Divine Planning
A dam was the first man as well as the first prophet. The generations succeeding Adam (according to some traditions) adhered to the path of monotheism and true religion for about a millennium. Adam’s people later came under the influence of polytheism (2: 213). The Prophet Noah was then sent to reform the descendants of Adam who inhabited the green, luxuriant land lying between the Tigris and Euphrates.
Despite Prophet Noah’s prolonged efforts, Adam’s progeny, with the exception of a very few, remained resistant to renouncing their polytheistic religion. Consequently, the Great Storm came and swept away all human existence from the earth. Now the human race made a fresh start with the followers of Noah. But again, this new generation, with the passage of time, digressed from the path of monotheism to the path of polytheism. This went on, repeatedly, for many centuries. God continued to send prophets in succession (23:44), but far from showing any willingness to accept their message, people laughed His apostles to scorn (36:30).
This process continued for thousands of years until polytheism came to be firmly rooted in human existence. Anyone born in the societies of those days came under the influence of polytheism from his surroundings. Religious rituals, social ceremonies, national affairs, governmental organizations, —all were founded on polytheistic beliefs. Ultimately, the situation deteriorated to the extent that any child born in this world opened his eyes in an atmosphere of idolatry and when he closed his eyes for the last time, it was in that same atmosphere. The practice of idolatry, once having set in in history, became ineradicable. It is this state of affairs, which finds expression in this prayer of Noah: ‘Lord, do not leave a single unbeliever in the land. If You spare them, they will mislead Your servants and beget none but sinners and unbelievers.’ (71:27).
Prophet Abraham, who lived between 1800 and 2000 B.C., attempted to reform society in ancient Iraq, but met the same fate as that of the prophets preceding him. Then God devised a new plan for the guidance of man. It meant preparing a human race by exclusive divine arrangement, totally detaching them from the sphere of polytheistic influence, so that they would find it easier to accept the message of monotheism. Then people so conditioned were to be used, as per the divine plan, to encounter and rout out the forces of polytheism in order to change the course of history.
Accordingly, Abraham was commanded to leave populated areas like Iraq, Egypt, Syria and Palestine for the desert land of ancient Makkah and settle his wife and little child Isma’il there. Being an uncultivable valley, this area was totally devoid of human population, hence completely free from ancient polytheistic culture. This is what is meant by Abraham’s prayer: “Lord, I have settled some of my offspring in a barren valley near Your Sacred House, so that they may observe the prayer” (14:37). That is to say, Abraham consciously chose a place which was beyond the influence of polytheism, so that there might arise a generation, nurtured in an environment free from polytheistic influences, who would become true worshippers of the one God.
The effect of such detachment from a cultural continuity is illustrated by an example from the life of the writer who belongs to an Urdu-speaking area. My parents spoke Urdu, which is the mother tongue of my children. Now it happened that my eldest son took up residence in London in an area with a predominantly English-speaking population. As a result, my grandsons now only know English and cannot express themselves in Urdu. On my visit to London, I had to converse with them in English.
My grandsons were in this linguistically deprived state precisely because they had been brought up in an environment completely cut off from the continuous traditions of Urdu. This would not have been possible had these children been brought up in Delhi. *
This is on a parallel with the story of Abraham, Ishmael and his mother Hajira. The dream shown to Abraham (37:102) was a symbolic one. Abraham, however, with his extreme sense of obedience, stood ready to execute his dream. In ancient Makkah there was neither water, nor vegetation nor any resources to sustain life. Settling his wife and child in such adverse circumstances appeared to invite their death. But the plan of giving birth to a generation detached from the polytheistic traditions could be carried out only at a place devoid of sustenance, because only then would it be devoid of human population. Abraham’s dream ostensibly entailed the economic and social sacrifice of his children, but it was actually a way of realizing the divine plan to prepare the desired generation.
Since this plan had to materialize under the veil of cause and effect it was constantly being watched. Abraham himself stayed in Palestine but would keep going at intervals to Makkah for the purpose of supervision.
