July 2014

Editors:

Shahid Aziz

Mustaq Ali

Contents: Page

The Call of the Messiah 1

So, What Did the Muslims Do for the

Jews? by David J Wasserstein 3

The Teachings of Islam on Fasting 6

م می

حالر

ن

م

ح اہلل الر

م س

ب

The Call of the Messiah

by Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the Promised Messiah and Mahdi

The present age And so this prophecy, in every age and time,

came to be fulfilled in one respect or another,

and Almighty God’s safeguarding of His honour

and Almighty God’s help have brought forth in

every age a defender empowered to tackle and

repulse an enemy onslaught of whatever kind

and from wheresoever it may have been

launched. But this age in which we are living has

been one in which the enemy has launched a full

-scale attack from all directions, and it has been

a time of terrible tempest such as Islam has

never witnessed since the introduction to the

world of the Holy Quran. Visionless and vile

people have also mounted an assault on the lit-

eral integrity of the Quranic text and written

incorrect translations and commentaries, and

many Christians and some materialists, as well

as unintelligent Muslims, have, under the cover

of translations and commentaries, sought to

corrupt and contaminate the true meaning of

the Divine Word. Many have been emphatic that

the Holy Quran, in many places, stands opposed

to rational, intellectual knowledge and to the

well-founded principles of natural science; that

many of its claims are repugnant to what is in-

dicated by reason and good sense; that its

teaching inculcates ways and means of coercion

and oppression, injustice and unfairness, and

that many of its tenets are inconsistent with

and contrary to the Divine attributes and the

laws of nature. Very many of the Christian mis-

sionaries and Arya Samajists have most boldly

and arrogantly denied the miracles of the Holy

Prophet and the prophecies and signs of the

Holy Quran, and have drawn such a dreadful

picture of the sacred Word of God, of Islam and

of the Holy Prophet, fabricating vile and vicious

falsehoods, that every seeker-after-truth would

necessarily be repulsed and disgusted by them.

The present age, then, was a time that naturally

demanded that, just as a storm of opposition

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2014

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July 2014

which is very much in the same way that God’s

good and righteous people, just like the Chil-

dren of Israel, suffered in Makkah, continuously

for thirteen years, the severest persecution at

the hands of the unbelievers, which was even

more cruel and inhuman than that which Phar-

aoh had inflicted on the Israelites, so that these

righteous and noble people, along with that no-

blest of the noble, and at his suggestion, fled

from Makkah just as the Children of Israel had

fled from Egypt. Now the Makkans ran after

them and pursued them that they might put the

fugitives to death, very much as Pharaoh had

done with the aim and intention of killing the

Children of Israel. The Makkans were at last

done to death and annihilated at Badr in conse-

quence of their homicidal pursuit in the same

manner as Pharaoh and his hordes were annihi-

lated in the river Nile, and it was to unravel this

riddle that the Holy Prophet, when he saw Abu

Jahl’s dead body among the slain at Badr, re-

marked that he (Abu Jahl) was the Pharaoh of

this Ummah. In short, just as the drowning of

Pharaoh and his army in the Nile was a matter

had arisen to mount an aggressive attack from

all quarters, the defence should accordingly be

conducted on every front. At the same time, it

was the beginning of the 14th Century Hijra, so

that God Most High, according to His promise

held out in the verse کرا وانا لہ لنا الذ انا نحن نز

Behold, We Ourselves have sent down‘ ,لحافظون

the Reminder and We Ourselves shall be its

Guardian’ (15:9), raised a mujaddid at the head

of the 14th century to rectify and remedy this

evil. Now, since every mujaddid has a particular

name in God’s nomenclature, and just as an au-

thor gives a title to his book according to the

subject matter discussed therein, in the same

way, God Most High conferred upon this

Mujad did, in view of the duty to be assigned

him, the appellation of Messiah, since it had

been ordained that the Messiah would rectify

and remedy the evils of the Cross typifying the

final age. Accordingly, the man who had been

entrusted with this mission would necessarily

be given the name ‘Promised Messiah’, note it

carefully, being one who had been raised to exe-

cute and accomplish the task of breaking the

Cross. And is this, then, the selfsame age or not?

