November 22, 2009
It was nearly 130 years ago, when the fate of the ‘land of Kabul' began to be written. That was some twenty-plus years prior to the incidents recounted below, when it was revealed to the founder of the Ahmadiyya Community, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, India in a vision that two ‘lambs’** will be slaughtered from among his people. It was immediately quite clear to him, he writes, that two innocents will lose their lives for the sake of following his teachings. Who, when and where was to be known afterward.
Fast-forward twenty–two years to 1902 and the first of the two ‘lambs’ was one Moulvi Abdur Rahman of Afghanistan. After having accepted the teachings and claim of Hazrat Ahmad, Moulvi Rahman was imprisoned and investigated. Once proven that he in fact followed a man who had claimed to be the Promised Messiah and, moreover, this ‘messiah’ doesn’t believe in the common notion of jihad, the religious holy war, Moulvi Rahman was sentenced to death and killed by strangulation in the jail.
Quite unique is the story of the second lamb. He was Sayed Abdul Latif, a saintly man of high standings and large following in the province of Khost, Afghanistan. He was a member and a royal advisor in the court of then ruler of Afghanistan, Amir Habibullah Khan. Once Sayed Latif was camped alongside Indo–Afghan border, negotiating on behalf of the ruler of Afghanistan to resolve the border disputes with the British; it was there he came to learn about Hazrat Ahmad and his claims. The aforementioned Moulvi Abdur Rahman was a close associated of Sayed Latif who had provided the in-depth knowledge about the Ahmadiyya beliefs as explained by Hazrat Ahmad. He liked what he had learned and paid a visit to Hazrat Ahmad in Qadian, where he accepted his claim. Just as his acceptance of a non-jihad-waging messiah was not an ordinary event, nor was his steadfastness anything ordinary as he was tortured and stoned to death for refusing to forsake the religious beliefs he had accepted at the hand of Hazrat Ahmad.
The irony of the two slaughters, however, is not in the slaughters themselves. The most extraordinary here are the reasons for which the two lambs came to be slaughtered.
Well, have you heard the word ‘jihad’ lately – especially in Afghanistan? It was about 110 years ago that the Afghan obsession with a wrong notion of ‘jihad’ and insistence on killing of the two innocent men in the name of God which doomed their motherland for ages to come. Amir Habibullah Khan, the then ruler, along with his brother, prince Sardar Nasrullah Kahn; and their court and accomplices – religious or otherwise, and the thinking people of that land, collectively wrote their own fate in blood, and the history of Afghanistan stands witness to this date that the ‘jihad’ has been haunting the condemned land of Afghanistan. Not a single day of peace has been apportioned to that nation. They wanted jihad and, oh so certainly, they got nothing but jihad - for ages to come.
You see, during the 19th century British rule of a large part of the Indian subcontinent, the Afghan rulers were making sporadic calls for Jihad preparedness against the British. Afghan territories, which had slowly become a common scene of corruption, lawlessness, diseases outbreak and famine, always provided willing fighters whose loyalties were reimbursed through the government payroll. For the rulers of Afghanistan an anti-jihadist messiah was a poor news in the first place; but to have his followers present inside the rulers’ chambers was quite another matter. If not at the time, but certainly in the future, a man like Sayed Latif with enormous following of his own could prove extremely dangerous for the future of the ruler’s family. So it was determined by the rulers and specially emphasized by his brother prince Sardar Nasrullah Khan that Sayed Latif should be punished for having abandoned their brand of Islam in favor of an anti-jihad prophet.
When Sayed Latif was accused of apostasy, he was repeatedly tried and exonerated. While he was being imprisoned, he was tried by judges, special magistrates, and finally by a 12-member Jury; but each time he was cleared of any violations of the covenants of Islam. None could find anything against him but the Afghan ruler Amir Habibullah Khan and especially the prince, Sardar Nasrullah Khan along with royal religious clergy stood resolute against letting him live. At the end they found two men of authority who were willing to find Sayed Latif guilty on a technicality. As a result he was found to have committed a blasphemous act by accepting the anti-jihadist teachings and the Messiahship claim of Hazrat Ahmad; thus the anti-jihad position being an act of conspiracy against the state of Afghanistan.
