Azam Ali, an Ahmadi Moslem
Chapter 07 – Grateful
One of Father’s passions was to get people to find the truth, help them to voice the find, and practice the discovery openly. He became Ahmadi and practiced Islam. He encouraged others to do that. He tried the candle he lit to light up other candles to spread light all around.
Those around him recognized, rewarded and renowned him for that. His co-villagers who became Ahmadi at his hands and friends who knew him as a Practicing Moslem always put him up as their Imam to lead in the prayers wherever they were two or more of them.
Ahmadiyya Community flies a flag with the Minara-tool-Massih. It displays the fact of the advent of Promised Messiah, a.s. also known as the Imam Mehdi for whom a great majority of Moslem world has been waiting. Father talked about that manifestation of God’s Will.
The leader of the Ahmadiyya Community, Khaleefa-tool-Massih II, announced in 1933 (See Azam Ali, an Ahmadi Moslem – as seen by the Daughter) that Father’s actions as an Ahmadi foretold that many great things could be expected from our Father.
The founder of the Ahmadiyya Community in Islam, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, a.s. taught his adherents to be Practicing Moslems. He told them to record so in the Census of 1900 A.D. as a distinct sect of Islam. Father had found, believed and acted upon being a true Ahmadi.
The Holy Prophet, s.a.w. was made Best Exemplar (033:022) by God Almighty. Many loud mouths in the world self-proclaimed to be Moslem. Father intended to be a humble but real duplicator of his mentor, s.a.w. He practiced what he believed. He was an Ahmadi Moslem.
It was a deep desire to copy the Holy Prophet, s.a.w., that Father talked of Ahmadiyya wherever he was, did what an Ahmadi was to do, let everyone see what a practicing Moslem was, raised his children exactly following his mentor, s.a.w., and urged others to follow him.
And Abba Ji was extremely grateful to God Almighty for the genealogy with which he was born, the education he received, understanding he developed, opportunities he availed, Ahmadiyyut he embraced, Ahmadi family he raised, and friends he guided to become Ahmadi.
Gratitude
An enormous wisdom had been laid down hundreds of years ago in the Holy Qor-aan.
La in sha-kaur toom la aa-zee-dun-na koom Wa la in ka-faur toom in-na aa zaa-b ee la sha-deed سُوۡرَةُ إبراهیم – Ch:014, Verse 008
If you are grateful, I surely will give you more. And if you are ungrateful, them My punishment is severe. 014:008
Father ingrained in us children a very simple rule. He paraphrased this rule of universal application in terms we could understand, practice and internalize it. The best way to thank God is (Shook-raan-e-Nae-mut) to use properly the powers, potential and prowess He gave to every human being so uniquely. The worst way to anger Him is (Koof-raan-e-Nae-mut) to misuse God Given Gifts and abuse them badly by abusing misusing them.
See those with lesser fortunes than you and be grateful that God blessed you better than them. See those with better fortunes than you and be content that God burdened you lesser than them. With these words Abba Ji had simplified the concept for his children to understand it.
Lemon into a lemonade
Father had lot to thank God Almighty. He often told us his children of many examples of why that phenomenon should spill over to them for similar reasons. One is to control anger.
He was home during a college break. Elites at that time held hunting guns. There was a double barrel 12-bore gun in the family. He took that family gun out for hunting.
The summer rains poured down huge quantities of water. It was collected on several hundred acres of land owned by many people and formed a shallow lake.
The vast expanse of water was held that way for many months, grew underwater all kinds of fish and attracted overhead all kinds of birds including ducks.
Father went out to shoot. His stepping into the water sent thousands of birds up in the air. He shot once. A flying duck was hit. It fluttered down as it fell. He ran to catch his hunt.
On reaching where the bird fell, Father saw a young man held the duck. Father told him to give him his bird he had shot. The man refused saying the bird was his as it fell on his land.
Father told us his rage reached sky high in an instant. He raised the gun and said. “This gun has two barrels. One shot a bird. The other will shoot you unless you give me my duck.”
Father added, “At that time I really and truly felt so angry that I would have pulled the trigger and fired at the guy if he did not give me my bird.”
The man trembled at the sight of a double barrel staring in his face in the hands of a hunter who had just struck his target. He dropped the bird. Father picked it up and came home.
Then father felt remorse developed inside him. He thought to himself: “What was I doing? Firing at a man just because he had taken my bird? What kind of anger was that?”
Abba Ji then instructed us. “Guess, what would have happened if I had shot that man. I could be in jail. You would not be here, and I would not be advising you to control your anger.”
Abba Ji thanked God that the situation was defused. He was grateful he had learnt the lesson for his life without making the irreversible mistake. He wanted to save us from that fate.
He openly spoke of his gratitude for guiding the lives of so many others who in time came into being his family and friends. Thank God this lemon he made into a lemonade.
