PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

There could be no better comment on the prevalent Muslim lethargy towards Islām than the fact that non-Muslim contributions to Islamic religious literature in English are by far in excess of the Muslim. It is true that much of this literature draws a distorted picture of Islām, but even here the Muslim is more to blame than the non-Muslim, for it is his duty to place the right kind of material before a world whose thirst for knowledge is insatiable. But whatever may be said as to the superficiality of one part of this literature and the prejudicial tenor of another, it cannot be denied that Europe has made a very valuable contribution to research on the religion of Islām and the history of the Muslims. The Muslims are also turning their attention to the producing of religious literature in English, but the attempt is, as yet, a very weak one, directed more to appealing to the market than to serious efforts based on hard work and critical acumen.

“The Religion of Islam” is the name of a book written by the Rev. F.A. Klein and published in 1906. It was through the courtesy of a friend that this book fell into my hands in the year 1928. He had read it with pain, he said, on account of the distorted picture of Islām that it contained, and he suggested that I should write a comprehensive work containing a true picture of Islām and dealing in detail with its teachings. More than twenty years before this, and just about the time when this book had been published in London, on the 13th of February 1907 to be exact, the Founder of the Aḥmadiyyah Movement, Ḥadzrat Mirzā Ghulām Aḥmad of Qādiān, had charged me with the writing of an English book which should contain all that was necessary for a Muslim, or a non-Muslim, to know about the religion of Islām, and to give a true picture of the religion which was largely misrepresented. The multifarious duties which I had to perform as President of the Aḥmadiyyah Anjuman Ishā‘at Islām were a great hindrance, but the call of duty overcame these difficulties, and I set to work immediately, after going through Klein’s book, and the work is now being published under the same name.