Abdul Ghaffar Janbah Sahib of Kiel, Germany claims to be the "real" Musleh Maoud as per the prophecy of the Promised Massih (as). Janbah Sahib thinks that he is on the right path and that he is the true and only Musleh Maoud promised to Massih Maoud (as) and he is adamant to defile the claim of Musleh Maoud of Hadhrat Musleh Maoud (ra). In order to prove that the claim of Hadhrat Mirza Bashiruddin Mahmood Ahmad (ra) was false, Janbah Sahib argues that Hadhrat Khalifa Sani met with the accursed death of a false claimant (God Forbid). In short, for the sake of making himself true, Janbah Sahib has smeared himself with the blood of the Musleh Maoud (ra).In order to prove his satanic theory, Janbah
Sahib attempts to derive a principle from the writings of the Promised Massih
(as). Janbah Sahib alleges that the Promised Massih (as) held that anyone
who is killed within a period of 23 years after making a claim of being a
divine appointee shall be deemed to be false. Applying this (self-invented) principle in the
case of Hadhrat Khalifa Sani (ra), Janbah Sahib comes to the conclusion that
because Khalifa Sani died 22 years
and 06 months under the Islamic Calendar after making the claim of being
the Musleh
Maoud of the era, he did not complete the requirement of 23 years! Further, since Khalifa Sani met with a severe attack on his jugular vein during
this period, Janbah Sahib argues that the Qur’anic punishment of divine wrath for
a false claimant is fulfilled in his case (God Forbid).
Such simplistic analysis of a profound spiritual issue
could have been dismissed as the fabrication of a deluded mind but for the
proponent of this idea claiming to speak on the basis of divine guidance. Since the Holy Qur’an is with us even today, any one who speaks
to be inspired by Allah, the Most High ought to confirm the message of the Holy
Qur’an and not to go against the grain of divine wisdom contained in the Holy
Book.
In this article, we shall examine the validity of the
assertions made by Janbah Sahib in the light of the writings of the Promised
Massih Hadhrat Ahmad (as) himself and the teachings of the Holy Qur’an,
spiritual precedents and plain common sense. As a preliminary, in examining the
writings of the Promised Massih (as), we must remember that the Promised Massih
(as) was a debater par excellence- he used
to deploy consummate logic in his argumentations of extraordinary dimensions on
any spiritual issue, simply to drive home his essential point. For instance,
while decrying the Christ of Christian imagination as unworthy of being
considered even a decent man, he had absolutely no problem in showering praise
on Jesus, son of Mary as emerging from the Holy Qur’an!
In the instant case, the Promised Massih (as) pointed to an
interesting fact in order to call the attention of the Ulema of the day to the
length of time he has had been claiming to be a recipient of divine revelations
and preaching among them. The Promised Massih (as) pointed to the
length of the Nubuwwat period of
the Holy Prophet Muhammad (sa) which lasted for a period of 23 years and argued
persuasively that this could be a criterion for confirming the truthfulness of
a divine claimant till the Day of Judgement.
For, the Holy Qur’an confirms that it is a well established
principle of divine practice that forging revelations and attributing them to
the Lord Almighty and deceiving people thereby to believe in them as Divine
Message is a crime punishable in this very earth. Verily Allah says in Surah Al-Haqqah: "And
if he had forged (and attributed) any sayings to Us, We would surely
have seized him by the right hand, And then surely We would have severed his
life-artery, And not one of you could have held
(Us) off from him."
(69: 45-48)
In short, a false claimant will meet his divine decree
within a short period of time and will not be able to leave his work for
posterity as whatever he has done would find its space within the dustbin of
history. No one will ever be able to produce a false claimant of divine
revelations who has not met with the Divine wrath within a period of 23 years;
this was the challenge of the Promised Massih (as) to everyone!
While précising the period of 23 years in some of his
writings as the period within which Allah, the Over-powering Lord shall seize and
kill a false claimant, the Promised Massih (as) has also written- calling
attention to the length of period he has been a recipient of divine revelations-
that Allah
will not give respite to a false claimant for more than 20 years and that it
can be confirmed that such a person is a truthful claimant. For instance, the Promised Massih (as) wrote:
“I do affirm that he who falsely poses as
the recipient divine revelation is soon seized and his life is cut short. The Torah, the Gospel and the Holy Qur'an bear witness to this and so does reason. An opponent cannot set forth a single instance to the
contrary from history and can not show that any false claimant of recipient of
divine revelation continued to spread false revelation in the world till twenty five (25) year or till eighteen (18) year and falsely called himself God beloved and God appointed and God Messenger." (Ayyam-us-Sulah, Ruhani Khaza'in, Vol. 14, pp. 267-268 with reference to Essence of Islam II, p. 379)
Today, Janbah
Sahib and his team of critics reject this writing of the Promised Massih (as). They fear that accepting this understanding of the
Promised Massih (as) would bulldoze the edifice of their entire case against
Hadhrat Khalifa Sani (ra). So, they insist that only those writings of the
Promised Massih (as) that stipulate the period of 23 years can be treated as
the actual standard.
