First Grain of Sand — Page 9
About the Author Maulawi Zahoor Hussain (1899–1982) was a pioneering mission- ary, educator, and devoted servant of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. Born in Dharamkot Randhawa in India's Gurdaspur district, he was orphaned at a young age and moved to Qadian in 1910 to pursue religious education. There, under the direct mentorship of Hazrat Khalifatul-Masih Ira and later Hazrat Khalifatul-Masih IIra, he became part of the first generation of students at the newly established Madrasah Ahmadiyya—a sem- inary founded to produce missionaries of deep spiritual and high intellectual calibre. In 1923, he was first appointed as a missionary to Jammu and Kashmir. He holds the historic distinction of being the first Ahmadi missionary of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community to enter the Soviet Union in 1924, during a time of deep religious suppression. His groundbreaking journey, which began with high hopes, took a harrowing turn as he was arrested by Soviet author- ities, falsely accused of espionage, and imprisoned for two gruel- ling years across multiple facilities—including in Artyk, Ashgabat, Tashkent, and Moscow. Despite suffering torture, isolation, and constant surveillance, Maulawi Zahoor Hussain fearlessly con- tinued to preach Islam in prison. Remarkably, some forty indi- viduals embraced the Ahmadiyya Jamaʻat during his captivity. His accounts of secretly delivering sermons, debating theology with