People of Jalsa – ‘I Had the Privilege of Showing Huzoor the Spinning Wheel’

This year, for Jalsa Salana UK 2024, The Review of Religions teamed up with the National Outreach Department UK (aka Tabligh) to produce an exhibition in a shared marquee.

The exhibition was called ‘Chasing the Unknown’.

Basically, there were 3 different rooms with 3 different names: ‘Secrets of the Universe’, ‘The Future is Here’ and ‘All the World’s a Stage’.

Visitors could go to all 3 of these rooms.

But, to decide which room they were going to go first, they had to spin the Spinning Wheel. The number it showed was the number of the room you started with.

Alhamdulillah, by the Grace of Allah, the exhibition was very popular and loads of people came.

However, one visit in particular gave us far more joy than all the others. 

The Worldwide Head of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, His Holiness Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad (aba) visited our exhibition on the Friday of Jalsa, a few hours after the end of Jummah Prayers.

The moment that Huzoor (aba) graced us with his presence, people rushed to his side and senior members of our team began explaining the exhibition to Huzoor (aba) as he explored the vicinity.

My colleague Zafir Malik Sb told me to show Huzoor (aba) the Spinning Wheel so I went to grab it and then stood awkwardly with a massive Spinning Wheel near the room that Huzoor (aba) had just entered.

As Huzoor (aba) was leaving, he saw me standing there holding the Spinning Wheel. Huzoor (aba) smiled and asked ‘Yeh kya hai?’ (‘What is this?’)

I replied that it was a Spinning Wheel for determining the room that visitors would go into and then I spun it to demonstrate. I couldn’t tell which number it eventually stopped at because I was holding it from behind so that it would face Huzoor (aba).

I was about to check it when Huzoor (aba) himself informed me that it had landed on the number ‘2’. Huzoor (aba) then asked ‘Main kaunse kamre mein tha?’ (‘Which room was I in?’)

Huzoor (aba) was standing in the middle room, with the other two rooms on either side of him. I replied, ‘Huzoor, you were in room number 2.’

I felt a little startled when I realised what had happened. Huzoor (aba) just smiled at the coincidence and joked that it was a good thing because he was about to leave anyway and didn’t have time to go into the other two rooms.

Then Huzoor (aba) left our exhibition.