Without conceding our right to remind them about the other
writings of the Promised Massih (as)
in which he clearly stated that “more than 20
years” is a sufficient period to close
a case against a false claimant, we shall presently examine their logic of 23
years.
In judging the validity of any statement made by any holy
Man of God (including the Promised Massih (as), it is a well established
principle of interpretation that the statement has to be seen in the over all
framework of Qur’anic ideas. Aspects of those statements that apparently run
counter to the spirit of the Book of Allah has to be read down as not really
implied. For, it is deemed that they never wanted to articulate positions that
went against the essence of the Divine Will as emerging from the Holy
Qur’an.
Now, if one pays close attention to the actual challenge of
the Promised Massih (as), he will understand a startling fact: it
was a profound, yet precise challenge:
The
challenge of Hadhrat Ahmad (as) is that all false claimants will be killed
within the period of 23 years and no one will be able to produce any evidence
contrary to this principle. In other words, the challenge of the Promised Massih (as)
was ONLY that no false claimant shall be able to survive the period of 23
years.
To put it differently, the Promised Massih (as) never extended this challenge to the other end of the spectrum- (1) There is no possibility of a holy man of God
getting killed; or that (2) No righteous claimant shall die within the period of 23
years; or that (3) all those
claimants who die or get killed within a period of 23 years after making the
claim shall be deemed to false.
While a false
claimant shall be killed within the period of 23 years and his mission will go
into the dustbin of history, getting killed at the hands of enemies
within the period does not make a righteous claimant false automatically. In
short, the Promised Massih (as) never challenged the world that a righteous
servant of Allah shall never get killed within a period of 23 years.
In spite of this
very apparent logic, Janbah Sahib attributes his
idea that no
righteous claimant can get killed within a period of 23 years to the Promised
Massih (as). There is absolutely no evidence to believe
that the Promised Massih (as) ever entertained this idea. As we have shown earlier, the crux of the argument of the
Promised Massih (as) was that if he was indeed a false claimant, he could not
have been addressing them for a period of more than 20 years. And the simple
fact is that Promised Massih (as) did not address the
question as to whether a righteous claimant can get killed in his challenges
and he was only dealing with the fate of false claimants. This deception is being
practiced willfully or through negligence of a colossal magnitude, with the
objective of gaining legitimacy for the satanic theory.
Unlike the Janbah Sahib and his team of critics, the Promised Massih (as) had a profound
understanding about the Qur’anic perspective on the issue. That is why he did
not extend his argument to the aforesaid propositions. For the Holy
Qur’an expressly indicates that even
righteous servants of Allah can be killed by unscrupulous enemies by pointing
to the experience of the past Prophets.
[2:62; 3:113; 4: 156].
With absolute detachment, Allah declares
in the Holy Qur’an that even the Holy Prophet of Islam (sa) could “die or be slain” at the hands of his opponents just like
any other human being in the course of his life. And this can happen regardless
of the number of years he has already completed on the face of earth (3:145, 22:59).
It
is our belief that Allah will not let His prophets die until their missions are completed, even if it means that their Shahaddat (martyrdom)
is written in the hands of their enemies. Indeed Martyrdom is a great status
reached by prophets and pious and beloved servants of Allah. But a Prophet is protected by
Allah till he completes his mission (An example of it is when Allah saved
Jesus (as) from the cross, and made him accomplish his mission before taking
him back to Him through death).
The fact that Hadhrat Khalifa Sani (ra) "survived
the cross" and went on to live for a period of over a decade even after
such a serious and severe attack on life only points to the messianic qualities
and the veracity of Hadhrat Mirza Bashiruddin Mahmood Ahmad (ra). That he lived
long enough to touch the standard of Nubuwwat period of the Holy Prophet (sa)
in spite of the extreme attack on his person at an old age adds to the
extraordinary dimension of Divine help and shadow protecting a Man of God in
adverse conditions of material life.
By stretching an argument of the Promised
Massih (as) to its illogical extend, Janab Janbah Sahib is doing a considerable
disservice to the cause of Islam and the noble reputation of righteous
claimants of divine revelations who faced adverse conditions by putting them
under a permanent veil of doubt.