I seek refuge with Allah from Satan, the accursed. In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. We praise Him and invoke His Blessings on His noble Prophet.
With the Grace and Mercy of Allah.
He alone is the Helper.
We render countless thanks to Allah, the Most High, Who has endowed us with powers and capacities whereby we can attain to the highest plane of progress, and has equipped us with the wings of perception and knowledge whereby we can fly into the heights of the spiritual heavens, and Who, seeing our shortcomings and weaknesses, has revealed to us the secrets of spiritual remedies and has sent to us, to heal our ills, spiritual physicians, who have cured us and conferred on us added strength and power. Again we render grateful thanks to Allah, the Most Compassionate, Who infused His Love into our hearts and then made us happy with His meeting; Who caused us to taste the cup of His Love and then made us drink deep from the cup of Union; Who, in this age of Darkness, when seekers after Truth were groping blindly in the gloom, caused the Sun of His Knowledge to appear, and raised His Messenger and Prophet, Hazrat Ahmad (as) in the East, and dispelled the darkness of doubt and misgiving with the rays of His Light. He then caused the breeze of His Grace to blow and the clouds of His Mercy to pour forth life-giving rain, so that all parched lands be refreshed, and the world become one smiling garden of Purity and Righteousness after it had been a barren wilderness so that men should draw the breath of Life and Happiness after they had become rotten and dead.
We invoke blessings on His Holy Prophet, Muhammad (sas), through whom was caused to flow that Fountain which shall never run dry and through whom were opened the Gates of Divine Knowledge which shall never be shut on those who seek.
Lastly, we pray to Allah, the Most High, that He may be pleased, in the fulfilment of His Divine Promises, to guide the world towards Truth and Righteousness, and enable it to accept the Truth so that Peace may reign on Earth, and strife and discord may vanish and men may attain to true happiness which can only be found in Union with God. Amen!
I must next give expression to the pleasure that I feel on finding that God has, in fulfilment of His Word which He had revealed in the Holy Quran over thirteen hundred years ago, enabled the conveners of the Conference of Religions in London to collect all of us together in this Gathering. I have in mind the following verses of the Holy Book:
‘To bear witness to the fact that Truth shall prevail in the end, I call attention to the gatherings in which people shall sit in rows, and to the committees which shall convene such gatherings, and which shall not permit anybody to infringe another’s rights, and the persons who shall read papers on the beauties of the different religions; the efforts of all these will lead but to one conclusion—that God is One, the Lord of the Heavens and of the Earth and of all that is between them, the Lord of the East as of the West. We have adorned the nearest spiritual heavens with stars, charging them to guard the Truth from the attacks of all those who lead astray, and those who have renounced allegiance to God.’1
I now turn to the subject on which I have been asked to address you, viz., the Ahmadiyya Movement. Before I discuss its purely religious aspects, I deem it advisable to make a brief reference to its history and its present extent and strength.
1 Al-Saffat, 37:2-8.