Future: Riches and people
In
his testamentary will, known among the Ahmadis simply as the Al
Wassiyat, the Promised Massih (as) indicated in profoundly subtle language,
the future trajectories, his Jamaat, and especially the administrative mandarins
within it, shall pass through in the ebb and flow of time when he wrote about
the larger challenge awaiting it in the time of riches:
“Where will the money come from? And how will such a community be born-
a community of people willing to perform heroic feats for their faith? These
are not the questions that worry me. I am more concerned that people coming
after me may stumble when entrusted with such large amounts of wealth and that
they may take to the love of this world”.
-Hadhrat
Ahmad (as) [ Al Wassiyat, p.28, Qadian:
Nazarat Nashro Ishaat, (2003) ]
The Conditional Continuity
In 1939, the establishment of the Jamaat e-Ahmadiyya completed its 50th
anniversary, since the first Bai’at was initiated by the Promised Massih (as)
in March 1889. Speaking at the Annual Jalsa at Qadian that year, Hadhrat
Khalifa Sani (ra) famously observed:
“…O
Community of believers, and O workers of righteousness, I say to you that
Khilafat is a great bounty of God Almighty. Value it as such. So long as the
majority of you continue established in faith and righteous conduct, God will
continue to bestow this bounty upon you. But should a majority of you be deprived of faith and righteous conduct,
then, it will be for the Divine will to determine whether to continue this
bounty or to withdraw it. Thus, there is no question of the Khalifa going
wrong. You will be deprived of the
Khilafat when you yourselves become corrupt.”
[1939 Dec 28-29-Proceedings of the
Annual Conference at Qadian, quoted in “Fazl-e
Umar”: The
Life of Hadhrat Mirza Bashiruddin Mahmud Ahmad Khalifatul Masih II
, p. 234, by Mujeebur Rahman, London: Majlis Khuddamul Ahmadiyya, UK (2012).
The ‘Deconstruction’ of Khilafat-e-Ahmadiyya
The
noted French philosopher Professor
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) famously argued that every philosophical, religious
and social institution, no matter how framed and secure it seems, is never
fully complete and self-sufficient by itself. Instead the system depends on non-systematisable
elements that produce and sustain the system's very possibility. If we are to
understand the true nature of power and authority being exercised by the institutional
elites through privileged interpreations, the demystification and deconstruction
of the ideas, values and meanings that are embedded in the system is inevitable
and unavoidable.
In
the Islamic religious order, the idea of Divine revelations and the possibility
of Divine Reformers appearing in every century is central to any discussion on
the continuing vitality of Islam as an ethical way of living and being for
individual believers. Against this backdrop, the description of the Khilafat-e-Ahmadiyya as a complete way
of institutional life for all times to come hangs on a precarious hope. The
idea that the man-elected Khalifa will remain immune from injustice and that
the Ahmadis may not stumble in course of time and that they will protect
themselves against the onslaught of moral corruption had been belied by the
experience of history and the incidents of our own times.