First Grain of Sand — Page 100
84 FIRST GRAIN OF SAND there are a great number of Muslims and scholars, and other scholars look at our Community with a great deal of hatred. Due to this hatred, I was instructed to keep the identity of our new converts a secret so that these scholars could not harm them. A few days prior to this interrogation, news had finally reached the Turkish and Russian newspapers in Tashkent about the mar- tyrdom of Maulana Naimatullah Khan, a sincere Ahmadiyya Muslim missionary who had been stoned to death in Kabul, Afghanistan. I had already read that news myself in my cell in the Tashkent prison. The State Prosecutor had also once shown the newspaper clipping of this story to me, saying that the Soviet gov- ernment would not do the same to me as the Afghan government had done to him. I brought that incident up at this moment, saying they already knew that one of my Community's capable missionar- ies had recently been stoned to death in Kabul. I explained that this happened because the Muslim clergy in Kabul had given the wrong and cruel ruling to Afghanistan's Emir, who stoned Maulana Naimatullah Khan without thinking or realizing that killing someone due to differences of religious belief is cruelty. I explained that since Bukhara was a centre for Muslim clergy education, many clerics resided in the area. To avoid persecution by these clerics, my Imam instructed us to keep a low profile and maintain the Community's growth in secrecy. That seemed to sat- isfy the curiosity of the prosecutor, who dropped this question at that point. Sometimes the officers would keep me in solitary confine- ment, where I was locked in a completely dark room alone. After keeping me in there for some time, they would take me out and