Initially, Hajira and Ishmael were the only inhabitants in the valley. Later, with the appearance of Zamzam, some gypsies belonging to the Jurhum tribe settled there. When Ishmael grew up, he married a girl of that tribe. According to traditions, once when Abraham went to Makkah from Palestine, Ishmael was not at home. Abraham enquired of his wife how everything was going on. His wife told him that they were leading their lives in a very bad state. Life was full of hardship. As Abraham took his leave, he asked her to convey his regards to Ishmael and to ask him to change the doorsill of his home. When Ishmael returned and heard the message from his wife, he realized that the visitor must have been his father and that his message symbolically implied that he should divorce his present wife and marry another woman of the Jurhum tribe. To Abraham that woman was not worthy of mothering the generation under preparation.
After some time, Prophet Abraham again visited Makkah. This time too Ishmael was away, but his wife was at home. When Abraham asked her how things were going on, she thanked God for everything and talked of contentment, saying that life fared well for them. When he left, Abraham asked her to convey his regards to Ishmael and to give him the message that he should keep the doorsill of his house. On his return, Ishmael received the message of his father and rightly understood its symbolism: that this woman was capable of leading a life in accordance with the divine plan assigned to Abraham to prepare the generation desired by God. (Tafsir Ibn-Kathir)
In this way, in that hostile, aloof environment, a new generation began to be formed. What were the characteristics of this race? The two most prominent characteristics were their being in tune with nature and possessing the human quality of manliness.
The only thing to influence man in this rugged, hostile, Arabian Desert was nature: vast wilderness, high mountains, starlit sky. These natural phenomena gave man the message of the unity of God. They were perpetual reminders to man of God’s greatness and omniscience. These pure, divine surroundings nurtured a generation which, in the words of Abraham, had the real capacity to become an Islamic community, that is, one which could surrender itself completely to the Will of God. The nature of this community was preserved intact in its original state; hence it was fully capable of accepting the religion of nature.
It was then the most suitable environment for nurturing that characteristic which is called al-Muruwah (manliness) in Arabic. Life was full of hardships in the mountainous and rocky surroundings of ancient Hijaz, and in that setting innate human qualities had acquired the maximum importance, as external props were totally non-existent. There, man possessed only one thing, and that was his own existence. In such an environment, it was but natural that man’s inner qualities should be cultivated to the maximum. In this way a nation, characterized by manliness to an amazing extent, came into being through a process spanning two thousand years. In the words of Philip K. Hitti, the whole of Arabia was converted into a nursery of heroes the like of which had never been found before or after in history.
The hour had come with the dawn of the 6th century to bring to completion the plan of breaking the continuity of shirk (idolatry). It was then that Prophet Muhammad was born among the Ishmaelites. These are the words of the Quran:
It is He who has sent His Apostle with guidance and the Faith of Truth, so that he may exalt it above all religions, much as the pagans may dislike it. (61:9)
This verse shows that the main mission of the Final Prophet was to remove the religion of polytheism from its place of domination and establish the religion of monotheism in its place, giving it a position of dominance in the world. This dominance was to be of an intellectual and ideological kind. That is, a dominance similar to that gained by scientific knowledge over traditional knowledge in modern times.
This was the most difficult plan ever conceived in history. In the 7th century it was the hardest of tasks to stamp out polytheism and replace it with monotheism as the predominant ideology. It was just like uprooting a tree with all its roots and branches. It entailed severe difficulties and could be performed only with meticulous planning and strenuous effort.
To secure this goal the Final Prophet was provided by God with two special supporting factors. One was the divine proclamation:
You are the best nation that has ever been raised up for mankind. (3:110)
As a result of a two thousand years long process, a most competent group was prepared for the purpose. As mentioned above, this group had retained its nature (i.e. that with which it had come into existence, preserved intact and free from all the corruptions of civilization) and also possessed in perfect form, a high moral character and manly attributes. It was the people selected from this group who, after their acceptance of Islam, came to be known in history as the companions of the Prophet.
The other special divine succour is hinted at in the early verses of chapter 30. Prior to the advent of the Prophet, there had existed two great polytheistic civilizations in the world, the Byzantine and the Sassanid. The major populated part of the globe at the time, was directly or indirectly, under these two empires. For monotheism to prevail over a vaster world, a confrontation with the polytheistic empires was inevitable. God did bring this about during this period and the confrontation of these two empires continued for generations. First the Persians rose and, destroying the power of the Romans, occupied a large part of their empire. Then the Romans rose to avenge their defeat by destroying the might of the Persians. That is how, when the Companions rose unitedly under the guidance of the Prophet, they rapidly conquered most of the inhabited part of Asia and Africa, subjugating polytheism, and securing for monotheism its rightful place.
