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

I will continue again today to tell you about some more comments that Hazrat Masih Maood ^as made on Sura al Fatiha. As you might recall the Holy Prophet Mohammad ^saw said that the noblest, the best supplication is Al Fatiha. You should make it a habit during your prayers to understand and reflect over all the words of Sura Al Fatiha. In it are teachings that are unfolded slowly depending upon how much you reflect upon it. Since not everyone can dive into this deep ocean of divine knowledge so we need to learn from someone to whom Allah gave access to it. So I advise you to read the book about the commentaries of Hazrat Masih Maood^as on this important chapter of the Holy Quran. You can download it from www.alisam.org /library.  You will then understand the depth of your ignorance about this Sura. May Allah enable each one of us to understand and to practice.

In one extract Hazrat Masih Maood^as says:

These verses urge towards grateful appreciation of gifts that have been granted and towards steadfast supplication for that which is needful and towards eagerness for whatever is perfect and excellent so that the worshipper may be steadfastly grateful. They also urge towards non-reliance on one's own competence and ability and towards throwing oneself before the Holy One in hope and expectancy, persisting in supplication and prayer in humility with glorification and praise, in a state between fear and hope, like a suckling infant in the arms of the wet-nurse, dead to the rest of creation and everything on earth

These verses also urge towards confession and acknowledgement that we are weak and cannot carry out the duties of Thy worship without Thy help and cannot seek the ways of Thy pleasure without support and that we can act only with Thy help and can move only with Thy succor and hasten to Thee like mothers pining over the deaths of their children and like lovers who are on fire with love. They urge also towards discarding pride and arrogance and towards holding fast to the power and might of Allah when affairs become involved and hardships pile up and towards joining the company of those who are lowly of heart as if the Lord of glory were saying: O My servants, regard yourselves as corpses and ever seek strength from Allah. Let not a youth take pride in his vigor, nor an old one rely on his staff, nor a wise one feel elated with his intelligence nor a scholar trust in the accuracy of his knowledge, or the soundness of his understanding or the keenness of his intellect, nor let a recipient of Divine revelation depend for support on his inspiration and revelation and the fervor of his prayers. Allah does what He pleases, rejects whom He pleases and admits among His chosen ones whom He pleases.

The phrase: We implore only Thy help; warns of the great wickedness of the evil prompting ego which frisks away from virtue like the unbroken she-camel from its would-be rider, or which is like a vicious reptile who cleans up its victim like a bleached bone, emitting venom all the time, or is like a lion who is not diverted once it leaps. There is no power, no strength, no earning and no substance except with the help of Allah Who annihilates the satans. There are other implications in placing: We worship Thee alone; before: We seek only Thy help; which we propose to set down here for the benefit of those who are enamoured of the verses of the Fatiha, and not of the music of guitars, and run to them like eager devotees. Allah here teaches His servants a prayer which is a source of happiness for them and says, in effect: O My servants, beg of Me with humility and in lowliness of spirit: Our Lord, we worship Thee alone, but we have to struggle hard and have to grapple with affectation and remorse and distractions and satanic insinuations and confusing ideas and superstitions and dark thoughts like the muddy waters of a flood, and like one who gathers fuel in the dark we follow only conjecture and we are not firmly anchored in faith. In this situation we seek only Thy help. We beg Thee for the gift of keenness, eagerness and readiness of heart and overflowing faith and spiritual response and joy and light and for embellishing our hearts with the decor of truth and the garments of delight, so that, by Thy grace, we may win through to certainty of faith, and achieve our highest goals and arrive at the ocean of Reality.

In the phrase: We worship Thee alone; Allah, the Supreme, urges His servants to put forth, in their obedience to Him, the utmost energetic effort, standing upright, constantly responding to His call, with: Lord, we spare no pains in our striving and in observing Thy commands and in seeking Thy pleasure; but we seek Thy help and Thy protection against pride and self-esteem and beg of Thee to grant us the strength that would lead us to Thy guidance and to winning Thy pleasure. We are firm in our obedience to Thee and in Thy worship; so write us down among those who submit to Thee. There is yet another point to be noted in this context. The worshipper declares: Lord, we have adopted Thee alone for worship, preferring Thee over all else and we adore nothing save Thy countenance and we believe in Thy Unity.”(Karamatus Sadeqeen)

Developing these ideas further Hazrat Masih Maood ^as tells us that the way Allah has taught us to offer this prayer is such that we include all other Muslim brothers and sisters in it. The prayer is very inclusive and not at all exclusive. So when we pray for all Muslims to receive benefits from Allah how can we exclude a group by excluding them from our midst?  Those who institute such unislamic practices should reflect well on the following words of Hazrat Masih Maood ^as:

“Give one another gifts of prayer in mutual affection. In this verse Allah, the Lord of Glory and Majesty, has instructed the use of the first person plural, conveying thereby that this prayer is for the benefit of all brothers and not only for the benefit of the supplicant. Thus Allah urges the Muslims towards mutual accord, unity and love and requires that a supplicant should put himself to hardship for the promotion of his brother's welfare as he would put himself to hardship for the promotion of his own well-being and should concern himself with and strive to meet his brother's needs as he is concerned with and strives to meet his own needs, making no distinction between himself and his brother, and should be his brother's well-wisher, with all his heart as if Allah, the Sublime, had commanded: O My servants, give one another gifts of prayer as brothers and friends exchange gifts, and widen the scope of your prayers and your motives and your aims, making room in them for your brethren and become like brothers and fathers and sons in mutual affection (Karamatus Sadiqeen,).

