The Message or A Cry of Anguish — Page 53
THE MESSAGE OR A CRY OF ANGUISH 53 land like a surging river in terms of their magnitude and influence. As far as the magnitude i. e. , the quantity of publication is con- cerned, at places one hundred thousand copies of two-page pam- phlets are published weekly, and at some other places fifty thou- sand [are published]. You have just read that tens of millions of books against Islam have so far been published by the Christians. Now tell me how many Islamic books are there in response to those of the Christians. There are tens of millions of Hindus in this country who do not even know what Muslims have produced in refutation of the books and journals of the Christians. But there would hardly be any Hindu who has not seen these filthy books of the Christians written against Islam. I can say it with confidence that anyone among the Hindus who can understand Urdu a lit- tle or knows English would have certainly heard much about the foul books of the Christians. In fact, it is through the malicious writings of the Christians that a great deal of corrupt material has entered into the bloodstream of the Hindus which has actually provoked them to rail against Islam. They took their false accu- sations to be true and thus the Aryas too became entrenched in their enmity [against Islam]. Now I ask, where are the Islamic books published in such abundance? Can anyone tell what the Muslims have done to date? Nothing at all! If it ever crossed the mind of some secluded mullah to at all write a rebuttal to a certain book, with great dif- ficulty he would collect two or three hundred rupees and indif- ferently write a small piece of work publishing only six to seven hundred copies thereof, while the people remained quite unaware of its publication. After such brief and worthless undertaking can we satisfy ourselves thinking that we have done all we could and