The Message or A Cry of Anguish — Page 50
50 HADRAT MIRZA GHULAM AHMADAS sixty years. Some journals and newspapers are full of harsh and hurtful expressions that they far exceed anything contained in this treatise. Now reflect, how many memorials have the Muslims sent to the Government in frustration over such harsh language in the past sixty years? As far as I know, except for this memorial and the one from Rewari-also the work of this Anjuman-the conscience of the Muslims never issued the ruling that memorials needed to be sent in response to such kind of books. Approximately twenty years ago I read in the writings of a Bishop that in the last forty or fifty years the Christian priests had produced sixty million books against opposing religions. By this reckoning, at least ninety mil- lion books would have been published by now in which Muslims and adherents of other religions would have been targeted for criticism. Even if, for the sake of argument, it is said that no more books were published outside of this period, sixty million is no small number, and it is futile to even argue the number of harsh expressions that would have been used in these books. For how 'holy-tongued' and 'civil' these priests have prove to be in their religious writings is no secret to anyone. Such being the case, if the sole means for preventing the danger of public discord was the one now being proposed by the Anjuman-e-Himāyat-e-Islām Lahore, namely sending a memorial to the Government to ban the Christian literature, then at least ten million memorials should have been sent to date by the Muslims. There are only two major religions in British India: Hindus and Muslims, though the Christian priests are naturally less concerned with the Hindus. Even if it is assumed that half of the sixty million books were writ- ten against Hindus, it still stands established that thirty million