January 2012

Editors:

Shahid Aziz

Mustaq Ali Contents: Page

Announcements and News 1

The Promised Messiah speaks 2

The Second South Africa Case 3

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Announcements and News

Friday Prayers 12:30

Dars/speech 12:45

Sunday 01-01-2012 15:00

Webcasts: Please note that the Friday

khutba and prayers, the dars, as well as all meet-ings are broadcast over the Virtual Mosque at the time stated above.

Acquisition of New

Equipment

The UK jamaat has acquired the latest print-ing equipment. This is a digital printing machine

with automatic duplex facilities and direct print-ing from a computer. The means that rather than first having to print the material and then

copy it resulting in loss of sharpness especially

in pictures it can be printed directly from the

computer. The machine has facilities to staple pages so

that booklets can be produced automatically in

one process triggered from the printer. The

Light in your hands was printed on our new ma-chine and we look forward to your comments.

Hazrat Ameer in the UK

By Akbar Abdullah, Editor HOPE, USA

Meeting with a distinguished member

of the Lords

Hazrat Ameer-i-Qaum, Dr Abdul Karim

Saeed Pasha Sahib held a fruitful meeting to

benefit our Jamaat in the United Kingdom with

Lord Eric Avebury, a human rights activist and

a distinguished parliamentarian. After Dr Muja-hid Ahmad Saeed sends us the photographs taken during this important meeting with a text report we shall include the material in the first one of our two supplements we intend to pub-lish. Our readers can obtain more information

about the political agenda of Lord Avebury by

accessing his website on the Internet.

Luncheon in Woking by Br Azhar-ud-

Din Ahmad in honour of Hazrat Ameer

Mr Azhar-ud-Din and Mrs Samira Ahmad

hosted a welcome lunch in honour of Hazrat Ameer, Head of the Worldwide Lahore Ahmadi-yya Movement, on 13th November, 2011 at Jhol-pali Restaurant, Byfleet, Woking, England. Brother Nasir Ahmad has submitted a detailed

report of this event and Dr Jawad Ahmad has provided us elegant photographs of the lunch-eon meeting which will be part of our first sup-plement of the two of Hazrat Ameer's last two

weeks of activities in the United Kingdom

which we intend to publish.

Jumah prayers at Dar-us-Salaam

(London)

In the late morning of Friday, Brother Azhar-ud-din drove Hazrat Ameer-i-Qaum from Bir-mingham to our London Mission House where

the latter delivered khutba and led the Jumah

prayers. Mr Tim Miller, the Vice-President of

January

2012

www.aaiil.org

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January 2012

the European Chapter of the Universal Peace

Federation attended the Jumah prayers as an

observer of Hazrat Ameer's sermon and prayers, and after the prayers he delivered a brief mes-sage of peace.

Dr. Zahid Aziz followed Mr Tim Miller, and

delivered his speech on the "Importance of Ad-vent of Masih-e-Maood”.

Nasir Ahmad and Dr Jawad Ahmad in-

vite Hazrat Ameer to tea

Towards the final days of Hazrat Ameer-i-Qaum, Dr Abdul Karim Saeed Pasha Sahib's final leg of the tour of UK & Mainland Europe, Brother Nasir Ahmad & family hosted a farewell tea party in his honour in their residence on last Sunday afternoon.

The President of the UK jamaat lauds

Hazrat Ameer’s efforts

Sister Jameelah Khan, President of AAIIL, UK

expresses a highly favourable opinion of Hazrat Ameer’s mission to the United Kingdom and the

Mainland Europe. In a telephonic conversation

with me she stated that she marvels at the ener-getic spirit of Hazrat Ameer which the latter has demonstrated by his visit to the UK Jamaat. She

said that it is due to his stamina, sincerity and

faith. JazakAllah!

