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Author: Hadhrat Mirza Bashiruddin M. Ahmed (ra), 2nd Head of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.
Description: A popular edition of an excellent and affectionate account of life of the Prophet of Islam (pbuh) described as the most influential man in the history of the world.
An orphan beckoned to the Call, persecuted by neighbours, driven from his home with a prize tag on his head, quickly establishing a strong community of believers ready to die for his teachings and finally returning triumphant only to forgive his tormentors.
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Author: By Hadhrat Mirza Bashiruddin M. Ahmed (ra), The 2nd Head of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.
Description: Inspiring introduction initially written as a prologue to the English translation and commentary of the Holy Quran, now printed separately by popular demand. Includes an excellent and affectionate life sketch of Muhammad (pbuh), the Holy Prophet of Islam; a history of the compilation of the Quran; some prophecies in the Quran and how these have been fulfilled; and characterestics of the main Quranic teachings.
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Home Critical Analysis/Archives Report on Punjab Disturbances of 1953
Report of The Court of Inquiry

APOSTASY

Apostasy in an Islamic State is punishable with death. On this the ulama are practically unanimous (vide the evidence of Maulana Abul Hasanat Sayyad Muhammad Ahmad Qadri, President, Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Pakistan, Punjab; Maulana Ahmad Ali, Sadr Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Islam, West Pakistan; Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi, founder and ex-Amir-i-Jama’at-i-Islami, Pakistan; Mufti Muhammad Idris, Jami’Ashrafia, Lahore, and Member, Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Pakistan; Maulana Daud Ghaznavi, President, Jami’at-i-Ahl-i-Hadith, Maghribi Pakistan; Maulana Abdul Haleem Qasimi, Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Islam, Punjab; and Mr. Ibrahim Ali Chishti). According to this doctrine, Chaudhri Zafrullah Khan, if he has not inherited his present religious beliefs but has voluntarily elected to be an Ahmadi, must be put to death. And the same fate should befall Deobandis and Wahabis, including Maulana Muhammad Shafi Deobandi, Member, Board of Talimat-i-Islami attached to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, and Maulana Daud Ghaznavi, if Maulana Abul Hasanat Sayyad Muhammad Ahmad Qadri or Mirza Raza Ahmad Khan Barelvi, or any one of the numerous ulama who are shown perched on every leaf of a beautiful tree in the fatwa, Ex. D. E. 14, were the head of such Islamic State. And if Maulana Muhammad Shafi Deobandi were the head of the State, he would exclude those who have pronounced Deobandis as kafirs from the pale of Islam and inflict on them the death penalty if they come within the definition of murtadd, namely, if they have changed and not inherited their religious views.

The genuineness of the fatwa, Ex. D. E. 13, by the Deobandis which says that Asna Ashari Shias are kafirs and murtadds, was questioned in the course of enquiry, but Maulana Muhammad Shafi made an inquiry on the subject from Deoband, and received from the records of that institution the copy of a fatwa signed by all the teachers of the Darul Uloom including Maulana Muhammad Shafi himself which is to the effect that those who do not believe in the sahabiyyat of Hazrat Siddiq Akbar and who are qazif of Hazrat Aisha Siddiqa and have been guilty of tehrif of Qur’an are kafirs. This opinion is also supported by Mr. Ibrahim Ali Chishti who has studied and knows his subject. He thinks the Shias are kafirs because they believe that Hazrat Ali shared the prophethood with our Holy Prophet. He refused to answer the question whether a person who being a Sunni changes his view and agrees with the Shia view would be guilty of irtidad so as to deserve the death penalty. According to the Shias all Sunnis are kafirs, and Ahl-i-Qur’an; namely, persons who consider hadith to be unreliable and therefore not binding, are unanimously kafirs and so are all independent thinkers. The net result of all this is that neither Shias nor Sunnis nor Deobandis nor Ahl-i-Hadith nor Barelvis are Muslims and any change from one view to the other must be accompanied in an Islamic State with the penalty of death if the Government of the State is in the hands of the party which considers the other party to be kafirs. And it does not require much imagination to judge of the consequences of this doctrine when it is remembered that no two ulama have agreed before us as to the definition of a Muslim. If the constituents of each of the definitions given by the ulama are given effect to, and subjected to the rule of ‘combination and permutation’ and the form of charge in the Inquisition’s sentence on Galileo is adopted mutatis mutandis as a model, the grounds on which a person may be indicted for apostasy will be too numerous to count.

In an earlier part of the report we have referred to the proscription of the ‘Ash-shahab’, a pamphlet written by Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani who later became Sheikh-ul-Islam-i-Pakistan. In that pamphlet the Maulana had attempted to show from the Qur’an, the sunna, the ijma’ and qayas that in Islam the punishment for apostasy (irtidad) simpliciter is death. After propounding the theological doctrine the Maulana had made in that document a statement of fact that in the time of the Caliph Siddiq-i-Akbar and the subsequent Caliphs vast areas of Arabia became repeatedly red with the blood of apostates. We are not called upon to express any opinion as to the correctness or otherwise of this doctrine but knowing that the suggestion to the Punjab Government to proscribe this pamphlet had come from the Minister for the Interior we have attempted to inquire of ourselves the reasons for Government’s taking a step which ex hypothesi amounted to condemning a doctrine which the Maulana had professed to derive from the Qur’an and the sunna. The death penalty for irtidad has implications of a far-reaching character and stamps Islam as a religion of fanatics, which punishes all independent thinking. The Qur’an again and again lays emphasis on reason and thought, advises toleration and preaches against compulsion in religious matters but the doctrine of irtidad as enunciated in this pamphlet strikes at the very root of independent thinking when it propounds the view that anyone who, being born a Muslim or having embraced Islam, attempts to think on the subject of religion with a view, if he comes to that conclusion, to choose for himself any religion he likes, has the capital penalty in store for him. With this implication Islam becomes an embodiment of complete intellectual paralysis. And the statement in the pamphlet that vast areas of Arabia were repeatedly bespattered with human blood, if true, could only lend itself to this inference that even when Islam was at the height of its splendour and held absolute sway in Arabia there were in that country a large number of people who turned away from that religion and preferred to die than to remain in that system. It must have been some such reaction of this pamphlet on the mind of the Minister for the Interior which prompted him to advise the Punjab Government to proscribe the pamphlet. Further the Minister who was himself well-versed in religious matters must have thought that the conclusion drawn by the author of the pamphlet which was principally based on the precedent mentioned in paras. 26, 27 and 28 of the Old Testament and which is only partially referred to in the Qur’an in the 54th verse of the Second Sura, could not be applicable to apostasy from Islam and that therefore the author’s opinion was in fact incorrect, there being no express text in the Qur’an for the death penalty for apostasy. On the contrary each of the two ideas, one underlying the six brief verses of Surat-ul-Kafiroon and the other the La Ikrah verse of the second Sura, has merely to be understood to reject as erroneous the view propounded in the ‘Ash-Shahab’. Each of the verses in Surat-ul-Kafiroon which contains thirty words and no verse of which exceeds six words, brings out a fundamental trait in man engrained in him since his creation while the La Ikrah verse, the relevant portion of which contains only nine words, states the rule of responsibility of the mind with a precision that cannot be surpassed. Both of these texts which are an early part of the Revelation are, individually and collectively, the foundation of that principle which human society, after centuries of conflict, hatred and bloodshed, has adopted in defining one of the most important fundamental rights of man. But our doctors would never dissociate chauvinism from Islam.

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