Untitled - Al Islam

233 Pages·2017·17.02 MB·English

Perseverance

Perseverance
(cid:10)
Ha
The Story of al- j Rashid Ahmad American
The First American to Study at Jami‘ah Ahmadiyyah
Perseverance
The Story of al-Haj Rashid Ahmad American
Copyright 2015
Ahmadiyya Muslim Community
First edition, 2016
Published by
Ahmadiyya Muslim Community
15000 Good Hope Road
Silver Spring, Maryland, 20905
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1882494-02-6
Contents
A Personal Note from Rashid Ahmad American ........................ vii
Writer’s Note ............................................................................... ix
Acknowledgments ...................................................................... xiii
Introduction ................................................................................ xv
Part I – Life Before Islam ......................................................................... 1

Chapter 1 – My Family .................................................................................................... 1

Chapter 2 – Early Years.................................................................................................... 6

Chapter 3 – Introduction to Islam .............................................................................. 17
Part II – My Life as a Muslim ............................................................... 21

Chapter 1 – Dedicating My Life to Islam .................................................................. 21

Chapter 2 – My Handwritten Memoirs While in Pakistan ................................. 48

Chapter 3 – Other Incidents and Recollections from Pakistan ........................ 121
Part III – My Return to the United States ........................................ 151

Chapter 1 – Leaving Pakistan .................................................................................... 151

Chapter 2 – Other Activities While in America ................................................... 156
Concluding Thoughts ................................................................. 193

A Personal Note from
Rashid Ahmad American
This is the prayer that leads to God. All who want to meet Him
should recite and reflect upon its profound words:
(cid:14) (cid:15) (cid:16)۝(cid:11) (cid:12) (cid:13)۝(cid:1) (cid:3)۝(cid:7) (cid:8) (cid:9) (cid:10)۝(cid:1) (cid:3) (cid:4) (cid:5)
۝(cid:25) (cid:26) (cid:14) (cid:21) (cid:27) (cid:28)۝(cid:21) (cid:22) (cid:23) (cid:24)۝(cid:18) (cid:19) (cid:20)۝(cid:17) (cid:16)
In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful.
All praise belongs to Allah, Lord of all the worlds, the Gracious,
the Merciful, Master of the Day of Judgment.
Thee Alone do we worship and Thee Alone do we implore for
help. Guide us on the right path – the path of those upon
whom Thou hast bestowed blessings, those who have not
incurred displeasure, and those who have not gone astray.
[Amin]

Writer’s Note
TRANSLITERATION
In general, the transliteration is a phonetic spelling of the word as it
sounds in its original language, with hyphens separating multiple
words where applicable. An attempt has been made to respect the
sovereignty and grammatical boundaries of foreign languages when
transliterating their vocabulary into English.
In conformity with American writing convention, foreign
words are written in italics, unless they are names, proper nouns or
have become assimilated in English usage. After initially italicizing
the foreign words, they may be written in normal script thereafter.
Many of the foreign words in this book are of Arabic origin,
which uses strong guttural sounds; whereas Urdu words are much
softer even though they are, in most cases, derived from the Arabic
language. I have deviated from the Ahmadiyya Community’s
official transliteration system in order to help Western readers
pronounce these two different languages. Although the words may
be spelled the same with the same foreign characters, they are
pronounced differently in the Arabic and the Urdu languages.