Think it over very seriously, and may God Most

High help and save you.

The Promised Messiah in the Quran All this investigation points to the clear conclu-

sion that people who think that no mention of

the Promised Messiah has been made in the

Holy Quran are greatly in error. The truth of the

matter, rather, is that the Promised Messiah is

extensively indicated in the Holy Quran. In the

verse کما ارسلنا الی فرعون رسولا, ‘As We sent a

Messenger to Pharaoh’ (73:15), the Holy Quran

has indicated in clear terms that the Holy

Prophet is the like of Moses, for the significance

of the verse undoubtedly is: “We have sent this

prophet in the likeness of that prophet who had

been sent to Pharaoh”. The hard facts of history

have borne out that this statement made by God

Most High is correct and true, given that, just as

God Most High, having sent Moses to Pharaoh,

finally swept away and made an end of Pharaoh

before the very eyes of the Israelites, and deliv-

ered them from Pharaoh’s tyranny and oppres-

sion, not in any fanciful or whimsical way, but

actually, as a matter of fact and observation,

July 2014

3

570 CE, when the Prophet Mohammad was born,

the Jews and Judaism were on the way to oblivion.

And second, the coming of Islam saved them, pro-

viding a new context in which they not only sur-

vived, but flourished, laying foundations for subse-

quent Jewish cultural prosperity – also in Christen-

dom – through the medieval period into the mod-

ern world.

By the fourth century, Christianity had become

the dominant religion in the Roman empire. One

aspect of this success was opposition to rival

faiths, including Judaism, along with massive con-

version of members of such faiths, sometimes by

force, to Christianity. Much of our testimony about

Jewish existence in the Roman empire from this

time on consists of ac-

counts of conversions.

Great and permanent

reductions in numbers

through conversion,

between the fourth and

the seventh centuries,

brought with them a

gradual but relentless

whittling away of the

status, rights, social

and economic existence, and religious and cultural

life of Jews all over the Roman empire.

A long series of enactments deprived Jewish

people of their rights as citizens, prevented them

from fulfilling their religious obligations, and ex-

cluded them from the society of their fellows.

Had Islam not come along, Jewry in the west

would have declined to disappearance and Jewry

in the east would have become just another orien-

tal cult.

This went along with the centuries-long mili-

tary and political struggle with Persia. As a tiny

element in the Christian world, the Jews should

not have been affected much by this broad, politi-

cal issue. Yet it affected them critically, because the

Persian empire at this time included Babylon –

now Iraq – at the time home to the world’s greatest

concentration of Jews.

Here also were the greatest centres of Jewish

intellectual life. The most important single work of

Jewish cultural creativity in over 3,000 years, apart

from the Bible itself – the Talmud – came into be-

ing in Babylon. The struggle between Persia and

of fact, a visible event which cannot be gainsaid or

disputed, in the same way, the destruction of Abu

Jahl and his army at Badr at the time of pursuit

was an event that could be seen and felt, and to

reject and deny it would be sheer folly or stupidity.

Jesus not the like of Moses Both these historical facts, then, in terms of all the

events and occurrences that they involve, bear a

close resemblance to each other just as if they are

twin brothers, and the Christian claim that this like

of Moses is none else but Jesus Christ is not only

repugnant but shameful as well, because likeness

must necessarily be in matters that are percepti-

ble, clear and decisive, and not involve some vain

and preposterous claim

that is itself open to

strong objection and

denial. How baseless

and empty is the argu-

ment that, just as Moses

was the deliverer of the

Children of Israel, in the

same way Jesus was the

deliverer of the Chris-

tians, in that these are

merely the baseless con-

ceptions of their own minds, which have no clear

and explicit sign to support them! Had there been

any sign of bringing salvation, the Jews would, in

the same way, have accepted Jesus most gratefully,

and acknowledged the fact of his being their sav-

iour, and sung thanksgiving songs as they had done

after the event at the Nile. But those noble men of

God whom our master and lord, the Holy Prophet,

had delivered from the tyranny and oppression of

the Makkans sang songs of joy after the event of

Badr in the same way as had the Children of Israel

on the river Nile. Those Arabic songs, sung on the

field of Badr, have come down to us, preserved in

the pages of books.

