Under the Sun of Tamale, God’s Vicegerent on Earth Was in the Making – Part 1

Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad (atba), the man the world sees leading millions was first known by one woman in the quiet struggles under the Sun of Tamale in Ghana

By Admin

It is an early morning under the Sun of Tamale, northern Ghana and the year is 1977. A young man wakes up early morning, moves quietly through a small house, and begins filling large plastic drums with buckets of water. It is his daily routine about which he has never complained nor has he ever suggested that his wife should do it instead. Has he ever used his busy schedule as an excuse to skip it? The answer is no.

That young man is Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad (abta), today he is the fifth Caliph of the Worldwide Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and the spiritual leader of hundreds of millions of followers across more than two hundred countries. But in those early Ghanaian mornings, he was simply a husband, a father, and an Ahmadi Muslim doing what he believed was right.

It is his wife, Hadhrat Syeda Amatul Sabooh Begum Sahibah, who tells us this story published by the Review of Religions in 2018 after 110 years of the Ahmadiyya institution of Khilafat. For most people, her husband is a global religious leader. But for her, he is also the man who cooked when she was sick, washed the baby bottles, and taught their children to stand firm in their faith, even when it cost them.

When the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community sent Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad (atba) to Ghana as a school principal, the country was going through very hard times. The economy had broken down. There was drought. Basic goods were hard to find. For a young couple arriving from Pakistan, life was not easy.

Hadhrat Syeda Amatul Sabooh Begum Sahibah has written about those early days. She had seen other households where husbands in religious service expected their wives to cook fresh meals and manage everything at home, while the men focused only on their work. However, Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad (atba)  was different.

“The foremost notable aspect of Huzur’s (atba) character, which I dearly valued,” she wrote, “was that he never displayed any form of selfishness.”

Those are simple words. But coming from a woman who had shared difficult years with him in one of West Africa’s most challenging conditions, they mean a great deal.

Water was always in short supply in Ghana. The family had a tank outside their house that a tanker would fill from time to time. Inside the house,  large drums in the kitchen and bathroom needed to be filled by hand using buckets.

Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad (atba) did it himself. Every morning after the early prayer, he would carry bucket after bucket and fill those drums.

“No matter how urgent his work,” his wife recalled, “he never said to me that he was busy and I should fill these myself.”

When she fell ill, he cooked the meals. When visitors filled the sitting room and she could not walk through to the kitchen without passing a group of men, he washed the baby feeding bottles himself. When the children needed to learn the Quran, he sat with them and helped teach them. Nobody was watching. There was no praise to be won. He simply did what needed to be done.

Nothing frightens a parent more than watching a very young child fall seriously ill with no doctor nearby. That fear came to this family in the worst possible way. Their son Waqas was only two days old when he became very sick with severe diarrhoea. The doctors in Tamale were on strike. The hospital was only open from nine in the morning to five in the evening. Outside those hours, there was nobody to help. The tiny baby was getting weaker by the hour and could not even drink milk.

His wife had brought some medicine from Pakistan. It was very strong, not the kind of medicine anyone would normally give to a newborn baby. But they had nothing else.

“Placing his complete trust in God Almighty and supplicating to Him,” she wrote, Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad (atba) dipped his finger into the medicine and gave it to the baby twice. He said that “no one could know what Allah’s decree was, yet this regret will not remain that a cure was untried.

” Within a few minutes, the baby began to get better. Hadhrat Syeda Amatul Sabooh Begum Sahibah called it a miracle. It was a moment that showed exactly who this man was, a father acting out of love, and a believer acting out of faith, at the very same time.

Life in Ghana brought other kinds of tests too. When the children started school, the only available option was a Protestant Christian school. The school required all students to sing hymns, some of which described Jesus as the son of God. For an Ahmadi Muslim family, singing such words was not something they could accept.

Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad (atba) told his children clearly to not sing those hymns, no matter what happens. For three mornings in a row, the children came home having been caned as punishment for refusing to sing. Three days of watching his children suffer for holding onto their beliefs. On the fourth day, their father went to the school himself.

He spoke to the headmaster quietly and respectfully. He explained that his family were Muslims and could not sing words that went against their faith. Then he offered a simple solution, when religious studies came up, his children would write about the Christian viewpoint as a fact they were studying, not as something they personally believed. The headmaster agreed. The caning stopped.

His wife described it as “the first lesson in Tauhid that Huzur imparted to his children.” It was also a lesson in how to handle a difficult situation, with patience, clear thinking, and without losing your temper.

TO BE CONTINUED………………………………………………………………….