Hazrat Ameer’s departure from the UK

The Promised Messiah

Speaks

Muslim scholars’ misunderstanding of

the doctrine of jihad

Remember, the doctrine of jihad, as under-stood by the present day Muslim scholars, who

are called Muslim priests, and the form in which

they state this doctrine to common people, is absolutely incorrect. Its result is nothing except that they, through their passionate sermons, turn the men of brutish qualities into venomous beasts dispossessed of all pious virtues of hu-manity. Thus, so it happens. I know for certain

that the sin for all the brutalities and unjust bloodshed that results at the hands of these ig-norant conceited persons, who are quite un-aware of why and for what reason, in its early

period, the necessity for war arose for Islam, rests on the shoulders of these Muslim priests who secretly keep teaching such doctrines, which lead to such sorrowful bloodshed.

When these people meet the government officials they kneel so low to greet them as if they are ready to prostrate before them. But when they sit in the gatherings of their compa-triots they repeatedly insist that this country is Dar-al-Harb. In their hearts they consider wag-ing jihad as their religious duty. There are few of them who are not of that view. These people are

so firm in their belief about jihad, which is com-pletely erroneous and against the teachings of the Quran and hadith, that if someone does not agree with their view about this they call him

Anti-Christ and declare him deserving of the

penalty of death. Accordingly, I am subject to

such decree and some Muslim priests of this country have declared me an Anti-Christ and a

heretic. Without any fear of the Laws of the Brit-ish Government they have issued a private de-cree about me that this person deserves to be

put to death, his property looted and his women

abducted. And, that one doing so is worthy of great Divine reward.

But for what crime! Only this: that my being

the Promised Messiah and preaching against their

doctrine of jihad and declaring the coming of their

Hazrat Ameer, Dr Abdul Karim Saeed Pasha

and Dr Mujahid Saeed

at Heathrow before departure for Pakistan

January 2012

3

case our jamaat was directly involved and the case

started with two plaintiffs, Ahmadiyya Anjuman

Ishaat Islam Lahore and Mr Ismail Peck against the

Muslim Judicial Council. After much legal wran-gling and many hearings, eventually the case be-came Ismail Peck v MJC. On the day the hearing of the substantive matter started the defendants withdrew. Although this meant that we won by

default Hafiz Sher Muhammad still proceeded to

present our case announcing that if the Defendants decide to rejoin the proceedings at any stage there

will be no objection from the Plaintiff. His evidence

continued for a week but the Defendant did not reappear. Mr Ismail Peck was declared to be a Mus-lim and therefore, by extension, so were all Ahmadis. We printed and published the book The

Ahmadiyya Case which is a translation by Dr Zahid

Aziz of the evidence presented to the court by

Hafiz Maulana Sher Muhammad. The second case did not directly involve us. It

was between two Sunni imams, Sheikh Jasseim

and Sheikh Nazim and Sheikh Jasseim, and the M J C, whose President, I think, Sheikh Nazim was.

How the second case started :

In South Africa each mosque has an endow-ment by way of land, shops and other property and

the income from that endowment bears the

mosque’s expenses and pays the imam’s salary. Most Sunni mosques joined together many years ago to form the Muslim Judicial Council (MJC), a

body to which they assigned the authority to issue

fatwahs or religious opinions. Sheikh Nazim was the head of the MJC and Sheikh Jasseim the imam

of a mosque. It seems that when this mosque was built there was not much income from its endow-ment as it lay some distance from the main city

and its facilities. However, as population increased

and the city expanded the mosque’s property be-came extremely valuable and the income, mainly

rental, increased many fold. It is said that Sheikh

Nazim wanted his son to be appointed the imam of this mosque. The problem was that, in South Af-rica, imamat was regarded as hereditary making it impossible for Sheikh Nazim to remove Sheikh