So, What Did the Muslims Do for the Jews?

THE JC ESSAY

by David J Wasserstein

Islam saved Jewry. This is an unpopular, discom-

forting claim in the modern world. But it is a his-

torical truth. The argument for it is double. First, in

4

July 2014

Byzantium, in our period, led increasingly to a

separation between Jews under Byzantine,

Christian rule and Jews under Persian rule.

Beyond all this, the Jews who lived under

Christian rule seemed to have lost the knowl-

edge of their own culturally specific languages –

Hebrew and Aramaic – and to have taken on the

use of Latin or Greek or other non-Jewish, local,

languages. This in turn must

have meant that they also lost

access to the central literary

works of Jewish culture – the

Torah, Mishnah, poetry,

midrash, even liturgy.

The loss of the unifying

force represented by language

– and of the associated litera-

ture – was a major step to-

wards assimilation and disap-

pearance. In these circum-

stances, with contact with the

one place where Jewish cul-

tural life continued to prosper

– Babylon – cut off by conflict

with Persia, Jewish life in the

Christian world of late antiq-

uity was not simply a pale

shadow of what it had been

three or four centuries earlier.

It was doomed.

Had Islam not come along, the conflict with

Persia would have continued. The separation

between western Judaism, that of Christendom,

and Babylonian Judaism, that of Mesopotamia,

would have intensified. Jewry in the west would

have declined to disappearance in many areas.

And Jewry in the east would have become just

another oriental cult.

But this was all prevented by the rise of

Is lam. The Islamic conquests of the seventh cen-

tury changed the world, and did so with dra-

matic, wide-ranging and permanent effect for

the Jews.

Within a century of the death of Mohammad,

in 632, Muslim armies had conquered almost

the whole of the world where Jews lived, from

Spain eastward across North Africa and the Mid-

dle East as far as the eastern frontier of Iran and

beyond. Almost all the Jews in the world were

now ruled by Islam. This new situation trans-

formed Jewish existence. Their fortunes

changed in legal, demographic, social, religious,

political, geographical, economic, linguistic and

cultural terms – all for the better.

First, things improved politically. Almost

everywhere in Christendom where Jews had

lived now formed part of the

same political space as Babylon

– Cordoba and Basra lay in the

same political world. The old

frontier between the vital cen-

tre in Babylonia and the Jews of

the Mediterranean basin was

swept away, forever.

Political change was partnered

by change in the legal status of

the Jewish population: although

it is not always clear what hap-

pened during the Muslim con-

quests, one thing is certain. The

result of the conquests was, by

and large, to make the Jews sec-

ond-class citizens.

This should not be misunder-

stood: to be a second-class

citi zen was a far better thing to

be than not to be a citizen at all.

For most of these Jews, second-class citizenship

represented a major advance. In Visigothic

Spain, for example, shortly before the Muslim

conquest in 711, the Jews had seen their

chil dren removed from them and forcibly con-

verted to Christianity and had themselves been

enslaved.

In the developing Islamic societies of the

classical and medieval periods, being a Jew

meant belonging to a category defined under

law, enjoying certain rights and protections,

alongside various obligations. These rights and

protections were not as extensive or as generous

as those enjoyed by Muslims, and the obliga-

tions were greater but, for the first few centu-

ries, the Muslims themselves were a minority,

and the practical differences were not all that

great.

Along with legal near-equality came social

July 2014

5

and economic equality. Jews were not confined

to ghettos, either literally or in terms of eco-

nomic activity. The societies of Islam were, in

effect, open societies. In religious terms, too,

Jews enjoyed virtually full freedom. They might

not build many new synagogues – in theory –

and they might not make too public their profes-

sion of their faith, but there was no really signifi-

cant restriction on the practice of their religion.

Along with internal legal autonomy, they also

enjoyed formal representation, through leaders

of their own, before the authorities of the state.

Imperfect and often not quite as rosy as this

might sound, it was at least the broad norm.

