Muslim or Ahmadi?
Mohammad Yaqub Khan
Editor The Light
Akhand Islam
Muslim or Ahmadi?
مسلم آئیں ہوا کافر تو مسلماں کافر
” The Kafir has become Muslim in his way of life whereas the Muslim has become Kafir.”
The above biting line is from Iqbal. The Poet with his eagle eye on the fundaments of life as understood by Islam saw this double drama acted on the stage of life – the Musalmans drifting further and further away from those fundaments and the non-Muslims laying hand on them one by one. His heart was galled within him, and he burst into this biting sarcasm, in the hope that he might perchance open the eyes of the Musalmans to this grim irony of things.
We have adopted the above headline with the same purpose. The word ” Akhand ” has only recently come into the limelight. As a counterblast to the Pakistan Movement, Mr. Munshi, ex-Home Minister of the Congress Government of Bombay has started his “Akhand Hindustan” Movement which literally means “United Hindustan.” This movement aims at fighting the Muslim campaign to divide the country into Muslim India and Hindu India and preserving India as one political unit under the domination of the Hindu Majority. Be that as it may, what we are concerned with at the moment is the object lesson that the word “Akhand” should have for a Musalman.
It was 14 centuries ago that Islam gave humanity the grand message of the unity of the human race. The Quran proclaimed that all Muslims are brothers. It held up to contempt the people who split themselves up into groups and sects. It called attention to the doom that overtook such people for transgressing this law of unity, the fundamental law of life.The Musalman has thrown that great lesson of life to the winds. He has partitioned the vast unbounded ocean of Islam into little streams and sub streams with the result that not only have they lost all flow and current of life, these little streams confined within their narrow limits have fallen victims to the natural laws of petrification. Instead of the life-giving freshness of the ocean they stink of the decay and decomposition of death.
What is the other side of the picture? Hinduism was never one. The word unity is un-known alike to the scriptures and the history of Hinduism. Hinduism has always stood for division. Caste with all its iniquity which has been unknown to any other section of humanity is the peculiar product and pride of Hinduism and yet Mr. Munshi is running up and down the country, arousing his community to the danger of division and spreading the message of “Akhand” (united) Hindustan.
All honour to Mr. Munshi! In rallying his people to a common ideal and welding them into one compact nation; he is certainly living up to the great Truth of unity which Islam for the first time in the cultural history of man promulgated. This is the way of life, the way of merging all little stagnant pools of divisions into a mighty ocean. This is an instance of the “Kafir” becoming Muslim in his outlook on life.
Thank God, on the political plain, there is some awakening to this Truth among the Musalmans as well. The Qaid-i-Azam has evolved some semblance of unity among the Musalmans. But it is just semblance of unity yet. It has come into being as a reaction against forces threatening the disruption of Islam in India and as such lacks inherent strength of its own. It has yet to stand the test of time. With all that, it must be conceded, it is a step in the right direction and already there is an appreciable awakening among the Musalmans to the truth that unless we all stand united as one people, we are likely to fall and cease to exist as a community with an identity of our own.
This is however not enough. It is just one step, a step in the right direction. If this one step is to be consolidated, political unity must be cemented by cultural unity. And it is here exactly that the Musalman has ceased to be a Musalman and in the words of Iqbal become a kafir. The various cultural schools of thoughts within the house of Islam present a different spectacle. They still live in their little stinking pools of Sunnis, Shias, Wahabis and so forth. They simply can’t step out of these and sail on the high sea of Islam with its unbounded expanse, its fresh breezes, its mighty waves. The great religion which bestowed on humanity the greatest boon possible, the boon of unity has been torn, mangled and disfigured out of all recognition.
The Quran gave the Musalman the message of unity and brotherhood. The Prophet ﷺ laboured it all his life to inculcate that great Truth and is while departing bequeathed this as a parting message to the sons and daughters of Islam, making it incumbent on them to convey the same to the generations yet unborn. The Musalmans spurned at that great Truth. Rather than remind them in the words of the Quran and the Prophet ﷺ which stand at a discount with them, we press the same good old Truth on them over again in the words of modern Hindu revivalist movement.
إِنَّمَا ٱلْمُؤْمِنُونَ إِخْوَةٌ
“All believers are brothers ”
(Al-Hujurat (The Dwellings) 49:10)
– this Quranic phraseology has fallen on deaf ears. Perhaps “Akhund” Islam may appeal to them. Mr. Munshi is a modern man and so is slogan “Akhund.” If the Musalman dismisses the Prophet’s ﷺ message of unity and brotherhood a shibboleth of a backward age of long ago, perhaps he may hearken to it when uttered by a modern man in a modern terminology.
Muslim or Ahmadi?
While at this topic, we feel it wouldn’t be intellectual honesty if we don’t turn the searchlight on ourselves and say how far we, who belong to the Lahore Ahmadiyya Anjuman, swear by “Akhand Islam”. The misapprehension still persists, notwithstanding repeated refutations in these columns, that we too have dug out a little pool of our own and ceased to breathe the fresh invigorating air of the unbounded ocean of Islam. A friend in Peshawar who is a great admirer and supporter of this movement told us the same thing the other day when we happened to be there. He voiced the feelings of the whole gentry of the place, he told us. There is hardly any educated Muslim, he said, who does not appreciate the ideals this movement stands for and the line of work it has been carrying on. But they failed to understand how a movement so steeped in the original universality of Islam could also shrink within the narrow limits of a group and stamp themselves “Ahmadis” instead of Muslims.
We were both amused and grieved on hearing this – amused because we had the inward satisfaction that the charge against us had, thank God, no foundation in fact; grieved at the thought that the misconception should still persist. Times out of number it has been declared in these columns that there is no such thing as being Ahmadis by faith. How could we give up the Divine name of Muslim.
هُوَ سَمَّىٰكُمُ ٱلْمُسْلِمِينَ
(Surah Al-Haj 22:73-78)
“Allah named you Muslims.”
The Founder never called himself an “Ahmadi.” A member of this Movement is a Muslim first, a Muslim last and nothing but Muslim. The word ”’Ahmadi” has no more function to fulfil than similar words used for other groups such as the Khaksars the Ahrars, the Congressites, the Leaguers, the Nazis, the Communists and so forth. It is a functional designation, not religious. No sensible man would deny the need of a well-knit organized body for upholding any great ideal calling for personal sacrifices. To revive Islam in this age of gross materialism is the greatest ideal that anybody of Muslims could put before it. To uphold this ideal to make it triumph, a strong body of men devoted to the ideal was a paramount necessity and the Founder would not have been the great Reformer of the age that he was if he had allowed his work to die with him. Like a true General of Islam, he therefore enlisted a body of soldiers to keep the flag of Islam flying and to see that it flutters above every other flag. The label “Ahmadi” was innocently designed to mark out these soldiers and indicate the particular mission they have set before them. It is quite different from the religious label which for every son of Islam can be no other than Muslim.
M.Y.K
(Saturday, November 1, 1941)