To quote Professor Philip K. Hitti:
The enfeebled condition of the rival Byzantines and Sassanids who had conducted internecine warfare against each other for many generations, the heavy taxes consequent upon these wars, imposed on the citizens of both empires, and undermining their sense of loyalty…all these paved the way for the surprisingly rapid progress of Arabian arms.
(Philip K. Hitti, History of the Arabs, London, 1970, pp. 142-143)
Historians in referring to this turning point have generally represented the foregoing events as having taken place in the natural course. Whereas this extraordinary turn of events was the result of a divine plan specially conceived of by God for the support of the Final Prophet.
An article titled ‘Islam’, penned by a Christian writer and published in an American Encyclopedia, has this to say:
Its advent changed the course of human history.
It is quite true that after the Islamic revolution of the first phase (of Islam), human history saw such tremendous changes as had never been seen. The actual reason for all these changes was that the continuity of polytheism came to an end, yielding place to the continuity of monotheism. Shirk (polytheism) was and is the root cause of all evils, while monotheism was and is the source of all virtue. Hence the occurrence of this fundamental change opened for man the door of all virtue, which had hitherto remained locked.
Now the age of superstition gave way to the age of science. The foundation of human discrimination collapsed, giving place to human equality. Dynastic rule was replaced with democratic rule. Where natural phenomena all over the world had become objects of worship, now for the first time they were treated as subjects of research and investigation. This paved the way to the revelation of nature’s secrets to man. It was indeed the monotheistic revolution, which laid the foundation for bringing about the modern age of advancement. Abraham’s prayer, ‘Lord, preserve me and my descendants from serving idols. Lord, they have led many men astray’ (14:36), had been answered.
Now the question arises as to how people were misled by these idols. What qualities did these inanimate objects possess which helped them in this regard? We can understand this secret if we have a look at the idols prevalent during Abraham’s time and referred to in Abraham’s prayer.
The idols were of the sun, the moon and the stars. It has been proved historically that these bright, heavenly bodies were objects of worship everywhere in the civilized world of Abraham’s time. This gives us a clue as to how and why these idols managed to lead the people astray.
Although God is the greatest reality, He is invisible to the eye. On the contrary, the sun, the moon and the stars, shining brightly, are visible to every eye. Due to their brilliance people came under their spell and began worshipping them. These brilliant bodies captured human thought to such a degree and so dominated people’s minds that even governments, nay, empires began to be founded on their basis. The emperors of that age ruled over people by declaring themselves to be the descendants of sun and moon.
This age was brought to an end by monotheism gaining supremacy through the Final Prophet. This was carried out in two stages. The first stage is referred to in the Quran in these words:
And fight with them until there is no more persecution (fitnah) and religion should be only for God; but if they desist, then surely God sees what they do. (8:39)
Fitnah in this verse means religious intolerance, which in ancient times had become a form of oppression. Polytheism had become aggressive because it was the bedrock of all governments and as such enjoyed full state patronage. In such a situation, whenever the call to monotheism was raised, it was but natural for the rulers to feel strongly that such a call, in holding their right to rule suspect, posed a challenge to their sovereignty. Therefore, they wasted no time in crushing the dayees of monotheism. This was the actual cause of ideological aggression in ancient times.
Prophet Muhammad and his companions were commanded by God to fight for the extirpation of polytheism to put an end to the dayees of monotheism being the targets of polytheistic aggression. That is to say, that shirk and politics were separated from one another. The Prophet and his companions launched this campaign with full force and devotion, and it was due to their unceasing efforts that the power of shirk was given a death blow. Subsequently, in most parts of the inhabited world of the time, the polytheistic system was subjugated, thus putting an end to the aggressive status of shirk forever. Now for all time polytheism and political power were thrust into separate arenas.
The second stage of the domination of monotheism over shirk is mentioned in this verse of the Quran:
We will show them our signs in all the regions of the earth and in their own souls, until they clearly see that this is the truth. (41:53)
The first phase of this mission aimed at putting an end to the practice of deriving political theories from natural phenomena.