Sayed Latif wasn't afraid of dying nor was his honor any matter of concern for him. He had already bargained away his life and honor in exchange for his faith. But he did warn the rulers and the court about the calamities that might befall Amir Habibullah Khan's family and the land of Afghanistan for invoking the name of God for such heinous intentions that were nothing but creations of their own minds and justifications for own motives.
Sayed Latif wasn't afraid of dying nor was his honor any matter of concern for him. He had already bargained away his life and honor in exchange for his faith. But he did warn the rulers and the court about the calamities that might befall Amir Habibullah Khan's family and the land of Afghanistan for invoking the name of God for such heinous intentions that were nothing but creations of their own minds and justifications for own motives.
With guilty verdict in hand, Amir Habibullah Khan approved a sentence of death-by-stoning and Prince Nasrullah Khan and the royal religious clergy hurriedly planed to carry out the sentence. With some 200 lbs of punishing weights on his body, Sayed Latif was led from jail to the venue where the stoning was hastily planed.
Sayed Latif was placed in a waist-deep hole in the ground. Amir Habibullah Khan offered him one last chance to repent and renounce the messiah who was behind the spread of the anti-jihad teachings. At the refusal by Sayed Latif to take the offer, Amir Habibullah Khan asked the Qadi, chief of the Sharia (religious law), who had signed the final guilty verdict, to through the first stone. The next to throw the stone was Amir Habibullah Khan himself and struck Sayed Latif in the head. The ‘holy act’ was then followed by the prince, Sardar Nasrullah Khan. As the stones struck, loud cries of Allah-o-Akabr (God is great) came from the frail Sayed Latif and then everyone from the clergy and many of the members of the general public moved ahead to partake from the ‘blessed’ act of killing an anti-jihadist. Within minutes Syes Latif was buried in stones and the cries of Allah-o-Akabr had fainted away.
Upon learning about the martyrdom of Sayed Latif, Hazrat Ahmad wrote: “[T]he land of Kabul shall suffer the consequences of this brutality… He [God] will not overlook this brutality and the terrible consequences of this event shall be witnessed… O’ land of Kabul! You are a witness to the most heinous crime committed on your soil. O’ miserable land! You have been condemned in the sight of God, as you are the scene of this most atrocious crime.” (Tadhkratul Shahadtain, 1903)
At the time of this event one Frank A. Martin, a British engineer was stationed in Kabul and upon his retirement in 1907 he wrote a book entitled “Under the Absolute Amir”. In this book he writes many things about Afghanistan and its rulers including the events related to the murder of Sayed Latif. Although the author misstates the claim made by Hazrat Ahmad, the chronological order of the events relating to Sayed Latif is correct for the most part. The most curious to note is the state of mind of Amir Habibullah Khan and his brother, Prince Nasrullah Khan as the paranoia about the wrath of God sets in immediately after the murder of Sayed Latif. The excerpt below is quoted from pages 201-204 of the aforementioned book.
** - The original word used by Hazrat Ahmad to describe the animal in his vision is a 'she-goat', or a female goat, more commonly known for its milk and consumed for meat.“The prince [Sardar Nasrullah Khan]'s fear, as also that of the Amir [Habibullah Khan], had a reason, however, which intensified their usual dread of the disease, and it came about in this way. One of the chief and most influential of the moullahs in the country [Sayed Abdul Latif*] started on the Haj (holy pilgrimage to Mecca) in the beginning of that year, and while going down through India, on his way to the sea-port where he intended embarking for Medina, he heard of a holy man who preached the second coming of Christ one who said that he, like another St. John, had been sent on to prepare the way, and make Christ's coming known.
