The Holy Qur’an states: ‘Allah has promised to those among you who
believe and do good works that He will, surely, make them Successors in the
earth, as He made Successors from among those who were before them; and that He
will, surely establish for them their religion which He has chosen for them;
and exchange security and peace after their fear; They will worship Me, and
they will not associate anything with Me. Then whoso disbelieves after that,
they will be the rebellious’---Chapter 24;
Verse 56.
Reflecting
on this Qur’anic promise, the Promised Massih Hazrat
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (as) of Qadian states:
“If
a person reflects upon these verses, he will realize that God Almighty has
clearly promised the Muslims a permanent
Khilafat. If
this Khilafat were not permanent there would have been no sense in describing
it as resembling the Khilafat of the Mosaic dispensation…
He
who limits it to thirty years, foolishly overlooks the true purpose of Khilafat,
and does not realize that God Almighty did not design that the blessings of
Khilafat be limited to thirty years after the death of the Holy Prophet (sa)
and that thereafter, the world may go to ruin…
There
are many other verses in the Holy Qur’an, which give glad tidings of a
permanent Khilafat among the Muslims, and there are also several Ahadith to the
same effect…” [Shahadathul Qur’an, Ruhani
Khazain, Vol. 6, pp.339-352]
‘Had the world opened its eyes it would have seen that I appeared at the
beginning of a century. Nearly one fourth of the fourteenth century has elapsed…’
(p.7). He truly believed that for the development of high
qualities among believers and the achievement of salvation for everyone, the
Beneficent Lord has made ‘the
arrangement in every century so that His creatures should not fail in any age
to attain the stage of absolute certainty.’
According
to Hazrat Ahmad (as), “[t]he principal quality of Islam is that its
blessings always accompany it. It does not speak only of the past but offers
present blessings as well. The world is always in need of blessings and
heavenly signs. It is not as if it needed them in the past and does not need
them now...
A weak and helpless human being who is born like a blind is in need of
knowing something of the heavenly kingdom and needs to see some sign of the
existence and power of God in Whom he believes. The signs of a past age cannot
suffice for a subsequent age, for hearing is not the same as seeing and, by the
passage of time, past events become like stories. Every new century, in a
manner of speaking, starts a new world. Therefore, the God of Islam, Who is the
True God, manifests new signs for the new world.
At
the beginning of each century, especially at the beginning of a century which
has strayed far away from faith and integrity and is enveloped in many
darknesses, He raises a substitute Prophet in the mirror of whose nature is
exhibited the form of a Prophet. Such a one demonstrates to the world the
excellences of the Prophet whose follower he is and convicts all opponents
through the truth and the display of reality and the frustration of falsehood”.
(A’ina-e-Kamalat-e-Islam, Ruhani Khazain, Vol.5,
pp.245-247)
Hazrat Ahmad (as) thus had a broad understanding of religious history and a profound sense of spiritual phenomena. He did not reduce the concept of Islamic Khilafat solely to the category of leaders being elected by the assembly of people. For the Promised Massih (as), the Islamic Khilafat consisted of not only the four righteous Khulafa who were elected by people to preside over the Muslim community at a time when no divinely ordained Mujaddid was around. For him, Islamic Khilafat also included the divinely ordained Mujaddidin who were raised at the turn of every century of Islam. Hence, the raising of a Mujaddid at the turn of a new era is a Divine promise that will continue to be of relevance to the believers even beyond our times till the Day of Judgement appears by the will of God [Allah knows Best].