The letter to Dr Abdul Hakeem
Qadianis and the wider Muslim community have disagreed over who counts as a Muslim for almost as long as the movement has existed. As Ghulam Ahmad's claims grew in the early 1890s, many Muslim scholars declared him and his followers to be outside Islam. In some countries that view was later written into law. The best-known example is Pakistan's constitutional amendment of 1974, which declared both Qadianis and Lahoris to be non-Muslims. Qadianis today tend to present themselves as the victims of this takfir.
The takfir didn't all come from one side, though. Ghulam Ahmad and his early successors also made statements about Muslims who rejected his claims. Qadiani writers usually explain these as a reply to the fatwas issued against him: anyone who called him a kafir, they argue, had the charge turned back on himself. One passage recorded in Tadhkirah doesn't fit that explanation. It isn't limited to those who declared him a kafir. It covers everyone who heard his claim and didn't accept it:
God Almighty has conveyed it to me that every person to whom my call is conveyed and who does not accept me is not a Muslim and is accountable to God for his default (Letter addressed to Dr. Abdul Hakeem).
(Tadhkirah, English, 2004 print, p. 745)
The statement doesn't require someone to oppose Ghulam Ahmad or call him a kafir. Hearing his claim and not accepting it is enough. That would put most Muslims who know of him outside Islam. He also presents it as coming from God, not as his own view.
The same entry was in the Urdu edition of Tadhkirah until recently:
(Tadhkirah, Urdu, 4th edition, 2004, p. 519)
When a newly typeset Urdu edition was published in 2023, the entry was removed. A footnote from the publisher was added in its place:
Translation (my own):
(Publisher's note) In previous editions of Tadhkirah, a reference from the letters of Abdul Hakeem the apostate was given here, after this entry. However, because the original letter is not available, and because its transmission and content were found unsatisfactory, this reference has been removed from here.
(Tadhkirah, Urdu, 2023 typeset edition, p. 575, footnote 1)
The English edition had already made the same change, with a similar note:
In earlier editions, a citation taken from one of 'Abdul-Hakim's books appeared after this citation. That entry could not be verified during the process of preparing the second English edition. That is, it did not satisfy the requirements of riwayat and dirayat. [Publishers]
(Tadhkirah, English, 2019 reprint, p. 839, footnote 1037)
The two notes don't give quite the same reasons. The English note only says the entry "could not be verified" and failed the tests of riwayat (transmission) and dirayat (content). The Urdu note also says the original letter isn't available, and it calls Dr Abdul Hakeem a murtad, or apostate. He had been an early follower who later turned against Ghulam Ahmad.
Treating a statement with caution because it comes from a hostile witness would be fair if that were the only source. But the notes leave several things out. First, critics didn't add the entry. The Jama'at's own compilers put it in Tadhkirah, and it stayed there through several editions, including the 2004 English one. Second, neither note says what changed. The original letter wasn't available to earlier editors either, yet they accepted the entry. Third, neither note says the statement goes against Ghulam Ahmad's teaching. They only say this particular report of it can't be verified.
The last point matters, because the statement isn't known only through Dr Abdul Hakeem. In Haqiqatul Wahi, published in 1907, Ghulam Ahmad was asked about the letter directly and responded:
Question (6) 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.
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...
(The Philosophy of Divine Revelation [English translation of Haqiqatul Wahi], 2nd edition, 2023, p. 201)
This is the strongest evidence in this section, because it comes from Ghulam Ahmad's own book, published in his lifetime about a year after the letter. The questioner puts the letter to him and points out that it contradicts what he had said before: that no one who recites the Kalimah should be called a disbeliever. This was his chance to say Dr Abdul Hakeem had got it wrong. He doesn't take it. Instead he defends the statement, saying that in God's eyes there is no difference between someone who calls him a disbeliever and someone who simply doesn't believe in him.
The questioner is making the same argument Qadiani writers make today: that Ghulam Ahmad only called people kafirs if they had called him one first. Ghulam Ahmad himself rejects that argument. The question doesn't mention that the statement came from God, so this passage confirms what the letter says more than it confirms that it was a revelation. It still weakens the publishers' notes. Whatever doubts there are about Dr Abdul Hakeem's copy, Ghulam Ahmad accepted and defended the same position in his own book.
The letter was also accepted within the Jama'at after Ghulam Ahmad's death. His son, Mirza Bashiruddin Mahmood Ahmad, the second Khalifa, quoted it as evidence that his father regarded those who rejected him as kuffar:
To the apostate Abdul Hakim of Patiala, he wrote: 'At any rate, when the great God has revealed to me that every body whom my Call has reached and who has failed to accept my claim, is not a Muslim, and is liable to account before God, how can I at the instance of one individual, whose heart is steeped in a thousand darknesses, ignore the command of God. It is easier to cut off such a one from my Community. Accordingly from this date I hereby exclude you from the Community of my followers.'
(Mirza Bashiruddin Mahmood Ahmad, Truth about the Split, 2007 edition, p. 147)
His version of the letter is longer than the one in Tadhkirah. It goes on to show Ghulam Ahmad expelling Dr Abdul Hakeem from the community, with the revelation given as the reason. On the same page, he recalls explaining that the words didn't only apply to people who actively opposed his father. They applied to everyone who didn't accept him. He also explained, using his father's own words, that because the call had been made to reach every part of the world, the whole world could be counted as having heard it.
He doesn't say where he got the letter from, so his quoting it doesn't prove it's genuine. What it does show is that the second Khalifa had no doubt these were his father's words, and he used them to explain the Jama'at's view of other Muslims. Neither the 2019 note nor the 2023 note mentions this. If the letter really fails riwayat and dirayat, the notes don't explain why the Jama'at's own Khalifa relied on it.
The statement also appears in The Essence of Islam, the Jama'at's English collection of extracts from Ghulam Ahmad's writings:
Acceptance Obligatory
God Almighty has disclosed to me that whoever has been apprised of my advent and does not accept me is not a Muslim and is accountable to God...
(The Essence of Islam, Vol. 4, 2006, p. 87)
The editors put it under the heading "Acceptance Obligatory". That presents it as part of Ghulam Ahmad's teaching, not as a passing remark in a quarrel with a former follower. This volume was published in 2006, and including the statement in it suggests that, at that point, the Jama'at had no doubts about whether it was genuine or what it meant.
Put together, the evidence doesn't sit well with the publishers' notes. Ghulam Ahmad was asked about the statement in his lifetime, and he defended it. His son and successor quoted it as his father's words and built an argument on it. The Jama'at printed it in its Urdu and English editions of Tadhkirah and in The Essence of Islam. The recent notes admit only that the entry appeared in earlier editions. They say nothing about Haqiqatul Wahi, the second Khalifa or The Essence of Islam, and simply state that the entry couldn't be verified, without explaining why earlier editors and the second Khalifa were wrong to accept it. Taking it out of Tadhkirah doesn't change much anyway, because the passage in Haqiqatul Wahi where Ghulam Ahmad defends the same position is still part of his published works.