This goal was fully achieved in the seventh century. The second stage aimed at removing the veil of superstition from the phenomena of nature and casting upon them the light of knowledge. This second stage began with the era of prophethood (of Prophet Muhammad) and later reached its zenith in the present scientific revolution.
The present world is a manifestation of the attributes of God. Here man finds his Creator in the mirror of His creation. By making a profound study of creation, he witnesses God’s power and greatness. The ancient idolatrous concepts had, on the contrary, rendered all material things of this world mysteriously sacred. The superstitious ideas, which had come to surround them, came in the way of research being carried out on the multitude of objects in this world. When the entire world came to be held as God’s creation in the wake of the monotheistic revolution, this mentality of holding everything sacred vanished. Now everything began to be studied objectively.
As a result of this investigation, the truth about the hidden system of nature and its functioning in the world began to be revealed. Ultimately, in the form of the modern scientific revolution, the prophecy mentioned above in verse 53 of chapter 41 was quite finally fulfilled.
The facts unraveled about the universe through modern scientific studies have definitively brought to an end the age of superstition. These newly discovered realities have simultaneously benefited humanity in two ways, one being that religious beliefs are no longer just dogma, but facts established through human knowledge itself.
The other benefit to mankind is that these scientific revelations about nature provide an immense source for increasing the faith of the believer.
Although partial in extent, whatever has been revealed by science regarding the universe is so amazing that, on learning it, the believer’s hair stands on end. His mind receives the light of the realization of the Lord. His eyes become wet with tears from awe and fear of God. He is elevated to the plan of ihsan, a state of worship in which man feels as if he is seeing the Almighty. There is a hadith to this effect, asking the believers to worship God as if they were actually seeing Him.
Revival of Islam in the Modern Age
In modern times the history of human belief has once again reached almost the point that it was at fifteen hundred years ago. In ancient times shirk so dominated human thought that it became an inseparable part of the historical process, leading to a situation where every child born was an idolater. Now, by a process spanning the last several hundred years, atheistic thoughts have come to vitiate human thinking. In all intellectual activities atheistic thinking has so prevailed that once again in human history atheism has set in as a historical process. Now every child born in any part of the world is under its influence. Atheism is the dominant “religion” of today. Hence the revival of Islam in modern times will not be possible so long as atheism continues to enjoy its ideological dominance.
To render the revival of Islam possible in modern times, it will be necessary to employ the same methods as were formerly adopted when shirk dominated world thought, i.e., the conditioning of individuals and the subjugation of the opponents of truth.
For the first task to be accomplished, our own human resources are sufficient. But for the other task, God has once again in modern times, just as in the first phase of Islam, taken appropriate measures on a very large scale. The need of the hour is to exploit these opportunities so abundantly created for us.
- A workforce is a pre-requisite for the successful outcome of any Islamic revival campaign at the present time. The basics are the same as those needed to execute the mission entrusted to Abraham, although the training of the individuals may differ in view of the requirements of our age.
The individuals required for launching a campaign of Islamic revival in modern times are not just ordinary Muslims, but those for whom Islam has become the ultimate answer to a great exploratory quest. What activates a person more than anything is this event of discovery: all of a sudden a new personality is born within him, marked by conviction, courage, determination, manliness, generosity, the spirit of sacrifice and the desired unity—all qualities required for the performance of great tasks, and all part of the questing spirit.
All the best qualities found in western nations in modern times are linked with this urge to explore. The western nations may be said to have discovered the world in the scientific as opposed to the traditional sense, and it is this urge to understand all aspects of truth, which has produced individuals of such high caliber in western nations.
The same was true of the companions of the Prophet in the first phase of Islam. God’s religion came to them as a discovery: Islam as against jahiliyah (period of ignorance); monotheism as against shirk; Akhirah (Hereafter) as against this present world. It was this, which was responsible for producing those extraordinary qualities in them. If today the campaign of Islamic revival is to be effectively launched once again, such people will have to come forward as conceive of Islam as a fresh discovery rather than as an inheritance by birth.
- Islam came to the world fourteen hundred years ago, setting in motion historical processes marked by cultural grandeur and political conquests. Those who call themselves Muslims today are the products of those processes. But any group of people, which has such a brilliant past, is invariably pre-occupied with its recent history. It fails to go back through history to drink afresh from the original springs of inspiration.