Jasseim. So it remained until some Lahori-Ahmadis vis-

ited Sheikh Jasseim. As they talked the Azan was

blood-shedding Messiah and blood-thirsty Mahdi, on

whom they have pinned great hopes of pillage, as

completely false doctrines became the cause of their

rage and enmity. But they should remember that the

doctrine of jihad as it is in their minds is not correct

as its first step is shedding the blood of human sym-

pathy. We have a two-fold response to their question

that when jihad was permissible in the earlier period,

what is the reason that it is now prohibited? Firstly,

that the view about jihad is mere conjecture, which

has exceptions. Our Holy Prophet (s) did not raise the

sword against anyone except those who first raised

the sword and mercilessly slaughtered innocent and

righteous men, women and children. And they killed

them in such a distressing manner that even now

reading those accounts makes us cry.

The Second South Africa Case

Some Memories

Shahid Aziz

As many eyewitnesses to the historical events that took place in the case Sheikh Jesseim v Sheik

Nazim and the MJC have passed away, Dr Mujahid

Saeed has asked me to write down some personal memories of my participation in these momentous events and to share them with you.

Two cases in South Africa:

In the eighties there were two court cases in

South Africa where the question whether Ahmadis were Muslims or not was discussed. In the first

Hazrat Ameer and Mr Azhar-ud-Din Ahmad

4

January 2012

called and Sheikh Jasseim asked the Ahmadis to

join him for prayers. They responded by saying

that as he regarded them as kafirs they could not pray behind him. At this the Sheikh said that it seemed to him a silly comment for had it been a

Hindu or a Christian he would have asked them

to wait as he goes to pray. The fact that he asked

them to join him in namaaz shows that he re-garded them as Muslims. Upon this, the Sheikh

led the prayers and members of our jamaat prayed behind him providing Sheikh Nazim with

the excuse to start a campaign to oust Sheikh

Jasseim from the imamship of the mosque. Then

other things happened. There was a wedding at the house of someone called Rakip where

Sheikh Nazim said that Sheikh Jasseim was an

Ahmadi lover and thus unfit to lead a Muslim

congregation. Eventually, Sheikh Jasseim was dismissed by his local board under pressure

from Sheikh Nazim. Sheikh Jasseim promptly

sued both Sheikh Nazim and the MJC for breach

of contract by an unfair dismissal and defama-tion of character. As a consequence of these is-sues the question of what Ahmadis believe arose

all over again.

Before the hearing started :

Hafiz Sher Muhammad again went to South

Africa and spent a long time there. Mr Masud

Akhtar Choudhry was also there to translate and

interpret for Hafiz sahib. And, Rishad Khan was organizing things as Sheikh Jesseim’s solicitor. Zahid translated material and, as luck would

have it, as fax had been invented (!) fax it to the

solicitors. Hafiz sahib would ring me from South

Africa and give me a long list of references to dig

up and send him. Fortunately, at that time I worked in Central London and on many days I would take a longer lunch hour and go to some

library or other to find the books from which

Hafiz sahib wanted photocopies as original source material.

As the hearing date drew closer the question

of court interpretation arose. And for some rea-son known only to himself, Hazrat Ameer, Dr Saeed Ahmad Khan sahib, asked me to go to

South Africa to translate and to interpret in the

High Court.

Threats and mind games :

At that time Mr M R Malik was very closely

involved with our jamaat. He would ring me al-most daily to talk about things and we became

friends and occasionally we would meet to go

out. As young men all over the world do we

would go out to exciting places in Central Lon-don and the West End. I mention a few, as I be-lieve they still exist, and if any of our young

members want a bit of excitement, as we did, they can also go and spend many happy hours there! These were: the India Office Library, the

Library of SOAS, the University of London Senate

House Library and the British Library etc. I discussed my trip to South Africa with him.

