Your Exalted Holiness has written at thousands of places that it is not legitimate in any way to declare anyone who recites the Kalimah [the declaration of faith in Islam] and faces towards the Qiblah, as disbeliever. This clearly shows that, except for the ‘believers’ who turn disbeliever by pronouncing you to be a disbeliever, a simple failure to believe in you does not make one a disbeliever. But to ‘Abdul-Hakim Khan you have written that everyone to whom the message has been conveyed and fails to accept you is not a Muslim. There is a contradiction between this statement and the statements recorded in your earlier books. That is, you have written earlier in Tiryaqul-Qulub and elsewhere that failure to believe in you does not turn one into a disbeliever, but now you write that disbelief in you makes one a disbeliever.
Answer: It is strange that you consider the one who pronounces me to be a disbeliever and the one who does not believe in me, as two different kinds of persons; whereas, in the estimation of God, there is only one kind; for, one who does not believe in me, does so for this very reason that he considers me to be an impostor. But Allah the Exalted says that one who forges a lie against God is the greatest disbeliever from among the disbelievers, as He says:
Meaning that, there are only two kinds of arch-disbeliever, one who forges lies against God,2 and the other who denies the Word of God.
In the opinion of one who rejects me I have forged lies about God; and, if so, I become not only a disbeliever but an arch-disbeliever. But if I am not an impostor, then, without any doubt, his disbelief shall recoil upon him as promised in this verse by God Almighty Himself.
Besides this, one who does not accept me, does not accept God and His Messenger either, because the prophecy of God and His Messenger about me is on record. That is, the Prophet of God, may peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, had prophesied that the Promised Messiah shall come from amongst his ummah in the Latter Days. The Holy Prophet, may peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, also said that on the night of mi‘raj [ascension] he saw Masih Ibn-e-Maryam among those Prophets who had passed away from this world and that he saw him in the Second Heaven with Yahya the martyr [ John the Baptist]. Furthermore, God Almighty has stated in the Holy Quran that the Masih Ibn-e-Maryam had died. And, to bear witness to my truth, God manifested more than 300,000 heavenly Signs and the solar and lunar eclipses took place in the heavens in the month of Ramadan. Then how can such a person be a believer who does not believe what God and His Messenger say, who repudiates the Holy Quran, who deliberately rejects the Signs of God Almighty, and declares me an impostor despite hundreds of Signs? And if he is a believer, I would be deemed a disbeliever on account of mys fabrication; for, to him, I am an impostor. Allah the Exalted says in the Holy Quran:
Meaning that, the Bedouins of Arabia say, ‘We believe.’ Tell them, ‘You have not believed; you should [rather] say, “We have submitted”, for faith has not yet entered into your hearts.’
Therefore, when God does not call those who have submitted as ‘believers’, how can those people who blatantly reject the Word of God and do not desist from repudiating me—despite witnessing thousands of Signs manifested by God Almighty upon the earth and in the heavens—be believers in the estimation of God? They themselves aver that if I am not an impostor but am a believer, then, in that case, they have themselves become disbelievers after declaring me a liar and a disbeliever. Thus, after pronouncing me a disbeliever, they have set the seal on their own disbelief. It is the dictum of the Shariah that the one who pronounces a believer to be a disbeliever, he himself becomes a disbeliever in the end.
Now that 200 clerics have pronounced me a disbeliever, and an edict was also issued imputing disbelief to me, and it is also evident from their own edict that one who declares a believer to be a disbeliever, himself becomes disbeliever and the one who declares a disbeliever to be a believer becomes a disbeliever, too. Now, therefore, the situation can easily be remedied, provided they possess a grain of honesty and faith and are not hypocrites. They should publish a detailed proclamation concerning these clerics, mentioning each one of them by name, to the effect that all of them are disbelievers because they are guilty of pronouncing a believer to be a disbeliever. Then I shall consider them to be believers provided they do not retain any vestige of hypocrisy and do not deny manifestly visible divine miracles; otherwise, says God Almighty:
Meaning that, the hypocrites shall be cast in to the lowest depths of Hell.
The hadith also says:
Meaning that, no adulterer, when committing adultery, and no thief, while stealing, is a believer.
How then can a hypocrite in the state of hypocrisy be a believer? If the doctrine that by pronouncing a person a disbeliever one becomes a disbeliever himself is not correct, then let them show me the edict of their own clerics to this effect and I shall accept it. But if one does become a disbeliever, then publish an announcement about the disbelief of the 200 clerics, mentioning each one of them by name. After this, it will be forbidden for me to entertain any doubt about their profession of Islam provided they do not happen to suffer from any taint of hypocrisy.5
1 Who is, then, more unjust than he who forges a lies against Allah or gives the lie to His Signs (Surah al-A‘raf, 7:38)? [Publisher]
2 The term ‘unjust’ here means a disbeliever. The context is that like the impostor, one who rejects the Book of God is termed unjust. Without doubt, one who rejects the Word of God is a disbeliever. As such one who does not accept me declares that I am a disbeliever by considering me an impostor. Therefore he himself becomes a disbeliever on account of rejecting me. (Author)
3 Surah al-Hujurat, 49:15 [Publisher]
4 Surah an-Nisa’, 4:146 [Publisher]
5 As I have stated before, a person becomes a disbeliever by declaring a disbeliever to be a believer, for he denies the disbelief of one who is in reality a disbeliever. And I see that all those people who fail to believe in me consider those to be believers who have declared me to be disbeliever. Thus, even now, I do not consider the people who face the Qiblah to be disbelievers, but how can I consider those to be believers who have brought about the grounds for their disbelief with their own deeds. (Author)