This is true of Muslims today. The Muslims of present times, consciously or unconsciously, are deriving their religion from history instead of from the Quran and sunnah, the true sources of Islam.
This is why Islam has become for the Muslims of today a matter not of responsibility but of pride. This psychology so pervades their thoughts and actions that its effects are visible everywhere. Islam as set forth in the Quran and the hadith stands out as a religion of responsibility and accountability, but if viewed in the mirror of its cultural and political history, it appears to be an object of pride and glory. All the great revolutionary movements of Muslims in modern times have been influenced by this sense of pride. That is why they all lost their original luster after very brief periods of activity. This is because a sense of pride leads one to showy activities, while a sense of accountability leads one to genuinely serious action.
For any campaign of Islamic revival to be effectively managed, its promoters should have derived Islam from the original teachings in the Quran and the hadith rather than from the cultural and political history of later times. Only those who have derived their religion from the Quran and the hadith can sustain a true campaign in all seriousness and with a sense of responsibility.
Those who derive their religion from history will only glorify their own sense of pride, and no result-oriented action will follow from their activities.
Muslims in modern times have turned into a defeatist nation, thanks to the entire Muslim world suffering from a persecution complex. This is what ensues from deriving religion from history. Awed by the grandeur of the history of the “Red Fort” and “Granada”, they chose to derive their Islamic identity from these objects of historical significance, and since in present times these things have been taken over by other nations, they have never ceased in their lamentations. Yet, if they had considered divine guidance to be their religion, they would never have felt themselves the victims of deprivation. For divine guidance is something which can never be taken away by anyone.
Since we consider those things to be Islam, which may be taken away by others, we have become compulsive bewailers of our own fates. How strange it is that we are engaged in lamenting over a very small loss, and demanding reparations, while completely unaware of the far greater treasure of which we are still in possession.
Muslims consider Islam as an emblem of their national greatness, and as a result of this mentality, they are engaged in clash and confrontation with other nations all over the world. That is why, when they find people robbing them of their glory, they rise against them. This reaction can range from verbal castigation to armed confrontation. This negative attitude continues to mar Muslim relations with others. Whereas, if they had received Islam as a matter of divine guidance, they would have felt that they had something to give to other nations. They would have considered themselves as the giver and the others as the taker. They would not then have become obsessed with recovering the irretrievable. The actual relationship between Muslims and other nations should be that of dayee and madu, not of depriver and deprived. But the result of holding the historical Islam to be the true Islam is that other nations are now seen simply as rivals. So long as this rivalry continues between Muslims and other nations, no real work of Islamic revival can be started.
It is not possible in the very first stage to cleanse all Muslims of this antagonistic psychology. Yet at least one such team should be assembled, the members of which have rid themselves of this mentality of rivalry. This transformation in thinking will help them to regard other nations as their madu, instead of as their material competitors and national adversaries. To establish the relation of dayee and madu, it is essential to forget all complaints and grudges, and to be willing to bear all kinds of material losses. This relation of dayee and madu can be founded only on the basis of unilateral sacrifice on the part of the dayee. There is no doubt about it that this is the most difficult of tasks, one for which one has to forfeit a great deal.
The willingness to make sacrifices and other such attributes must be possessed by those who come forward for the mission of Islamic revival. For the preparation of such individuals in modern times, again the same planning is required as was carried out in the first phase.
In modern times we are in need of a high standard training centre with all the latest facilities. Set up in the pure surroundings of nature, far from the corrupting centres of civilization, such a training centre would respond fully to this exhortation of the Quran:
... some should stay behind to instruct themselves in religion and admonish the others when they return, so that they may take heed. (9:122)
The training of talented individuals in such an isolated location would be the equivalent of the setting of Hagar and Ismael in barren, uncultivable terrain, so that their religiosity would grow and be strengthened.
For this proposed training centre to give the maximum benefit, parents like Abraham should be willing to sacrifice talented children, in the sense of taking them away from the lure of economic opportunities and putting them in surroundings where, even by giving of their best, they would have nothing in return save the concept of reward in the Hereafter. The successful running of such a training centre would be akin, in the words of Philip Hitti, to producing a nursery of heroes.