The political unity brought by the new

Is lamic world-empire did not last, but it created

a vast Islamic world civilisation, similar to the

older Christian civilisation that it re-

placed. Within this huge area, Jews

lived and enjoyed broadly similar

status and rights everywhere. They

could move around, maintain con-

tacts, and develop their identity as

Jews. A great new expansion of trade

from the ninth century onwards

brought the Spanish Jews – like the

Muslims – into touch with the Jews

and the Muslims even of India.

All this was encouraged by a fur-

ther, critical development. Huge num-

bers of people in the new world of

Is lam adopted the language of the Mus lim Arabs.

Arabic gradually became the principal language

of this vast area, excluding almost all the rest:

Greek and Syriac, Aramaic and Coptic and Latin

all died out, replaced by Arabic. Persian, too,

went into a long retreat, to reappear later heav-

ily influenced by Arabic.

The Jews moved over to Arabic very rapidly.

By the early 10th century, only 300 years after

the conquests, Sa‘adya Gaon was translating the

Bible into Arabic. Bible translation is a massive

task – it is not undertaken unless there is a need

for it. By about the year 900, the Jews had

largely abandoned other languages and taken on

Arabic.

The change of language in its turn brought

the Jews into direct contact with broader cul-

tural developments. The result from the 10th

century on was a striking pairing of two cul-

tures. The Jews of the Islamic world developed

an entirely new culture, which differed from

their culture before Islam in terms of language,

cultural forms, influences, and uses. Instead of

being concerned primarily with religion, the

new Jewish culture of the Islamic world, like

that of its neighbours, mixed the religious and

the secular to a high degree. The contrast, both

with the past and with medieval Christian

Europe, was enormous.

Like their neighbours, these Jews wrote in

Arabic in part, and in a Jewish form of that lan-

guage. The use of Arabic brought them close to

the Arabs. But the use of a specific Jewish form

of that language maintained the barriers be-

tween Jew and Muslim. The subjects that Jews

wrote about, and the literary forms in

which they wrote about them, were

largely new ones, borrowed from the

Muslims and developed in tandem

with developments in Arabic Islam.

Also at this time, Hebrew was revived

as a language of high literature, paral-

lel to the use among the Muslims of a

high form of Arabic for similar pur-

poses. Along with its use for poetry

and artistic prose, secular writing of

all forms in Hebrew and in (Judeo-)

Arabic came into being, some of it of

high quality.

Much of the greatest poetry in He brew writ-

ten since the Bible comes from this period.

Sa‘adya Gaon, Solomon Ibn Gabirol, Ibn Ezra

(Moses and Abraham), Maimonides, Yehuda

Halevi, Yehudah al-Harizi, Samuel ha-Nagid, and

many more – all of these names, well known to-

day, belong in the first rank of Jewish literary

and cultural endeav our.

Where did these Jews produce all this?

When did they and their neighbours achieve this

symbiosis, this mode of living together? The

Jews did it in a number of centres of excellence.

The most outstanding of these was Islamic

Spain, where there was a true Jewish Golden

Age, alongside a wave of cultural achievement

among the Muslim population. The Spanish case

illustrates a more general pattern, too.

What happened in Islamic Spain – waves of

6

July 2014

Jewish cultural prosperity paralleling waves of

cultural prosperity among the Muslims – exem-

plifies a larger pattern in Arab Islam. In Bagh-

dad, between the ninth and the twelfth centu-

ries; in Qayrawan (in north Africa), between the

ninth and the 11th centuries; in Cairo, between

the 10th and the 12th centuries, and elsewhere,

the rise and fall of cultural centres of Islam

tended to be reflected in the rise and fall of Jew-

ish cultural activity in the same places.

This was not coincidence, and nor was it the

product of particularly enlightened liberal pa-

tronage by Muslim rulers. It was the product of

a number of deeper features of these societies,

social and cultural, legal and economic, linguis-

tic and political, which together enabled and

indeed encouraged the Jews of the Islamic world

to create a novel sub-culture within the high

civilisation of the time.