One day he rang me asking me to meet him as he

had important information. As he had contacts with many organizations I was curious to find

out what it was. When we met he warned me

that there are plans afoot to assassinate

Ahmadis who go to South Africa for this case. I was sure that this was just an empty threat but I immediately rang South Africa and spoke to

Hafiz Sahib to warn him. It seems that such

threats had been made in South Africa as well and Rishad Khan, the solicitor there, had ar-ranged for a paramilitary guard to protect Hafiz

sahib. When I got home I told Riffat, my wife, about

this in the hope that she will come up with a

suitable excuse for me to get out of the trip. I

Lahore-Ahmadiyya Mosque Suriname

January 2012

5

assume that it was after checking my life insur-ance policies (!) that the reply she gave was this. She said Allah provides for even those who have

neither a mother nor a father. If I believed that I provided for the family then I should not go but if I believed that Allah provides then I should go. Second, she said that she did not expect her hus-band to turn his back to the enemy.

But that wasn’t the only problem that arose. At the time I worked for British Telecom in a

department called Logistics. One day a clerk

came and told me that the pen I had ordered had

arrived. I had indeed ordered some biros so I asked her to put them in the stationery cup-board. She was insistent on my collecting this pen so I told her not to be silly and just put the

pens where people could get them. I was later told that someone had ordered a gold Parker pen and the lady was trying to get me to accept it and to sign a receipt for it.

Many years later, after I had moved to an-other part of BT I saw someone in Holborn who

worked with me in Logistics and asked him

about the gold pen incident and why the pen

was so specifically offered to me. He told me that the black members of staff, and this was about one third of the section, resented my going to

South Africa for a “holiday” which if you remem-ber had apartheid at the time. They had set this trap for me. They hoped that I would accept the

pen, they would inform BT internal investigation

team and I would be charged with theft and dis-missed. Of course having acquired a criminal

record and without a reference I would not have

been able to get another white-collar job. But I guess, Allah saves His own people.

Getting to South Africa :

At that time, many countries, because of its apartheid policies, did not recognize South Af-rica. This meant that if a person has a South Af-rican visa in their passport they would be de-nied entry to places like Pakistan. I explained

this to the embassy and they stamped a visa on a

blank sheet of paper. To be able to take maximum leave I took a

night flight. I remember I had a meeting with

suppliers which over-ran and I rushed to the

underground. There was some kind of incident and there were thousands of commuters being

off-loaded at King Cross. I fought my way out as there was no point in waiting and ran down the

road. Zahid and I used had spent some time in

halls of residence in the area so I knew the back

streets. Anyway I got to the airport just in time, checked-in, found my seat and discovered I had

dropped my wallet. As I began to panic the air hostess walked straight up to me and asked me

if I was Mr Aziz and after seeing my passport handed me my wallet. This is one time I’ve been

glad to have been brown among a sea of white

faces! The plane landed at Nairobi and then at Jo-

hannesburg where I had to change planes for Cape Town. At Johannesburg the security at the

airport was the way it is now at most airports. I had to empty my pockets in a box and walk

through the machine which bleeped. I had to go

back and take off my belt and shoes and tried

again. There was no response to my protests that the machine was malfunctioning. Every

time I had to take off one more item and try

again until I was a picture of “there’s no place to

hide anything”. At which point the Sergeant went: “You may be right, put your clothes back

on.” I have to say that it is not easy to drag a trol-ley full of books with one hand while trying to

pull your pants up with the other as you hop on

one leg; especially when scores of people are

laughing and clapping. Although I was grateful for the experience I don’t really want to repeat it.

Hazrat Ameer broadcasting on Eid

6

January 2012

Sana Ullah Amritsari and secret plans :

I arrived at departures. I looked around and

saw what I guessed were some of the witnesses from Pakistan who were appearing against us. They must have boarded the plane at Nairobi. To

check my guess, I went and lent on a pillar close

to them so that I could hear what they were say-ing. They were indeed talking about the hearing

in which Hafiz Sher Muhammad was appearing

as a witness. One asked the other: “Why is it only Ahl-i-Deoband who conduct this jihad

against the Qadianis?” The other replied: “Who

else is going to do it? Barailvis? They are tomb-worshippers and Qadianis will defeat them in a

minute.” I was grateful to learn that we could

easily defeat the vast majority of Muslims living

in the sub-continent in one minute. “You are

right,” said the first man, “Maulana Sana ullah

Amritsari declared them a kafir and carried out a jihad against them all his life.” The other re-plied: “The less you say about Sana ullah the bet-ter. All you needed was to give him ten rupees and he would declare anyone you wanted a kafir

or a Muslim.”

