After reciting the Tashahhud, the Ta’uz and the first chapter Al Fatiha of the Holy Quran, Hazrat Amirul Mo’emenine, Zafrullah Domun said:

Today I will revert to what I was saying about the Surah Al Fatiha. I think that if a Muslim reads what Hazrat Masih Maood^as has said about this chapter of the Holy Quran, he or she will know what is the essence of worship. I personally have profited a lot by reading his commentaries. Therefore I want to share with you what has been of great use to me in the path towards Allah. Speaking about the last two verses he says:

“The blessed servant and the blissful employee is one who pleases his master and neglects not a syllable of his directions and hears words of approval and praise from his lord. This is the one who combines in his person the three qualities fully and does not offend his master by his dishonesty or unfairness nor injure him through negligence or ignorance and becomes a well-liked servant. These are the three conditions for those who follow the ways of their Lord seeking fully His guidance: We worship Thee; is the first condition, We implore Thy help; is the second, and: Guide us along the straight path, is the third. Felicity is, therefore, for those who combine these three in their person and turn wholly to their God. They observe all the requirements of reverence in their attitude towards their Lord and pursue their way to Him fulfilling all conditions without falling short in any manner. These are the people with whom Allah is pleased and they are pleased with Him. They enter the sanctum of Holiness in peace.

Since these conditions are matters of weight for one who takes to the paths of light, Allah the Wise made them ingredients of prayer, so that the spiritual wayfarer may reflect deeply on them like persons of sagacity and so that the way of the dishonest may become manifest (Karamatus Sadiqeen,pp. 104-106).

This extract is taken from the first book that the Promised Messiah wrote in Arabic. You will note that Hazrat Masih Maood ^as says it here and elsewhere that the blessed servant is the one who receives words of praise from his Lord or Master. The blessed servants start receiving words of approval from their Lord in this world. They do not have to wait to die before they come to know whether Allah is happy or unhappy with them. During his three or four past Friday sermons the Ahmadiyya Caliph has been speaking about how Allah is the friend of the believers. But most of the examples that he gives are from past history. Up till now I have not read or heard that he has said that in these days Allah is revealing Himself to him or to the members of the Jamaat and He is telling them such and such things. However, as far as we are concerned we are repeatedly telling the world that as promised by Allah, this humble one being a true servant of Allah and a true follower of Hazrat Mohammad ^saw and Ahmad ^as  is a recipient of divine revelations quite often. By the Grace of Allah for the past eleven months I have noted about more than 300 of such revelations. Allah be praised  for Allah who sent His Messiah to help us to know the right path (siratam moustaqim) and who has blessed us to be among His honorable servants. Did not the Promised Messiah say in the Revealed sermon (Khutbah Ilhamiyya) “Laa waliya ba’di illa min ahdi”. The translation is “there will be no wali after me except the one who is in my bai’at.” We have already talked about this quotation elsewhere. There is no need to repeat what we have already said again.

In another extract he says:

“The essence of the worship that is acceptable to the Lord in His beneficence is whole-hearted submission, in the face of His magnificence and the majesty of His glory and His glorification on the observation of His beneficence and His bounties and preferring Him over everyone, in love of Him and in contemplation of His praiseworthiness and His beauty and His luminance and purging the heart of all satanic insinuations with an eye to His heaven.

The highest worship is constant watchfulness over the five daily Prayer services in the early portion of their timing and to endeavour with eager attention to derive the utmost blessing therefrom, through strict observance of obligatory and voluntary parts. For, Prayer (Salat) is a mount that carries the worshipper to the Lord of men, transporting him to a station he could not reach on the back of fast-running horses. The object of Prayer cannot be achieved with arrows, and its mystery cannot be unfolded by pens. Whoso makes this method obligatory on himself arrives at the truth and discovers the reality and meets the Friend Who is hidden behind the screens of invisibility and is delivered from doubt and uncertainty. His days become bright, his words shine like pearls, his face becomes refulgent like the full moon and his station is elevated. Whoso makes himself lowly before Allah in Prayer will find that God makes kings humble before him and makes such slave a master….”

He goes on to add:

“In Surah Fatiha Allah praises Himself first in His words: All praise belongs to Allah the Lord of Universal Providence; and then urges His creatures to His own worship through His words: We worship Thee alone and we implore Thee alone for help. This emphasizes that the true worshipper is the one who praises Him as He ought to be praised. Thus Allah raises to the dignity called Ahmad him who devotes himself to His worship. This entails that there should be an Ahmad among the Muslim people in the latter period as there had been in the early period the Ahmad, the Chief of creation, so that it may be realized that the Fatiha Prayer is heard in the august Presence of the Hearer of prayers and that his appearance is a sign of the acceptance of prayer. This Ahmad is the Messiah whose advent in the latter age had been promised in the Fatiha and in the Quran. This verse also conveys that it is not possible for a person to worship truly without the grant of strength from the Presence of the One, the only Lord. One of the elements of worship is that you should love your enemy as you love yourself and your children, and that you should overlook the faults of others and forbear and be good-hearted and pure-minded, upright and clean-living and loyal and virtuous, free from evil inclinations; and that you should be of service to mankind with a natural inclination like that of some vegetables, without formality and without affectation; and that you should not hurt your less fortunate brother with your arrogance, nor injure him with harsh words. It is obligatory on you to respond to your aggrieved brother with courtesy and never speak to him contemptuously. You should die before your death and count yourself among the dead. Honour your visitor even if he be dressed in tattered rags and not in gorgeous robes and new garments. Greet with the salutation of peace, both the acquaintance and the stranger and be ever ready to share the burdens of others (Ijazul Masih, pp. 161-165).”

These are the teachings of Hazrat Ahmad ^as. As far as we are concerned we are trying to imbibe these teachings in our life and we tell others to do the same. But unfortunately we cannot say the same things for our brothers and sisters from the mainstream Ahmadis. If you have a problem with their caliph, they adopt the problem for themselves and they behave accordingly. They will show through their ignoble behavior how they do not care for what Allah and His Prophet ^saw say but they will obey their caliph and his administration. In Islam no one is above the law. Those who say that it pains them to take some measures against some members are acquiescing how far they have failed in trying to reform the people. I advise Ahmadis generally and those in Mauritius particularly to examine these teachings of Hazrat Ahmad ^as and wonder how far they have miserably failed in putting them into practice. Previously jokingly it was said of Christian priest that they used to say “Do what I ask you to do; don’t do what I do!” These days this should apply to some Ahmadis as well.

In another comment Hazrat Masih Maood^as says:

“There is no greater boon for a man than that he should hate sin, and that God, the Supreme, may be pleased to safeguard him against disobedience. But this cannot be attained merely through effort or merely by prayer but through both jointly; as God, the Exalted, has taught: We worship Thee alone and we implore Thy help. This means that one employs one's God-granted powers and capacities in the best manner and commits the result to God with the supplication addressed to the Supreme Lord: I have made use of the powers and capacities Thou hast granted me (this is the meaning of: We worship Thee) and then seeks His help in the later stages praying: We implore Thy help.”

All those who try to get rid of their sins can easily testify how difficult it is. In fact those who are confronted with such difficulties are not diehard sinners. They are those who do not commit the great sins like murder, rape or theft or even spreading calumnies. Such people are those who find it difficult to control their anger or to let their eyes rove wherever there are women or regret prayers that they have not done on time or they may regret wasting their time in worldly pursuits. These are the people who when they are steadfast in telling Allah “Thee alone do we worship and from thee alone do we seek help”, in the end Allah helps them to avoid all these minor sins which was a source of great uneasiness for them. They strive and they seek help also.

In a further comment he says:

“One who does not make use of his God-granted powers and faculties but seeks help merely through prayer is in error. How can he ever succeed in his objective (Al-Badr, March 1,1904)?

The believer makes use of both effort and prayer. He plans well and puts forth his best effort and then leaving the matter in the hands of God, prays. This is the teaching imparted in the very first chapter of the Holy Quran: We worship Thee alone and pray to Thee for help. One who does not use his talents, not only destroys them and slights them but commits a sin (Al-Hakam, March 10, 1904).”

From these extracts we understand that we should put to use all our God-given faculties and then Allah will grant us His help. If we just sit idle and pray we will be the losers.

In the last extract that I will read today Hazrat Masih says:

“When a person says: “We worship Thee and implore Thy help” and sets out with sincerity and loyalty, then God, the Sublime, causes to spring forth a wide stream of righteousness which flows down on his heart filling it with the spirit of righteousness. Man approaches with a paltry offering, but Allah, the Exalted, bestows on him a precious gift of immense value. In this situation it behoves man so to deport himself that righteousness should become his outstanding insignia. He is then granted a volume of insights and verities and such strength that no one can stand in opposition to him (Al-Hakam, May 17, 1905).

In humility, I can testify that I have been in search of Allah since I was quite young. With my brothers and my sisters and our parents we have spent hours together talking about several aspects of the teachings of Ahmadiyyat as we were learning from the books of the Promised Messiah and his caliphs. What Hazrat Masih says in the above extract has been quite true for us. We were sincere in our search and Allah has blessed us with spiritual blessings that have not been given to others. The praise is His not ours. We are just humble servants that He has honored. We pray and hope that the Favours He has granted us will stay with us and we will share them with any willing person who would like to partake of it. We also pray that our future generations also will be a group who will always be submissive to Allah and they will partake of all these blessings incha Allah.