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Membership of the brotherhood of Islam

Friday Khutba by Dr Zahid Aziz, for Lahore Ahmadiyya UK, 30 August 2024

“O you who believe, when you go forth (to fight) in Allah’s way, make investigation, and do not say to anyone who offers you salutation, You are not a believer, seeking the good of this world’s life. But with Allah there are abundant gains. You too were such before, then Allah conferred a benefit on you; so make investigation. Surely Allah is ever Aware of what you do.”— ch. 4, An-Nisa, v. 94.

یٰۤاَیُّہَا الَّذِیۡنَ اٰمَنُوۡۤا اِذَا ضَرَبۡتُمۡ فِیۡ سَبِیۡلِ اللّٰہِ فَتَبَیَّنُوۡا وَ لَا تَقُوۡلُوۡا لِمَنۡ اَلۡقٰۤی اِلَیۡکُمُ السَّلٰمَ لَسۡتَ مُؤۡمِنًا ۚ تَبۡتَغُوۡنَ عَرَضَ الۡحَیٰوۃِ الدُّنۡیَا ۫ فَعِنۡدَ اللّٰہِ مَغَانِمُ کَثِیۡرَۃٌ ؕ کَذٰلِکَ کُنۡتُمۡ مِّنۡ قَبۡلُ فَمَنَّ اللّٰہُ عَلَیۡکُمۡ فَتَبَیَّنُوۡا ؕ اِنَّ اللّٰہَ کَانَ بِمَا تَعۡمَلُوۡنَ خَبِیۡرًا ﴿۹۴﴾٪

It is now fifty years since the National Assembly of Pakistan passed an amendment to the Pakistan Constitution on 7th September 1974, designating all Ahmadis as being non-Muslim. That will remain as a black day in the history of Islam and Pakistan. In connection with this, I refer to the verse which I have recited. It was revealed when there was a general state of warfare in Arabia between Muslims, who had accepted the Holy Prophet Muhammad’s message, and others who not only rejected him but were trying to destroy the Muslim community by force. But people were also embracing Islam all over the country, who might not be known to the Muslim community at Madinah. They may be strangers or individuals belonging to hostile tribes who had accepted Islam. So Muslims are directed here, twice, to make investigations about any individual before treating him as an enemy, and if they find that someone greets them with the greeting taught by Islam, they must not say that he is an unbeliever, and is not a Muslim but an enemy. The word translated as “salutation” here is salām, which stands for the greeting assalamu alaikum.

Some Muslims raise an objection to this interpretation and say that sometimes non-Muslims, such as Hindus, Sikhs, and Christians, say assalamu alaikum to Muslims out of courtesy. Does it mean that we should regard them as Muslims? The answer is that such people are not claiming to be Muslims. This verse mentions those who claim to be Muslims and use the greeting assalamu alaikum to indicate that they are Muslims.

In connection with this verse there is a report in Sahih Bukhari that the famous Companion Ibn Abbas said that a man was tending his sheep when some Muslims on a military expedition came across him. He said to them: Assalamu alaikum. But they killed him and took his sheep. So Allah revealed this verse, and by the “good of this world’s life” is meant his sheep which they took (Bukhari, hadith 4591). In Tafsir Ibn Kathir, a different incident is reported which is said to have led to the revelation of this verse. It is as follows:

The Messenger of Allah sent a military expedition under the authority of Al-Miqdad bin Al-Aswad and when they reached the designated area, they found the people had dispersed. However, a man with a lot of wealth did not leave and said, ‘I bear witness that there is no god but Allah’ (ash-hadu an la ilaha ill-Allah). Yet, Al-Miqdad killed him, and a man said to him: You killed a man after he proclaimed: ‘There is no god but Allah.’ By Allah I will mention what you did to the Prophet.

When the Holy Prophet was informed of this, he summoned Miqdad and asked him: “O Miqdad! Did you kill a man who proclaimed, la ilaha ill-Allah? What would you do when you face la ilaha ill-Allah tomorrow (i.e., after death)?”

The man had indicated that he was a Muslim by greeting Muslims with assalamu alaikum or by declaring his belief as la ilaha ill-Allah. But this was not accepted by the Muslims in this incident and he was treated as an enemy. The reason for doing this is said here to be worldly gain, in this case the gain being what that man possessed.

The temptation of worldly gain swayed these Muslims from recognising the man who greeted them assalamu alaikum or said La ilaha ill-Allah as a Muslim and made them brand him as an unbeliever. That has always been the case whenever a Muslim has been branded as unbeliever, that those branding him thus had something worldly to gain by it. In the case of those who declare Ahmadis as non-Muslims, even though Ahmadis claim to be Muslims, the worldly gain for them is popularity with masses and gain of political power or leadership of Muslims. They first misguide and misinform them that Ahmadis are a danger to Islam, and then they claim credit from their followers for fighting this danger. By this means they gain or retain the religious or political leadership of the community or the nation. It is also common to find individuals who use this declaration of Ahmadis as non-Muslims as an opportunity to take the properties or jobs of Ahmadis.

