Chiragh-ud-Din’s claim of being a Messenger:
Chiragh-ud-Din, a resident of Jammu, joined the ranks of Hazrat Mirza’s disciples. But in April of 1902, a strange craziness came over him. He claimed that he was a messenger of Jesus, and had been sent to make peace between Muslims and Christians, and to remove the discord between the Quran and the Gospels. He maintained that he could show signs to prove his Divine appointment, and produced numerous other writings in the same vein.
When Hazrat Mirza came to know of this, he supplicated about the matter to God, and received the following Divine revelation in Arabic about Chiragh-ud-Din:
نزل بہٖ جبیز
“Afflicted with jabeez.”
Jabeez is an Arabic word that literally means: dry, tasteless bread, devoid of any sweetness and that is hard to swallow. Hazrat Mirza said that in the present context the word jabeez referred to meaningless dreams of a person’s sub-conscious thinking that are devoid of any heavenly light. Such thoughts are the result of frustrated efforts or of Satanic inspiration that feeds on an individual’s wishes and desires.
Later, on a night when the moon was going through an eclipse, Hazrat Mirza received another Divine revelation:
انّی اذیب من یریب۔ میں فنا کر دوں گا۔ میں غارت کر دوں گا۔ میں غضب نازل کروں گا۔
“I will annihilate; I will destroy; I will send down My wrath,”
if this person (i.e., Chiragh-ud-Din) doubts and accepts not (i.e., the Promised Messiah), and recants not the claim of being an appointee of God. After receiving this revelation, Hazrat Mirza informed Chiragh-ud-Din and the public through an announcement that Chiragh-ud-Din’s claim of being a messenger was utterly wrong and the purpose of his messengership was totally absurd because the Holy Quran never asserts that it shall seek reconciliation with the Gospel or the Torah. In fact, the Holy Quran declares these books to be altered and defective. Hazrat Mirza also addressed Chiragh-ud-Din:
“If you do not publish a negation of your claim in the very near future, then you should consider yourself excommunicated from my discipleship. And you should also be aware of this prophecy about you …”
Hazrat Mirza then enumerated all the Divine revelations that he had received about Chiragh-ud-Din. This announcement was published on April 23, 1902, with Hazrat Mirza’s booklet Daafe-ul-Bala. Additionally, out of compassion, Hazrat Mirza requested Maulana Muhammad Ahsan Amrohi to counsel Chiragh-ud-Din through a friendly letter as this might prove to be more effective. So Maulana Amrohi wrote a detailed letter in which he counseled Chiragh-ud-Din at length and exhorted him to repent.
Chiragh-ud-Din recants:
In response, Chiragh-ud-Din wrote a letter dated April 27, 1902, in which he disavowed his claim. He wrote:
“Sir, since you are the spiritual leader of the era, the vicegerent of Allah, and the arbiter, it is obligatory upon every person to accept and comply with your decision. Hence I too wholeheartedly approve and accept Your Honor’s decision regarding my claim of being an appointee of God. I am sending Your Honor this letter of my repentance and permanent disavowal from my claim. If Your Honor so desires, this letter may be published.”
Hazrat Mirza was glad to receive this letter of repentance from Chiragh-ud-Din. He remarked:
“It appears that Chiragh-ud-Din is not a mischievous or bad person by nature but had become a victim of some Satanic inspiration or a meaningless dream arising out of a sub-conscious thought. So all praise is to Allah that he realized his mistake, and repented in a timely fashion.”
Chiragh-ud-Din’s letter of retraction was published in Al-Hakam dated April 30, 1902.
Subsequent excommunication of Chiragh-ud-Din:
Alas! Chiragh-ud-Din did not adhere to his recantation, and fell prey to the previous craziness again. This time, he was so emphatic in his claim of Divine appointment and messengership that he wrote an entire book denigrating Hazrat Mirza, and titled it Minarat-al-Masih (literally translates as Messiah’s Minaret). In this book, he claimed with great arrogance that he had come to construct the spiritual minaret on which Jesus Christ will descend, and that Hazrat Mirza was (God forbid) the Antichrist whose advent had been foretold in the hadith. He asserted that God had appointed him, and Jesus had given him his own scepter for slaying this Antichrist with it.
One year after the publication of Minarat-al-Masih, Chiragh-ud-Din wrote another book to prove that Hazrat Mirza was the Antichrist. Because Chiragh-ud-Din’s insolence, arrogance and slandering had invoked the wrath of God and brought the time nigh for his punishment, he imprecated Hazrat Mirza in this second book and supplicated to God for Hazrat Mirza’s death. He declared Hazrat Mirza to be a tribulation and prayed to God to exterminate this tribulation from the face of this earth. In a tremendous show of the amazing power of God and an admonition for everyone, Chiragh-ud-Din’s two sons, his only male progeny, contracted plague and died even as he handed the manuscript of the imprecatory prayer to the scribe and before it could be typeset. Finally, on April 4, 1906, only two or three days after the death of his sons, Chiragh-ud-Din also died of the plague. It thus became quite apparent to everyone as to who was truthful and who was a liar. It has been reported by witnesses who were present at Chiragh-ud-Din’s deathbed that he was saying:
“Even God has become my enemy now.”
That second book was later published. But the author had already passed away from this world, putting a seal on his own failure and falsehood. So take heed O men of understanding!
The Great Reformer 