Effects of Thankfulness
Father was grateful to God Almighty for what he achieved though born a farmer’s son. He was admired by teachers in his village school. He had academic performance with honors in city college. He got a law degree which as far as I know was the first among Buttar clan. He breezed through passing the Civil Service exam during those days of British Empire. He served as a judge par excellence for nearly all his working life. He was highly honored in every religious and other location he visited. He raised a family with superb spiritual and temporal values. He had every reason to be grateful to God and was a fine example of thankfulness.
Abba Ji intended to show the effects of thankfulness by himself and by his progeny. He personally set up a high bar which is not easy to scale over and I do not know if anyone has successfully done that. But he also prepared his children to do that, and I reaped the benefits.
Tremendously long-reaching benefits have continuously enriched all walks of my life. Trust only in God, risk-taking, self-reliance and dependence on none else is me. Heavy exercise resulted in my good health. Paying attention to the immediate environment brought me higher school grades. Speed reading escalated my extensive retention of reading material. Writing powerfully impacted many lives and went far and wide. Loudly voicing what my mind had retained proved highly productive for me. God-given gift to me just kept multiplying effectiveness as the years went by. Power arising from observing, speaking and writing is indeed the best of GOD’s gifts.
Such graces of Almighty God in all arenas enabled me to express my thoughts openly, explicitly. My words written and spoken produced enviable results in every field and profession I moved through, from courts of law to fields of religion, around more countries and continents than one. If I must name one book and one person that led me to my achievements, it would be the Holy Qor-aan and my father – two pricelessly valuable gifts of God I have, and for which can’t thank Allah enough.
I have enumerated the above effects, not to boast but for one and only one solitary reason: To thank my father that he trained us his children that way, so that we as conduits may pass those results on to our children, then they continue the process, and it may go on and on.
The spill over
Brilliantly dawned upon me was the full impact of Father’s advice that he had been giving us since my childhood. After my immigration to the USA and experience of my four (4) children’s schooling — of one from his pre-school age — all the way to their post-graduate levels I saw the harvest of what Father had been sowing, nurturing and urging us to do.
American education system aims at developing among its students a thorough awareness about themselves. It exploits to the maximum the talents each student has including the top-quality self-respect, self-esteem and self-reliance which essentially means making good use of whatever God has given to us. Father had spurred us to do precisely that.
It is thankfulness that wins the hearts of a spouse, parent, child, friend, associate, servant, master, etc. Take away the thankfulness and all that is left is dissatisfaction, disquiet, disorder, disruption and degeneration in every relationship. Marriages, friendships and even nations go by the board.
It is this gratitude that leads to progress and prosperity. Man’s link with the Almighty God based upon appreciation, gratitude and thankfulness to Him means a person does not need to ask, beg or want anything else from anyone else. Everybody can look back at his own genealogy and find plenty to thank His Maker, the One and the only One, the Creator.
Grantor of Recognition and Reward
In 1995 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania I heard of an incident that happened over sixty years earlier. It shows how my father made constructive suggestions, provided generous incentives, and admired achievements.
Maulana Mohammed Ajmal Shahid told me how my father had appreciated and rewarded others success in assigned tasks. Maulana said he was about 7 years old kid when my father and his father frequently met as friends.
At that time my father was the District and Session Judge in Dera Ghazi Khan. The father of the two boys was Chaudhry Sirbuland Khan (Sahabi) who was working in the Canal Department and was the President of the local Ahmadiyya Jamaat.
My father assigned to him (the7-yr-old) and his older brother by a couple of years the task of memorizing a poem of the Promised Messiah (peace upon him) within the next few days, fixed a reward and promised to test them when the period was over.
After the allocated period had expired, my father tested the boys. The older boy recited the poem fully and got the promised reward. He the younger boy had not memorized the poem and missed the reward. But he still remembered the consolation prize my Father gave him on noticing a disappointment in his face.
Some modern psychologists may criticize such practice, but the proof lies in the pudding. The boy was grateful for the prize, albeit a consolation and learnt that he never forgot.
- Success comes to those who work towards a goal and at good speed to reach it on time
- Rewards and recognition come to those who successfully reach the objectives.
- Failure to reach one’s goal brings no success, no reward and no recognition.
- Gratitude remains, unforgotten, for both (a) the success that entails reward and (b) the failure that is glorious even when success was attempted.
The boy at the impressionable age of seven was for over one-half of a century exposed to an important lesson in life that affected his young mind strongly enough to remain fresh for all those years. That boy grew up to be a great religious scholar and recognized the world over for his spirituality and knowledge of the Holy Qor-aan, Hadeeth and Ahmadiyya literature.
It is gratitude that makes all relationships including friendships, marriages and even nations lead to progress and prosperity. Take away the thankfulness and all that is left is dissatisfaction, disquiet, disorder, disruption and degeneration.
It is the thankfulness that wins the hearts of a spouse, parent, child, friend, servant, master, etc. If man’s link with God Almighty is based upon appreciation, gratitude and thankfulness to Him, one does not need to ask, beg or want anything else from anyone else.
Anyone can look back at his own genealogy and find plenty to thank His Maker, One and the only One, the Creator – and that is what Abba Ji taught us.
