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

Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad^as , the founder of Jamaat Ahmadiyya declared himself to be the Promised Messiah and Mahdi for all Muslims. But the majority of Muslims rejected him and his message and they believed their own religious scholars. Most of the religious scholars of his time even signed a fatwa of Takfir against him and his followers. Takfir means to declare someone to be a non Muslim and he should be killed. While he was living the greatest enemy of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad ^as was Molvi Hussein of Batala, a village near Qadian. He was a friend of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad^as and he even praised him and his book “Buraheen Ahmadiyya” in his magazine ishaa’atoush Sunnah. But later one when the Promised Messiah said that he has been appointed Promised Messiah he rejected his claims and vehemently opposed him till his death.

In many of his declarations the Promised Messiah explained that he believed in all the tenets of Islam and as such he was a Muslim. He tried through his writings and speeches to reason with his opponents but most of them blindly adhered to their wrong notions of takfir and sought to harm him and his followers. Many were molested and some were even killed during the Messiah’s own lifetime. But the persecution of Ahmadis has been going on throughout the twentieth century and it culminated with the passing of a resolution in 1974 by the world Islamic Mission that Ahmadis are not Muslims. Consequently many Ahmadis have lost their lives in Pakistan and elsewhere. The place where Ahmadis suffered the brunt of persecution was indeed Pakistan. Bigoted Mullahs prey upon simple minded and ignorant people’s mind and incite them to kill Ahmadis and to go to Paradise.

But many times the Ahmadiyya caliphs have warned Pakistan that such attitudes on their part will throw the whole country in a spiral of violence from which it will not be able to recover. Hence in that particular country due to a rigid and narrow-minded interpretation of Islam many young men became Jihadists and thus they killed wantonly those who were thought to represent another Islam. It was against such a background that Benazir Bhutto was killed and more than 3000 people have been killed since the beginning of last year in suicide attacks. Similarly the Bin laden interpretation of Islam tried to destabilize Saudi Arabia but fortunately up till now they have been contained.

The misery that the idea of takfir has brought about is so horrible in the Muslim World that many right-minded person started thinking that something was wrong somewhere with the Islam that they were practicing. The founder of Jamaat Ahmadiyya explained under what circumstances Jihad was permitted and he explained that these days such circumstances do not exist and hence there was no need for Jihad. Because of his ideas he and his adherents were declared to be beyond the pale of Islam. But throughout the years our leaders have said that no one has any authority to declare anyone Muslim or not Muslim. Matters of belief is an individual matter and that according to the Shariah if one says one is a Muslim it has to be accepted as such. But such advices were ignored.

Then came 11^th September 2001. 19 Muslims mainly from Saudi Arabia killed more than 3000 innocent people in the USA followed by the Bali, Madrid and London bombings where many innocent people lost their lives. Following 9/11, USA attacked Afghanistan and later on they invaded Iraq in 2003. They are still at these places. As a result there have been many suicide bombings in both these places and most of the victims have been Muslims. Slowly the fighting spread to Pakistan and there almost every day we hear someone has blown himself up killing many other innocent people in the wake. In many Muslim countries people are not safe.

In order to try to stem this tide and to spread the real teachings of Islam to the Muslim world, King Abdullah II of Jordan took an initiative in 2004 which culminated in what is known as The Amman Message. Amman as you know is the capital of Jordan. I quote from their website. It says:

“The Amman Message started as a detailed statement released the eve of the 27th of Ramadan 1425 AH / 9th November 2004 CE by H.M. King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein in Amman, Jordan. It sought to declare what Islam is and what it is not, and what actions represent it and what actions do not. Its goal was to clarify to the modern world the true nature of Islam and the nature of true Islam.

In order to give this statement more religious authority, H.M. King Abdullah II then sent the following three questions to 24 of the most senior religious scholars from all around the world representing all the branches and schools of Islam: (1) Who is a Muslim? (2) Is it permissible to declare someone an apostate (takfir)? (3) Who has the right to undertake issuing fatwas (legal rulings)?

Based on the fatwas provided by these great scholars (who included the Shaykh Al-Azhar;Ayatollah Sistani and Sheikh Qaradawi), in July 2005 CE, H.M. King Abdullah II convened an international Islamic conference of 200 of the world's leading Islamic scholars' Ulama) from 50 countries. In Amman, the scholars unanimously issued a ruling on three fundamental issues (which became known as the 'Three Points of the Amman Message'):

1.      They specifically recognized the validity of all 8 Mathhabs (legal schools) of Sunni, Shi'a and Ibadhi Islam; of traditional Islamic Theology (Ash'arism); of Islamic Mysticism (Sufism), and of true Salafi thought, and came to a precise definition of who is a Muslim.

2.      Based upon this definition they forbade takfir (declarations of apostasy) between Muslims.

3.      Based upon the Mathahib they set forth the subjective and objective preconditions for the issuing of fatwas, thereby exposing ignorant and illegitimate edicts in the name of Islam.

These Three Points were then unanimously adopted by the Islamic World's political and temporal leaderships at the Organization of the Islamic Conference summit at Mecca in December 2005. And over a period of one year from July 2005 to July 2006, the Three Points were also unanimously adopted by six other international Islamic scholarly assemblies, culminating with the International Islamic Fiqh Academy of Jeddah, in July 2006. In total, over 500 leading Muslim scholars worldwide unanimously endorsed the Amman Message and its Three Points.

