New Planning
It aimed to make nature the object of investigation which had only been an object of worship until then.
Since according to the creation plan, human freedom could not be revoked; therefore, God indirectly intervened in human history. He planned a group which would separate religion from political power in order that human history may travel in the right direction without revoking human freedom. The purpose of this new plan was to provide opportunities to sincere individuals to adopt the true religion as per their own conscience. However, the majority choose to abuse the freedom granted by God.
This new plan came into effect four thousand years ago with the advent of Prophet Abraham. The sphere of action was ancient Iraq, where polytheistic culture was predominant. Abraham communicated to them monotheism for a long period of time. But owing to their hard conditioning, they could not accept the idea of monotheism. They turned against him to such an extent that they planned to kill him. Therefore, Abraham changed his sphere of activity, bringing his wife, Hajra and his son, Ishmael to Makkah, a desert.
In this desert environment, a new chain of procreation and reproduction began, which produced the people of Banu Ishmael or the Children of Ishmael over a 2500 year-long process of ‘desert deconditioning’. A new nation of heroes was born, termed as “a nursery of heroes” by Philip K. Hitti. It was in this group of Banu Ishmael that the Prophet Muhammad bin Abdullah was born. Prophet Muhammad strived hard for 23 years during which a great number of truth seekers from the race of Banu Ishmael joined him. They are known as the Companions of the Prophet.
These Companions of the Prophet played a key role in the accomplishment of several divine tasks. For instance, the preservation of the sacred book, the Quran, and establishing a practical model of divine religion. This divine religion which was mostly limited to the intellectual and theoretical stage during the times of the previous prophets, for the first time, reached the stage of a revolution. These significant changes made the permanent sealing and termination of prophethood possible. The era of individual prophets reached its culmination, replacing it with the era of the collective nation, the Ummah.
The revolutionary work carried out by the companions of the Prophet, with special divine help, finds mention in this verse of the Quran, “Fight them until there is no more [religious] persecution, and religion belongs wholly to God (8.39)”. Fitna (religious persecution) here refers to the aggressive system established under the auspices of ancient imperialism. The imperial powers had established a system that was tantamount to abolishing God’s creation plan, that is to say, the abolition or cancellation of the freedom of thought. Therefore, God desired that this system of coercive imperialism has to be abolished so that the journey of the human caravan continues unhindered and unobstructed.
The Sassanian Empire and the Byzantine Empire were two representatives of this coercive imperialism in the seventh century. These two empires were so powerful that it was practically impossible for the Companions of the Prophet to defeat them. What happened was that at the exact same time, a devastating war broke out between the two empires. As a result, they exhausted their resources, facilitating the Muslim conquest. This historic event was predestined in God’s scheme. This has also been predicted in the Bible. “He looked and startled the nations. And the everlasting mountains were scattered” (Habakkuk 3:6)
Subsequent to this event of the 7th century, the Muslims for the first time gained the political dominance which was enjoyed so far by the political systems that patronised the polytheistic culture. Under the political rule of the Muslims, a new process was set in history. It aimed to make nature the object of investigation which had only been an object of worship until then. By virtue of this revolution, man found full freedom which was essential for his intellectual development and unveiling of nature’s hidden resources. All this was required to make global dawah work possible.
Since God has granted man freedom, all the events in this world are governed by the laws of cause and effect. The work of research and investigation began among the Muslims, especially during the Abbasid period. It was the heyday of Muslim empires having been established over large areas of Asia and Africa. Their energy was mostly devoted to political activities. Therefore, they could only partially engage themselves in such activities as scientific research.
The work of scientific research, being a gigantic task, necessarily entailed full concentration and involvement. However, political power became an obstacle to such serious intellectual and scientific engagement. That is why they failed to make a sufficient or substantial contribution in this field. Conversely, political power did not become an obstacle to European Christian nations in their works of scientific research which began after the Crusades. Therefore, their minds devotedly engaged themselves in the field of science.
This was also a case of managing human history while maintaining human freedom. The Creator shifted the work of scientific research from the Muslim world to the Christian world when He saw that the Muslim world’s conditions were not conducive to support such pursuits.