The moullah went to see this man, of whom many and wonderful things were told by the natives about, and the words of the self- styled prophet were so convincing that the moullah was converted, and came to believe in the man being what he said he was. One day, it being known that the moullah was going on the Haj, the "prophet" took him into an inner room, and there, the moullah afterwards stated, the two together visited Mecca, and he saw himself one of the multitude of pilgrims at the holy shrine, and visited the inner court, and saw all there was to see, and said all the prayers prescribed in the different places before reaching the inner sanctuary. Whether mesmeric, or other influence, would account for this hallucination of the moullah is a matter for conjecture, but even death could not shake the moullah's belief that he had been to Mecca, and that his guide was a true prophet.
The Mohammedans believe that the religion preached by various prophets (Moses, Christ, Mahommed) are the true religions for the time being, and that God inspires a new religion as it becomes necessary to the advanced needs of mankind, and that, therefore, the Jewish religion was the true religion until Christ came, and the religion Christ preached was the true religion until Mohammed came. This new man, therefore, if his preaching was listened to, would upset Mohammedanism, and as he preached that Mussulmans must regard Christians as brothers, and not as infidels, this would render useless the Amir's chief weapon, Jihad (religious war), in case of English or Russian aggression. So the Amir, when he heard of all this, sent word to the moullah to return, and the moullah did so, preaching the new religion as he came, and as soon as he was well within the boundaries of the country, he was made prisoner and brought to Kabul. Here he was examined by the Amir, but the Amir could find in the moullah's clever replies nothing against the true religion which would make him an infidel, and therefore worthy of death, for a Mussulman, according to the Koran, who becomes an apostate, must be stoned to death.
He was then sent for examination to Sirdar Nasrullah Khan, who is regarded as more than a moullah in knowledge of his religion, but the prince could not convict the man out of his own mouth, and so a jury of twelve of the most learned moullahs was convened, and even their examination of the accused could elicit nothing on which the man might be killed, and they reported this to the Amir. But the Amir said the man must be convicted, and so he was again sent to the moullahs, who were told that they must sign a paper, saying the man was an apostate and worthy of death. Again the majority of the moullahs made affirmation that he was innocent of anything against their religion, but two of the moullahs, who were friends of Sirdar Nasrullah Khan, and had been talked over by him, gave their verdict for death, and on the finding of these two moullahs the man was condemned by the Amir and stoned to death. Before being led away from the Amir's presence to be killed, the moullah prophesied that a great calamity would overtake the country, and that both the Amir and the Sirdar would suffer.
About nine o'clock at night the day the moullah was killed, a great storm of wind suddenly rose and raged with violence for half an hour, and then stopped as suddenly as it came. Such a wind at night was altogether unusual, so the people said that this was the passing of the soul of the moullah. Then cholera came, and, according to former outbreaks, another visitation was not due for four years to come, and this was also regarded as part of the fulfillment of the moullah's prophecy, and hence the great fear of the Amir and the prince, who thought they saw in all this their own death, and it accounts also for the prince losing control of himself when his favourite wife died. The murdered moullah was a man with a large and powerful following, and the two moullahs who gave the verdict for his death lived in constant fear of the retaliation of his followers, who had sworn to avenge him. One of them got cholera, and almost died of it."
*-The earlier published Arabic book (Tadhkratul Shahadtain, 1903) by Hazrat Ahmat recounts this event in relation to Sayed Latif Ahmad.
Bibliography:
Ahmad, Hazrat. Tadhkaratul Shahadatain. Qadian, India: 1903.
Martin, Frank. Under the Absolute Amir. London: Harper & Brothers, 1907.
Ahmad, Sheikh Mubarik. "The Ahmadiyya Martyrs." The Muslim Sunrise. Winter 1988, p. 26-36.
Read /download the PDF book: UNDER THE ABSOLUTE AMIR | BY FRANK A. MARTIN
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