But unless a considerable number of such individuals are made available, no real steps can be taken towards the revival of Islam. That is to say, a group of intelligent, talented individuals of the nation should be brought to a different, special environment, set apart from mundane things, where they are given training and education specially to prepare them to successfully undertake the revival of Islam in modern times, thus becoming warners and givers of good tidings for the peoples of the world.
In order to facilitate the Islamic revolution in its first phase, God made the special provision of setting the mighty Roman and Persian empires—the greatest opponents of monotheism—on a collision course, and consequently weakening them so considerably that it became easy for the Muslims to subjugate them.
This same succour of God for the believers has taken another form in modern times, i.e. the flow of such information about the universe as proves religious realities at the level of miracles. The superstitious way of thinking dominated the world in ancient times, as a result of which man had formed strange opinions about divine creation. The universe has been called the ‘miracle of God’ in the Quran. But this divine miracle lay hidden under the veil of superstition. One of the results of the Islamic revolution is that the phenomena of nature, which had been subjects of worship, now became subjects of research and investigation. In this way, for the first time in human history, the occurrences of nature began to be studied in a purely academic manner. This fresh approach went on gaining ground until it spread to Europe where it was given the great boost which helped it develop into the scientific revolution of modern times.
It is as if science, having removed the Veil of Superstition, has proved the miracle of the universe to be a miracle of God. By displacing the phenomena of nature from the status of objects of worship, man has ultimately been able to set his foot on this moon, which has been worshipped throughout human history from the time of ancient man, who considered it an object of divinity.
If the new arguments furnished by science are properly employed, the call of monotheism can be presented to the world on the same, if not a greater scale, than that for which miracles had earlier been given to the prophets as a testament to the uniqueness of the Creator.
All things of the heavens and the earth are there to remind man of God. But man, on his own began to deify those things. This was a major deviation from God’s original intention.
In modern times we have witnessed another kind of deviation as regards scientific information. The facts that have come to light through scientific investigations are all proofs of the divinity of God. They are there to remind man of God. But the atheists of modern times have distorted those very revelations of science, which were proofs of the existence of God, to show that there is no God. By giving the wrong direction to these facts, it was held that the entire system functioned on its own through a mechanical process of action and reaction, cause and effect.
The universe discovered by science was, however, an extremely meaningful and purposeful universe, as modern discoveries have shown, it is not a haphazard assemblage of matter. Rather it is a highly organized and sophisticated factory of a very superior standard. All the things of the world inevitably move along the purpose-oriented course which will produce the best results. The discovery of organization and purposefulness in all things is certain proof that the hand of God, albeit invisible, is behind the working of the universe. But what the atheist thinkers did was divert the courses of scientific discovery towards atheism. They held that whatever has been proved is an end and not the cause. But what is the proof that it is an end? It is quite possible that it may simply be an effect. The atheists nevertheless maintain that, it is not necessary that there must be a mind which, through will, is guiding events deliberately towards a particular end or conclusion; it may be possible that, through the blind, interplay of some physical and chemical forces, certain things on their own are being produced which may, by chance, be meaningful. When this meaningless explanation itself has been produced through the exercise of will (human will in this instance), how strange it would be to believe in the functioning of a meaningful universe without a will behind it.
After the emergence of science, atheist thinkers have, on a very large scale, attempted to point science in the direction of atheism. On the contrary, the attempts of religious thinkers to utilize scientific evidence to support the claims of religion have been extremely few and far between. Over the last one hundred years thousands of books of a high academic standard have come out which aim, quite wrongly of course, at producing atheism out of science, while few academic efforts worth mentioning have been made on the part of religious thinkers. One of these books, The Mysterious Universe, by Sir James Jeans, is notable for the impact it has had on both religious and scientific thinking: In this book the author has ably demolished through purely scientific arguments, the principle of causation as the acceptance of the mechanical substitute for God.
In the latter half of the present century innumerable new facts have come to the knowledge of man, which prove the truth of religious beliefs on an extremely elevated plane. But so far, no religious thinker has come forward to harness, this scientific information in support of religious truths. If this work could be performed at a high intellectual level, it would amount to an academic miracle in support of the religion of monotheism.
As we learn from the Quran, the prophethood of all the prophets of the past was doubted by their contemporaries (11:62). