An Encounter with the Mullahs in Triolet
On Thursday 20 February 2014, I was in the North of Mauritius in one of its biggest
villages called Triolet. On the way I met two Mullahs coming from Bangladesh.
They presented themselves to me after greeting Salaam, and with very good and
sweet words they invited me in the mosque at about 10:00a.m. I met many other
Muslims coming from Bangalore and India. They asked me my name and before I
have finished giving my full name, when I reached: Munir Ahmad, one of the
Mullahs told me that his Burzuq’s
name is Munir Ahmed, but then when I gave completed my full name: Munir Ahmad Azim, all of them looked at
me with big surprised eyes and they suddenly turned aggressive.
Gone were the good and
sweet words! Their tone changed and they immediately asked me: “You
have proclaimed that you are the Mohyuddin, Khalifatullah etc.”
Without any hesitation and fear to creatures, although they
were in great numbers in the mosques, I
replied them in the affirmative.
They then asked me a
series of questions pertaining to the titles I have received from Allah,
wanting to know who told me that I was the Khalifatullah, Mohyuddin etc. I told
them that it is my Creator, my Rab, in whose hands my life, health, food,
dignity and honour are found. They did not believe me and called me liar
and thus started a debate on the finality of prophethood in which they believe.
Holy Qur’an and the Sunnah as Final Guidance
Among other questions
concerning the Mahdi and Messiah to come, they put to me put a question to me
regarding a Hadith, “I have left
for you the Book of Allah and the Sunnah, if you hold fast to it you will never
go astray.”
Some people claim that
the Hadith concerning the Mahdi are contradictory and the Hadith concerning
Nabi Isa (Jesus, upon him be peace) are not certain. According to them, in the
absence of a clear verse of the Holy Quran, saying that there is someone who is
going to come and in the light of this Hadith, is it not the conclusion that
the way to bring back the glory of Islam is just to follow the Holy Quran and
follow the Sunnah of Hazrat Muhammad (saw)?
When they finished the
question, and before I replied to them, they told me: “You are a
Qadiani, you are the follower of Mirza (that is, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
(as)). You are liar, imposter like Mirza.”
I told them: “Yes
I am an Ahmadi who believe sincerely in my master Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
(as). By the grace of Allah, I will answer you all your questions and you will
see who is a liar, imposter etc., between Hazrat Mirza Sahib, me and you people
who have trampled the teachings of the Holy Quran and sayings of the Holy
Prophet (saw) into dust.”
Sects and Schisms in Religions
There are other people,
who label themselves Muslims, yet they ask such preposterous questions, and I wish to refute
them too in this sermon, especially concerning their questions and ridiculing
about the splits in Jamaat Ahmadiyya and how a Khalifatullah has come from
within “them” (the Jamaat Ahmadiyya). All
their answers are found in the Quran itself.
My answer to them: As
far as the last part of the question goes, there
is no denying that the only way to bring the people of Islam together, that is,
Muslims, and to put them on the right path is to make them put into practice
the Holy Quran and the Sunnah. There is absolutely no denying this fact.
But the big question that follows is who is going to bring it about and how?
Dissensions in Early Islam
While the Holy Quran
remained intact until now, while in the very presence of the Holy Quran people
started to differ with each other and fell into sects and schisms. Why in the
first place this process began and is it a process without a direction and
without a trend or do you have a positive plan to observe in this process?
When the second part of
the question comes, then you can positively answer this question without
denying again, that we find a direction and a trend and that direction and
trend are downwards. Right from the start, that is from Hazrat Muhammad’s (saw)
time, despite the fact that Sunnah was the clearest at that time and the Holy
Quran was the strongest in influence, after him people began to differ and kept
on differing with each other until time came when Khilafat was no longer there
and from then on it was total rot. New sects, new schisms came into being and
the Holy Quran started to be looked upon as a book speaking on divergent views
and paradoxically so at the same time, according to some, the Holy Quran has
this view and at the same time by others, it had that view and both those views
by different groups were in direct clash with each other.
Decadence and Differences Increase with Time
So all this started and
went on and on until you reach this stage. So far as the necessity of getting
together upon the Holy Quran and the Sunnah is concerned, that is obvious. But
how to go about it; this is the big question. Unless someone solves this question,
this dilemma will not be solved.
Time is against us, that is obvious. The more you
travel away from Hazrat Muhammad (saw), the more divided you are and the more
corrupt are your religious scholars. They become less God-fearing and instead of bringing
us together, they create disorder, they create hatred of one against each
other. This is also a known fact of history. So if there is, let’s forget for
the time being any Mahdi and any Messiah (suppose they won’t come) how
will the Ummah survive then? As the questioner himself believes that
the only way for survival is to stick to the Holy Quran and the tradition and
the practice of the Holy prophet (saw).
So why are they not sticking to both the Quran and
Sunnah and why did they start leaving and separating if they had stuck? They
could not have become divided had they really stuck to the Quran and Sunnah. So the process is of that of deterioration and
constant decadence which have never gone back once it started. Every other
generation we find is a less pious generation, less God-fearing, every other
generation we find is less confident of an Islamic way of life. There are of
course sporadic movements here and there spread all over the history. But those
sporadic movements have failed to set a trend up in the opposite direction,
that is the most important thing. So those who believe that without anybody
having even come, this process will be reversed, they are living in a paradise
which has no reality because we have never seen nations do this. Let’s go back
to religious history as preserved by the Holy Quran. And let’s find our answer
there. That is indeed a very positive and sure history.
The Qur’an on the history of religions
According to the Holy
Quran whenever a truth was revealed, after some opposition and some very
hostile opposition for that matter, ultimately it got established and then
people began to deviate from the right path and go into a decadent society.
What happened then
according to the history of the Holy Quran, either a prophet was sent from
Allah to save those people or if the religion was abolished altogether a new
prophet came with a new religion. We never read anywhere in the history of
religion that after a religion decayed and people became corrupt and the
religious scholars differed with each other on fundamentals then suddenly out
of the blue the religious scholars of a later time repented all this behaviour,
they got together, shook hands with each other, embraced each other and
said ‘let us forget about our
differences and be one’.
How could they forget
their differences when they thought they were based on the Holy Quran or the
Holy Book or whatever that book was and persisted they were in the right unless
they dialogued, unless they tried to convince each other, tried to convey their
point of view to others. And in a religious society that has become so
divergent, this is not permitted. People become so intolerant that they are not
ready to listen to other’s views. It is not only the scholars, the whole
society became corrupt. And according to the history preserved in the Holy
Quran it has never happened before, never once that a people following a
religion became corrupt, they were put together again and rectified again by
their Pirs or Fakirs or Ulemas or Sufis
and all these people.
Religious corruption in society starts with the Ulema
Why not? Because
according to the Holy Quran it is the religious leadership which became
corrupted first and the masses follow suit later on. Once the top becomes
corrupt mentally and are less God-fearing, then the masses follow automatically
behind them and it is always the leadership which destroys people, it is true
as much of religious leadership as of political leadership as of other
leadership. The fundamental most important thing is correct, honest, true
leadership.
If religious leadership
had been intact, there is no reason why they started to differ with each other.
They differed may be primarily by some mistake but definitely the process
ultimately degrades into a process of conscious difference with a crooked, bent
mind within. That resulted in those differences (like we are witnessing
nowadays also).
When there is no Mahdi to look after Islam
So considering that
there is no Mahdi – I am talking on that preposition, that there is no Mahdi to
come and no Messiah to come and none is required and ‘Nabuwwat’(prophethood)
of every sort is finished forever – what will become of the Muslims at whole?
That is now the responsibility of those who hold this for you to prove and to
do satisfactorily. If an individual becomes a good Muslim, let him, but who is
going to look after the ascendency of Islam over the rest of the religions of
the world? Those Ulemas? Who is going to revive the Muslims’ integrity as such?
These Ulemas, had they been capable of doing it, they
would not have differed in the first instance and surely the century which took people back to the
life of Hazrat Muhammad (saw) by the effort of the Ulemas – to supposedly make
the people commit themselves to Islam, through the application of the Quran and
Sunnah – yet they went on fighting with each other, they went on blaming each
other for heresy and not only heresy but they called each other traitors of
Islam, not only out of the pale of Islam but worse than those who were outside
the pale of Islam, treacherous people according to them. And according to some
other, they were great religious scholars of Islam, great servants of Islam.
So this being their
attitude even today, how can you say that Islam would revive once again? What
would be the means and measures? There should be some reasonable hope
somewhere, and the religious history (which constitutes the defiled thoughts of
those scholar and Ulemas throughout history) denies this, rejects these
possibilities altogether. What is the answer according to the Holy Quran and
Sunnah?
I stop here for
now. Insha-Allah, I shall continue on the same subject next Friday.
May Allah give us Muslims around the world the Tawfiq to
ponder over the state of Islam nowadays and to follow the guidance of Allah as
stipulated in Quran and Sunnah, and which gives hope for the maintenance of
Islam and its conservation till the Day of Judgement, Insha-Allah,
Ameen.
- Extracts from the Friday Sermon of March 28, 2014 delivered by the Khalifatullah Hadhrat Munir Ahmad Azim Sahib (atba) of Mauritius