I may digress here to note that in the above report, where the Holy Prophet said to Miqdad, “Did you kill a man who proclaimed, la ilaha ill-Allah?”, only the first part of the Kalima is mentioned and not the complete Kalima: La ilaha ill-Allah, Muhammad-ur Rasul-ullah (‘There is no god but Allah; Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah’). The Kalima is sometimes abbreviated just to its first part. For example, the Holy Prophet said:

“Three things are the basis of faith: (the first is) to withhold from one who says ‘There is no god but Allah’— do not call him kafir for any sin, nor expel him from Islam for any misconduct” (Abu Dawud, Book of Jihad, ch. 35, hadith 2532).

Another example is that when some Muslims said about a certain fellow-Muslim: “He is a hypocrite who does not love Allah and His Messenger”, the Holy Prophet said:

“Do not say that. Have you not seen that he says ‘There is no god but Allah’ (La ilaha ill-Allah), desiring thereby the pleasure of Allah?” (Bukhari, hadith 425)

It is written in an Islamic work of the classical times:

“If an atheist, or an idol worshipper, or one who believes in gods besides the One God, were to merely say, There is no god but Allah, he enters Islam. Or if he were to say, I believe Muhammad to be the messenger of God, he enters Islam. This is because the deniers of Islam refrain from saying these two formulae. Hence if he were to declare even one of these two commandments, he would be taken out of the category called non-Muslim, and would be considered as a Muslim.” (Lisan-ul-Hukam).

We can see from this how accommodating are the teachings of the Quran, the Holy Prophet and Islamic law, that they are minimising what they require from a person to show that he belongs to the Muslim community. Even only saying La ilaha ill-Allah should be accepted as showing that a person is a Muslim. But Muslim Ulama of later times want to require more and more from a person before accepting him or her as a Muslim. According to the 1974 amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan, a Muslim is also required to declare belief in the finality of prophethood of the Holy Prophet Muhammad and to announce that they reject anyone after him who applied the word prophet to himself “in any sense of the word or of any description” and not accept such a person even as a reformer or as a Muslim.

The verse I quoted at the beginning goes on to say: “You too were such before, then Allah conferred a benefit on you; so make investigation.” It is reminding those Muslims, who did not believe a person to be Muslim even after he greeted them with salam or he declared ‘There is no god but Allah’, that all of you were at the beginning of Islam in the same position as that person. You too were scattered individuals, to be found mixed in anti-Muslim tribes and clans. You used to identify yourselves to each other by the Islamic greeting or by saying ‘There is no god but Allah’. If you had openly said this, your life was in danger. Now this person, and others like him, are in that position and you are refusing to accept their claim to be Muslim. If his tribe heard him say this, they would have killed him for being a Muslim, and you have killed him for being an enemy of the Muslims.

Opponents of the Ahmadis in Pakistan should ponder over the words of this verse: “You too were such before”, meaning you too used to in the position of that man whom you are not accepting as a Muslim. Before the creation of Pakistan, Muslims of the Indian subcontinent were a minority in the country. They say they were disadvantaged and unfairly treated by the Hindu majority. But how did the non-Muslim majority of that country identify who is a Muslim? And when Muslims demanded that Muslim-majority provinces should join together to become Pakistan, how did they themselves identify who is a Muslim in order to be able to count the number of Muslims? There was a famous scholar of Islam and prolific author in India, Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi (d. 1999), who also wrote a book against the Ahmadiyya Movement. It has a chapter devoted to strongly condemning Maulana Muhammad Ali’s interpretations of the Quran. Yet in another book, in English, called Muslims in the West, Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi writes:

“A friend of mine once said to an educated Hindu gentleman, ‘My brother, if a Muslim is asked who is a Muslim, he unhesitatingly replies that whoever recites and believes in the holy Kalima — La ilaha illallah, Muhammadur rasulullah, is a Muslim. This affirmation sums up the whole of Islam. Now, what would your answer be if the same question was put to you concerning a Hindu?’ ” (p. 137).

This is the answer, as to how Muslims as well as non-Muslims identified who was a Muslim. But this is what these Ulama tell the outside world, with great pride, that Islam has provided such a simple and clear definition of a Muslim, which is accepted by every Muslim, and that no other religion provides the same kind of unanimously-accepted definition about its own followers. On the other hand, the same Ulama add conditions to this definition of a Muslim by their own will and whim in order to exclude people from Islam who recite and believe in this holy Kalima.

May Allah enable all Muslims to recognise and implement the real and broad teachings of the Quran and the Holy Prophet Muhammad about who is a member the brotherhood of Muslims — Ameen.

Website: www.aaiil.uk