This did not last

for ever; the period of

culturally successful

symbiosis between

Jew and Arab Muslim

in the middle ages

came to a close by

about 1300. In reality,

it had reached this

point even earlier,

with the overall rela-

tive decline in the importance and vitality of

Arabic culture, both in relation to western Euro-

pean cultures and in relation to other cultural

forms within Islam itself; Persian and Turkish.

Jewish cultural prosperity in the middle

ages operated in large part as a function of Mus-

lim, Arabic cultural (and to some degree politi-

cal) prosperity: when Muslim Arabic culture

thrived, so did that of the Jews; when Muslim

Arabic culture declined, so did that of the Jews.

In the case of the Jews, however, the cultural

capital thus created also served as the seed-bed

of further growth elsewhere – in Christian Spain

and in the Christian world more generally.

The Islamic world was not the only source of

inspiration for the Jewish cultural revival that

came later in Christian Europe, but it certainly

was a major contributor to that development. Its

significance cannot be overestimated.

(David J Wasserstein is the Eugene Greener Jr Profes-

sor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University. This

article is adapted from last week’s Jordan Lectures in

Comparative Religion at the School of Oriental and

African Studies.)

[Source: The Jewish Chronicle Online at http://

www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/

comment/68082/so-what-did-muslims-do-jews, May

24, 2012.]

The Teachings of Islam

on Fasting The importance of self-reform and

abstention from base desires

1. “O you who believe, fasting is prescribed for you

as it was prescribed for those before you, so that

you may guard against

evil.” (The Holy Quran,

2:183.)

2. Allah says: “And when My

servants ask you (O

Prophet) about Me, surely I

am near. I answer the prayer

of the suppliant when he

calls on Me, so they should

hear My call and believe in

Me that they may walk in

the right way.” (2:186.)

3. “And swallow not up your

property among yourselves by false means, nor

seek to gain access thereby to the authorities so

that you may swallow up other people’s property

wrongfully while you know.” (2:188.)

4. “He who does not give up uttering falsehood and

acting according to it, God has no need of his giving

up his food and drink.” (The Holy Prophet Muham-

mad.)

5. Jesus fasted forty days and forty nights, and ex-

plained it by saying: “It is written, Man shall not live

by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds

from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:2–4). Moses

also fasted forty days and forty nights (Exodus,

34:28).

The purpose of fasting in Islam

1. To develop and strengthen our powers of self-

control, so that we can resist wrongful desires and

bad habits, and therefore “guard against evil” (see

July 2014

7

extract 1 above). In fasting, by refraining from

the natural human urges to satisfy one’s appe-

tite, we are exercising our ability of self-

restraint, so that we can then apply it in our

eve ryday life to bring about self-improvement.

2. To attain nearness and closeness to God so

that He becomes a reality in our lives. As we

bear the rigours of fasting purely for the sake of

following a Divine command-

ment, knowing and feeling

that He can see all our ac-

tions, however secret, it in-

tensifies the consciousness of

God in our hearts, resulting

in a higher spiritual experi-

ence (see extract 2 above).

3. To learn to refrain from

usurping other’s rights and

belongings. In fasting we

voluntarily give up even what

is rightfully ours; how can

then we think of unlawfully

taking what is not ours but

belongs to someone else?

(See extract 3 above.)

4. Charity and generosity are

especially urged during

Ramadan. We learn to give,

and not to take. The deprivation of fasting

makes us sympathise with the suffering of oth-

ers, and want to try to alleviate it; and it makes

us remember the blessings of life which we nor-

mally take for granted.

Fasting in Islam does not just consist of re-

fraining from eating and drinking, but from

every kind of selfish desire and wrongdoing.

The fast is not merely of the body, but essen-

tially that of the spirit as well (see extract 4

above). The physical fast is a symbol and out-

ward expression of the real, inner fast.

Fasting is a spiritual practice to be found in

all religions (see extracts 1 and 5 above). The

great Founders of various faiths, such as Bud-

dha, Moses and Jesus, practised quite rigorous

fasting as a preliminary to attaining their first

experience of spiritual enlightenment and com-

munion with God. This kind of communion is

indicated in extract 2 above.