Mrs Sabiha Saeed (wife of Hazrat Ameer), Mrs Bano Anwar, Mr Azhar-ud-Din Ahmad, Mr Shahid Aziz and Dr Mujahid Saeed

They also said that they will be using

Qadiani’s original books so that we will not be

able to ask for the original and how they had to

bring a ton of books with them to make sure. This proved to be very useful because when I went to collect my luggage I stood close to the

belt to see what they had brought. They had

been very kind and labeled each package with

the names of books. To my delight I noted that they were indeed original Qadiani books but mostly those written by the likes of Mirza Bashir ud Din Mahmud Ahmed, Mirza Bashir Ahmad

etc.

Work starts :

As I got out I found our brothers from the

South Africa jamaat waiting for me, worried at the delay in my coming out. I think it was Rishad

Khan, the solicitor, Sulaiman and one more per-son whose name I can’t remember. We drove to

Rishad’s house. Hafiz sahib was anxious for me

to arrive because there was still a lot of work to

be done in translating materials from Urdu into

English. There were also other difficulties such

as the fact that when Hafiz sahib arrived back in

January 2012

7

Pakistan after the first case, the Government of Pakistan confiscated a lot of his books as if such

confiscation would actually change the facts. I asked Rishad if he could get hold of a couple of

PCs. Before I left the UK I had been experimenting

as a part of my job with introducing PCs using word

processing etc. to BT so I knew what would be use-ful. Shabir, a friend of Rishad’s, provided two PCs and a matrix printer. We hired a typist and by the

following day, off we went translating. I directly

keyed-in material but Masud sahib would write out the translation and the typist we had hired would

key it in. He had much typing to do as Masud sahib

had already translated a lot of the material. Zahid

would of course send his translations in a typed

format. The following day we met Sheikh Jasseim’s ad-

vocates, Mr De Villiers, one of the top barristers in

South Africa, and his assistant whose name I cannot now remember.

An interesting incident :

Mr De Villiers had been part of the team which

put South Africa’s case regarding, I think it was Na-mibia, to the World Court. He told us of an interest-ing conversation he had with Sir Muhammad Zafa-rullah Khan who was one of the judges of the Inter-national Court. Mr De Villiers told us that when the

court started hearing the case Sir Zafarullah ex-cused himself saying that he hated the system of

apartheid so much that he may not be able to do

justice to the South African case. Later on, when

the Court decided in South Africa’s favour, Sir Zafarullah told Mr De Villiers that had he known

that white judges were going to give such an

unjust decision he would not have withdrawn

from the case.

Our plans :

Mr De Villiers started by asking Hafiz sahib

how he would explain matters to the opposition

barrister under cross-examination. To my aston-ishment, the Great Hafiz replied: ‘With love’. It would be many years before I would learn that Hafiz sahib was correct and my fist waving and

shouting in the court did not further our cause. I told everyone about our opponents’ plans and

the books I had seen and suggested that at the

very start we announce that we are not Qadianis and we will not respond to any quotations from

their books. This was agreed. Hafiz sahib then

asked Mr De Villiers to make an application to

the court at the very beginning asking for the

court not to sit on Fridays because of Friday

prayers. This was agreed. It reminded me of the incident at the start of

the First South Africa Case when the opposi-tion’s maulvi stood and asked everyone to raise

their hands and pray for the truth to be victori-ous. Hafiz sahib immediately leapt to his feet and asked all Ahmadis to stand up and join the

others in their prayers and say Amin. All I can

say is that Allah listened to our Sunni brothers’ prayer and granted it and truth was victorious.

