Barahin-e-Ahmadiyya Part V — Page 507
REPLY TO THE DOUBTS RAISED BY RASHID AHMAD GANGOHI وَإِمَّا نُرِيَنَّكَ بَعْضَ الَّذِي نَعِدُهُمْ أَوْ نَتَوَفَّيَنَّكَ ) 507 And then, for this sole purpose, I also read collections of Arabic poetry and reviewed the verses written prior to and after the advent of Islam with great attention, and spent a great deal of time reading them, but I did not find even one instance among them wherein God is the fail of the verb تونی tawaff which is used for a proper noun as the maful bihi—that is, some individual has been made the object by specifying him-and it has any other meaning besides 'causing to die. I then queried many Arab scholars and experts as well, and verbally learned from them, too, that the idiom prevalent in the Arab world to this very day is that when a person says with regard to another person, توفى الله فلانا it is taken to mean categorically and definitively that God caused that person to die. And when an Arab receives a letter from another Arab wherein it is written, for instance توفّى الله زيدًا it is under- stood from this that 'God has caused Zaid to die. After all this research, which has reached the level of true certainty, it is confirmed-and attained the level of an established and incontro- vertible fact that when the word توفی tawaffi] is used in this way with regard to an individual, it means that he has died and nothing else. And since the word تونی tawaffi] has been used in this fashion twice in the Holy Quran with reference to Hadrat 'Īsā, it is therefore established categorically and to the degree of certainty that Hadrat 'Īsā, may peace be upon him, has indeed died, and his rafa is no more than a spiritual exaltation, and that his death did not occur through murder or cruci- fixion, as God Himself has said, but rather he died of his own natural death. It is also established on the basis of Lisānul-Arab and other lexicons that the true meaning of the word تونی tawaffi is to cause someone to 1. And if We make you witness a part of what We promised them or cause you to die (Sūrah Yūnus, 10:47). [Publisher]