Maulana Muhammad Ali on fasting

“The real purpose of fasting is to attain right-

eousness. A person who undergoes hunger and

thirst, but does not behave righteously, has done

nothing. If someone is told the aim and object of

doing a certain duty, and he does that duty but

without attaining the required aim and object, it

is as if he has not done that duty.”

Special spiritual exer-tions in the month of

Ramadan

Every year in the month of

Ramadan, Maulana Muham-

mad Ali in his khutbas and

writings used to exhort the

Jama‘at to undertake a spiri-

tual exertion (mujahida) in

two forms. One was to fall in

prayer before God and be-

seech Him tearfully in

tahajjud prayers to enable

us to carry out the work of

the propagation of Islam

and the Quran, and the

other was to make financial

sacrifices. In this connection

he wrote many heart-felt,

moving prayers and en-

treated every member of the Jama‘at that at

least in the month of Ramadan they should treat

the tahajjud prayer as obligatory for them. Once

he suggested three types of supplications which

were as follows:

1. Prayer for spiritual fostering by Allah:

“All praise is for Allah, the Lord of the worlds.”

– O God, Your providence comprehends

every iota of the universe. You have provided the

very best means for the physical development of

human beings. Now provide for Your creation,

who have moved far off from You and are lost in

darkness racing towards destruction, spiritual

nourishment through the Quran. Acquaint their

hearts with the bliss that is attained by bowing

at Your threshold.

O God, Who granted the Holy Prophet Mu-

hammad and his Companions unique success

enabling them to transform the destinies of en-

8

July 2014

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tire countries and nations, foster and nourish us

and our Jama‘at today to make it reach the pin-

nacle of success in spreading the Quran and

propagating Islam in the world. Let the founda-

tions for the propagation of Your religion be laid

by our hands, upon which an edifice continues

to be raised till the Day of Judgment.

2. Prayer for triumph over unbelief:

“Forgive us, grant us protection, have mercy on

us. You are our Patron, grant us victory over the

disbelieving people!”

– O God, unbelief is dominant over the

world. Love of worldly things and wealth have

taken hold of human hearts. Human beings are

being led astray by possession of physical

power, material resources and outward adorn-

ments. But, O God, it is Your promise that You

shall make Islam triumph in the world. It is Your

promise that after falling into the greatest devia-

tion and wrongdoing people will again turn to

You. Fulfil this promise of Yours today and let

the truth overcome falsehood and let Islam tri-

umph over unbelief.

O God, the armies of unbelief and misguid-

ance are attacking with full force. Your strength

in the past too has been manifested through

weak human beings. Let it be manifest today

through this small Jama‘at. We are weak, hum-

ble and sinners but we have a strong zeal to see

Islam prevail over unbelief. Forgive us our

faults, grant us protection, save us from stum-

bling, and be our helper and make this weak

Jama‘at of Islam overcome the vast strength of

unbelief. O God, make the Quran and Muham-

mad Rasulullah and Islam triumphant in the

world, and wipe away the forces of unbelief and

misguidance.

3. Prayer for help from Allah:

“Thee do we serve and Thee do we beseech for

help.”

– O God, we do as much as it is in our power

to obey You and to spread Your name and Your

Word in the world, but we are weak and cannot

fully discharge our duty of obeying You. Help us

and produce within us the greatest strength to

obey You.

O God, spreading Your name in the world is

the exalted mission for which You had been ap-

pointing Your chosen ones, and it was only with

Your help

that they

s uc ce e de d

in achieving

this mag-

n i f i c e n t

goal. One

such chosen

man of

Yours has

e n t r u s t e d

us with this

task, but we

are small in

n u m b e r s ,

weak, and

lacking in means. We are opposed not only by

outsiders but also by our own who hamper our

way. Guide us through Your graciousness and

infuse in us the same strength with which You

have ever filled Your chosen ones, and create in

our hearts the same light with which You have

been illuminating the hearts of Your chosen

ones.

O God, spreading Your message in the world

is the most difficult of tasks in the world. When-

ever such a reformation came about, it was not

because of the strength of any man or army but

it was from Your aid and succour. So we seek

from You that help and aid which You have been

bestowing upon Your chosen ones.

(Adapted from A Mighty Striving, pp. 314–315.)