Suggestion to ConvertThe Review of Religions
Truth About the Split
In 1905, a suggestion was made by The Watan that if The Review of Religions should refrain from making any mention of the Promised Messiah (as), and devote itself solely to propagating the general principles of Islam, then it would be possible for the general body of Muslims outside the Ahmadiyya Community to support and subscribe to The Review.
Khwaja Sahib at once consented to act on the suggestion, and proposed that The Review should have an appendix attached to it and in that appendix should be published matters connected specially with the Ahmadiyya Movement, the body of the magazine to contain only topics connected with the general principles of Islam. The proposal raised such a storm of protest that at last Khwaja Sahib had to give in and the whole idea had to be abandoned. But this proposal by Khwaja Sahib and Maulawi Muhammad Ali served to encourage one Dr. Abdul Hakim, who had already for some time been labouring under the influence of certain heterodox notions, to initiate correspondence with the Promised Messiah (as). The apparent occasion of the correspondence was the understanding which Khwaja Sahib had entered into with the editor of The Watan with regard to The Review of Religions, but in the course of this correspondence were formulated for the first time certain doctrines which subsequently proved to be the basic principles of the Lahore seceders.
Dr. Abdul Hakim wrote his first letter to the Promised Messiah (as) early in 1906, the purport of which was as follows:
(1) That it should be legal for us to offer prayers behind other Muslims, except such as designated us as kuffar.
(2) That the proposal made by Khwaja Kamaluddin and Maulawi Muhammad Ali with regard to The Review of Religions should be accepted and carried out.
(3) That the claims of the Promised Messiah (as) were subordinate to Islam and not fundamental to it; the presentation of his claims, therefore, should not be allowed to stand in the way of propagation of Islam.
(4) That in the order of presentation some scientific method should be followed. The more general principles pertaining to Shirk (polytheistic tendencies) and Bid‘at (innovations) should be presented to the public before the presentation of the personal claims of the Promised Messiah (as).
(5) That undue prominence should not be given to the question of the death of Jesus. Other doctrines of Islam should also receive due attention.
(6) That the moral tone of the Ahmadiyya Community should receive special attention for its improvement.
(7) That the Ahmadiyya Community had proved slack in the work of propagation, which duty required their special attention. They had ceased to show ordinary courtesies to non-Ahmadis, although remissness in propagation was primarily their own fault.
(8) That the true guides to Islam were healthy instincts and a sound teaching, not merely prophecies. It was, therefore, the greatest temerity to speak of the teachings of the Holy Qur’an as dead. (The reference here is to what was said in reply to the suggestion made by The Watan, viz. that all omission of the Promised Messiah (as) would leave only a dead Islam for presentation to the world—Author). If Ahmad and Muhammad were not different in their teachings, why should the teachings of Muhammad in the form in which they had been presented to the world during the last 13 centuries be now regarded as obsolete. There could be no greater insult to Islam than to suppose that the mainstay of its life depended upon a personality which appeared in the world thirteen hundred years after the advent of Islam.
(9) That this was an age of learning and much good would have accrued from the presentation of philosophical interpretations of the Holy Qur’an. The Appendix proposed for The Review of Religions might have been printed separately, and subscribed to exclusively by members of the Community. This arrangement would have increased the circulation of The Review of Religions. But, unfortunately, Ahmadis chose to follow the path of narrow-mindedness, and while non-Ahmadis offered to break down barriers, Ahmadis themselves worked to keep them erect.
In another letter Dr. Adbul Hakim wrote: "What! do you think that not one out of thirteen crores of Muslims is truly God-fearing and righteous, that the spiritual influence of Muhammad has ceased to work in the entire mass of Muslims, that Islam has become altogether a body without life, that the Holy Qur’an has altogether lost its influence, that God and
Muhammad (sa) and the Holy Qur’an and the Divinely planted instincts and human reason, have all alike become outworn and useless, so that outside your own Community there remains no righteous person either in the general body of Muslims or in the mass of mankind, and that they have all turned black-hearted, doers of black deeds and inmates of Hell?"
At this place, I do not propose to state what answers the Promised Messiah (as) gave to the questions of Dr. Abdul Hakim. I propose to discuss these questions further on and in more detail. Here I should like only to state what the Promised Messiah (as) wrote in reply: "If you are worried by the question—how can it be that the multitudes who are not members of our Community have no righteous persons among them—then, pursuing the same trend of thought you might also ask whether millions of Jews and Christians who reject the truth of Islam have no righteous persons among them. At any rate, when God has been pleased to reveal it to me that every person who has heard my call and failed to accept my claim, is not to be considered a Muslim, and is answerable before God for it—then under the circumstances, how can it be that I should overlook this Divine command at the instance of a person whose heart is enwrapped in a thousand shrouds of darkness? It is better that I should cut off such a person from the body of my Jama‘at. Accordingly, I hereby and from to-day excommunicate you from my Jama‘at."
The immediate effect of this sharp and severe chastisement by the Promised Messiah (as) was that no other member of the Community at the time could gather courage to support and subscribe to the views expressed by Abdul Hakim. But, nevertheless, it would appear that the ideas had already found deep root in the hearts of some members of the Community, and chief among them was Khwaja Kamaluddin. Facts go to show that the faith of Khwaja Kamaluddin at this time had already begun to crumble. His subsequent writings make it clear that he really had fallen a victim to these views of Dr. Abdul Hakim, and today it is an open secret that it is just these views which Khwaja Kamaluddin advocates.