Mr De Villiers then started going through

the evidence. Long days were spent going

through Hafiz sahib’s evidence. If Mr De Villiers didn’t fully follow something, Hafiz sahib would

become very anxious and say to me: “explain to

him because if our advocate doesn’t understand

the issue, how will he explain to the court.” And

then set about finding more references for translation.

Once the hearing started the routine was to

arrive at Mr De Villiers chambers which was a

few minutes’ walk to the court, go through what was going to happen during the day, then pro-ceed to the court for an all-day hearing, go back

Interior of one of the Lahore-Ahmadiyya

mosques in Holland

8

January 2012

to the chambers have a debriefing there, come

home and start translating more materials. I was amazed at Hafiz sahib’s capacity for hard

work. He would give evidence all day and then

go through books looking for references all night.

A prayer :

The night before the hearing I prayed to Al-lah for the truth to prevail and if I find the oppo-nents’ case to be convincing then not to let my

long family association or pride stop me from

accepting the truth.

The battle commences :

The hearing started and Mr De Villiers made

his application for Friday off. The judge looked

at the other barrister who turned and asked his clients. To my surprise but not to Hafiz sahib’s there was much whispering and then no objec-tion was raised to our application.

I was put on the stand because first the

judge had to be convinced that I would be able

to interpret properly and second because I had

to swear to interpret faithfully. I got the shock of my life when the opposition barrister started to

cross-examine me. “You support Sheikh Jesseim, don’t you?” he said. “I support the oppressed

everywhere.” I replied. “Who paid your fare?” “I paid it out of my own pocket. I have the receipt here. Do you want to see it?” And so it went on

until he asked me to look at a translation and

give my opinion as to its accuracy. I was puzzled

and Mr De Villiers, who must have noticed the

change in my expression, immediately leapt to

his feet and raised some objection. The judge

did not allow it and asked me to answer the

question. I had had the few seconds I needed to

collect my thoughts and declined to comment. The barrister then took me to another transla-

tion and asked the same question and I gave the

same answer. When the barrister tried it a third

time the judge stopped him. I surveyed the opposition bench which I think

had about twelve anti-Ahmadi experts including

Professor Ghazi who was the main witness against us and Prof Khurshid Ahmad of the Jamaat i Islami and many others. Two came from Al Azhar to criti-cize Hazrat Sahib’s Arabic but left after about a

week without saying anything. Fourteen against one, I thought the odds were still in our favour! The

Public Gallery was full of people shouting slogans against us which were making me angry but not having any impact at all on Hafiz sahib.

Hafiz sahib took the stand and I requested the

judge if he may give his evidence while sitting

down. The judge agreed but Hafiz sahib would not sit down and insisted on giving evidence while

standing. The judge then ordered Hafiz sahib to sit down and he agreed. He started by saying that he

will not reply to any question or objection based on

the books by Qadiani. I noticed this caused much

consternation among our opponents. I started interpreting for Hafiz sahib and sud-

denly one of the opposing team leapt up and

started whispering in their barrister’s ear who then

rose with an objection. As Hafiz sahib and I usually

spoke in Punjabi I had started translating in Pun-jabi whereas the oath I had taken said that I would

interpret in Urdu. The judge asked me whether this was correct and I it was and explained the reason. I confirmed that I could interpret in Urdu.

(To be continued)

Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha’at Islam Lahore (UK)

The first Islamic Mission in the U.K. established 1913 as the Woking Muslim Mission

Dar- us-Salaam, 15 Stanley Avenue, Wembley, UK, HA0 4JQ

Centre: 020 8903 2689 President: 020 8524 8212 Secretary: 01753 575313 E-mail: aaiil.uk@gmail.com

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