“Ask not what khilafat can do for you. Ask what you can do for khilafat!” So said JFK (Jama’at’s Final Khalifa) at a hastily arranged emergency MTA show earlier today.

Ahmadiyya’s top brass had been fighting apathy, inertia, lack of focus and a worrying exodus of its brightest minds to atheism, or worse still, Islam, for some years. They had convened this special broadcast to establish a new scheme. The Mirza Mascroo Yousuf Aarup Yarassital Bleed Scheme was launched with its own attached chanda fund, code and bank account in a thrilling blaze of, well, ok, in a boring announcement without any glitz or glamour or fun whatsoever.

In a membership that is fast dwindling, it is truly an ingenious idea. For every Ahmadi child conceived that is pledged to Wassiyat Ultra Plus (the new variant of Wassiyat that gets you Platinum privilege – a year’s supply of homeopathic medicine, 4 mulakaats a year and an interest-free loan for a flat near the bait-ul-fazool, but where you pay 50% of everything you earn after tax to jama’at) – you get last year’s chanda payments back and JFK’s mobile number to call once a month on your allotted day. Obviously, if the scheme is successful, you’ll probably get his voicemail.

Most Ahmadis are too brainwashed to realise that they didn’t pay much chanda last year anyway, but it will still represent an outstanding opportunity for the younger ones who still have some zeal in them.

Insiders see it as a scheme that will save the community from imminent meltdown, but doubters see it as yet another last gasp attempt to salvage something, anything, financially, for the Mirza Family from the wreckage that is The Cult of Ahmadiyya.