Since we are speaking about how we should feel a sense of complete deprivation vis-a-vis Allah I am reminded of the hadith which vividly depicts this situation. Some time back I did tell you about this hadith. But since we are prone to forget I will share it again with you so that you might benefit from it. It is reported by Muslim, Tirmidhi and Ibn Majah on the authority of Abu Dharr al-Ghifari (may Allah be pleased with him) that from among the sayings he relates from his Lord, the Prophet (peace be upon him) (may He be glorified) said that Allah said:

“O My servants, I have forbidden oppression for Myself and have made it forbidden amongst you, so do not oppress one another. O My servants, all of you are astray except for those I have guided, so seek guidance of Me and I shall guide you, O My servants, all of you are hungry except for those I have fed, so seek food of Me and I shall feed you. O My servants, all of you are naked except for those I have clothed, so seek clothing of Me and I shall clothe you. O My servants, you sin by night and by day, and I forgive all sins, so seek forgiveness of Me and I shall forgive you. O My servants, you will not attain harming Me so as to harm Me, and will not attain benefitting Me so as to benefit Me. O My servants, were the first of you and the last of you, the human of you and the jinn of you to be as pious as the most pious heart of any one man of you, that would not increase My kingdom in anything. O My servants, were the first of you and the last of you, the human of you and the jinn of you to be as wicked as the most wicked heart of any one man of you, that would not decrease My kingdom in anything. O My servants, were the first of you and the last of you, the human of you and the jinn of you to rise up in one place and make a request of Me, and were I to give everyone what he requested, that would not decrease what I have, any more that a needle decreases the sea if put into it. O My servants, it is but your deeds that I reckon up for you and then recompense you for, so let him who finds good praise Allah and let him who finds otherthan that blame no one but himself.”

I think if we reflect on this hadith from time to time definitely we will develop in ourselves all the noble qualities that Hazrat Masih Maood^as has been talking about above. May Allah open the heart of all Muslims that we may always tread this path which will definitely lead us to Him without any false pride and without doing any harm to any of His creatures.

Today the mainstream Ahmadiyya Jamaat ofMauritius is holding its Jalsa Salana. I had the opportunity of casting a glance upon the program. The content is the usual one.  The program usually contains the translation of the caliph’s speeches from Jalsa Salana UK. Hence one will expect the Amir to tell the members about the accomplishments of the Jamaat in the different fields of activities. And of course as expected some orators will be there to nourish the wrong notions of khilafat that the Ahmadis should entertain in order to preserve the system. However on 26^th July 2009, the caliph Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad delivered an eighty minutes speech about the subject of “Revelation” and nowhere have I seen that anyone will present even a  summary of that speech. The reason is quite obvious. Once the Ahmadis hear what their caliph has said they will come to know that there is no contradiction between what he has said and what I have been saying since a long time. And of course the actual leaders of the Jamaat in Mauritius do not have enough intellectual and spiritual insights to explain these contradictions and they will land themselves in trouble. Hence they ignored the speech completely.

So for their benefit I have spent some hours translating the caliph’s speech into English so that everyone who is conversant with English but unfamiliar with Urdu may know what the caliph said. A transcript of that speech has been posted on our website together with a few questions that I am asking the caliph to answer.

8 Questions to Mirza Masroor Ahmad following review of his Jalsa speech of 26/07/2009 (PDF)
 
A translation of this speech in English (PDF)

(click on link to view PDF file or Right click and select 'Save target as' to save a copy of file)

 If we receive his replies we will post them on our website. Let us hope that as a representative of Hazrat Masih Maood^as he dares to reply.

Some people say of me that I am a hardheaded person.  I say that what they say is true. I have convictions and I fight for them. I am ready to defend them tooth and nail. But I also keep an open mind. Should anyone prove to me with some logical Quranic arguments that I am wrong I will readily bow to his or her wisdom. I pursue TRUTH and not a partisan point of view. If I find truth with my opponents I will acknowledge it. This is my position and this is what we teach.  I challenge the mainstream Ahmadiyya Jamaat or its local and international representatives to say the same thing if they think they have TRUTH on their side. My convictions are like a view from the hill tops unlike that of those who have made themselves caves in which they hide themselves. An Ahmadi has an Ahmadiyya point of view supported by the Holy Quran and above all by the interpretations given by Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad ^as. One cannot be an Ahmadi by cultivating a Sunni mindset like those who opposed Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad ^as.

It is our hope and prayer that our brothers and sisters of yore will accept to open a public dialogue on matters that have divided us. Let us sit down and iron out these differences once for all. Since argument-wise, apparently Jamaat Ahmadiyya is very adept at winning over its opponents what do you have to lose. Victory will be yours, according to your expectations. You have nothing to lose but everything to gain. So let us start a public dialogue. I am giving you a golden opportunity to convince us. We await your acceptance of our invitation.