sin, a preposterous view, repudated by the verse quoted above, and the Hadith “there is no Prophet after me”. We are strongly opposed to views of this kind. We hold a strong and perfect faith in the verse, namely, “an Apostle of God, and Khataman Nabiyin ”. This verse also bears a prophecy in regard to the future of which our opponents seem to have no awareness. This prophecy is that after the Holy Prophet Mohammad the door of prophecy has been closed right up to the Day of Qiyama. It is not possible, now that any Hindu, or any Jew, or a Christian, or some formal, superficial Muslim, should be able to prove that the word Nabi is applicable to him. All the windows of Prophethood so to say, have been closed except one, the window of Sirat-i-Siddiqi , i. e. the window of the attainment of a perfect merging of one’s own self into the entity of the Holy Prophet. So whosoever comes to God through this window, in a zilli manner, the mantle of the same Nabuwwat is placed on his shoulders, which is the mantle of the Holy Prophet himself. That such a man should become a Prophet, is not a thing