This amounts to a historical, universal and unanimous religious and political consensus (ijma') of the Ummah (nation) of Islam in our day, and a consolidation of traditional, orthodox Islam. The significance of this is: (1) that it is the first time in over a thousand years that the Ummah has formally and specifically come to such a pluralistic mutual inter-recognition; and (2) that such a recognition is religiously legally binding on Muslims since the Prophet (may peace and blessings be upon him) said: My Ummah will not agree upon an error (Ibn Majah, Sunan, Kitab al-Fitan, Hadith no.4085).”

In brief we may say that almost 100 years after Mirza Ghulam Ahmad ^as declared that it is not proper to declare Muslims who adhere to the tenets of Islam as  Kafir, the world of Islam suddenly wakes up from it sleep to accept that idea.  I say the world of Islam because more than 500 scholars from several countries including one even from Mauritius  have signed this document. Similarly recently a prominent Pakistani scholar known as Dr Tahir Qadri issued a 600 page fatwa with great fanfare to condemn terrorism whereas two or three verses of the Holy are enough to lead any reasonable Muslim to this conclusion.

Furthermore recently a conference was held by  prominent Muslim scholars in Mardin in southeastern Turkey where they have recast a famous medieval fatwa on jihad. They argue that the religious edict radical Islamists often cite to justify killing cannot be used in a globalized world that respects faith and civil rights.  They   declared that the fatwa issued by 14th century scholar Ibn Taymiyya rules out militant violence and the medieval Muslim division of the world into a “house of Islam” and “house of unbelief” no longer applies. Ibn Taimiyya is greatly revered by the Saudis. His voluminous books are freely available from there. He lived from 1263–1328 in Syria. He wrote profusely about the causes of Muslim decline and the need for a return to the Quran and Sunna to stem the decline.Osama bin Laden has often quoted Ibn Taymiyya’s “Mardin fatwa” repeatedly in his calls for Muslims to overthrow the Saudi monarchy and wage jihad against the United States.

Referring to that historic document, the weekend conference said: “Anyone who seeks support from this fatwa for killing Muslims or non-Muslims has erred in his interpretation.  “It is not for a Muslim individual or a Muslim group to announce and declare war or engage in combative jihad … on their own,” said the declaration.

My point in quoting these developments is that Allah sent someone to revive the Muslims faith and fate. But the Muslims as a whole ignored what they were warned against and they had to suffer plenty of misery and ignominy and they are still suffering. They are facing problems for which they do have any solutions for the time being. Now that they have redefined the meaning of Muslim through the Amman declaration they should follow through and declare that they have been mistaken in declaring the Ahmadis Non Muslims. If they are true to their words the signatories from Pakistan including Dr Tahir Qadri should unequivocally declare that they were wrong in branding the Ahmadis non Muslims.

I will now end by giving you some extracts from the writings of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahamd ^as on the important subject of jihad. Incha Allah in future sermons we  will speak further on this subject to show the prescience of the founder of Jamaat Ahmadiyya and how by following his teachings one will stay on the right path. He says:

“The philosophy and true nature of jihad is a matter both complex and subtle. Grave errors have been made both in our age and in the middle age [of Islam] because people failed to understand this subject. It is with great embarrassment that I am forced to admit that these dangerous mistakes have exposed the holy religion of Islam, which is a mirror of the laws of nature and a manifestation of God’s glory, to the criticism of its opponents…..

Why did Islam come to need jihad and what is jihad ? I would now like to address this question. It needs to be understood that Islam was forced to confront great difficulties from its very inception, and all nations stood opposed to it. When a Prophet or Messenger comes from God, his followers are perceived to be  a promising, truthful, righteous and progressive group that is likely to advance quickly. Pre-existing communities and religious sects inevitably begin to develop a certain kind of anger and jealousy towards them. Religious experts and leaders are particularly vocal about expressing such feelings because arrival of a man of God leads to a change in their incomes and prestige. Their students and disciples begin to emerge from their trap because they find all excellent qualities of faith, morality and knowledge in the person who is from God. Those possessing sense and discrimination therefore begin to understand that these scholars do not deserve the respect that they had been previously accorded on the basis of educational accomplishment, piety and abstinence. Exalted titles such as Najm-ul-Ummah [Star of the Nation], Shams-ul-Ummah [Sun of the Nation], Sheikh-ul-Masha’ikh [Leader of the Honourable] and so forth no longer befit them. Sensible people who do not wish to lose their faith therefore turn away from these scholars. Religious scholars and patriarchs have always been jealous of God’s Prophets and Messengers because of the foregoing losses. The members of this faction are in fact deficient; they possess very little of Divine light and their flaws are totally exposed during a Prophet or Messenger’s time. Their egos give rise to hostility towards God’s Prophets and the righteous, and they selfishly devise plans to injure them. Such people sometimes even know in their hearts that they have fallen under God’s wrath by unjustly persecuting his pure-hearted man. Their instinctive actions against the righteous indicate the guilty state of their hearts, and the fire of their jealousy—moving like a fast locomotive—pushes them towards the abyss of hatred.”

This message of Hazrat Ahmad ^as is addressed to non Ahmadis  as well as Ahmadis because unfortunately most Ahmadis these days are exhibiting the attitude of non Ahmadis of yore.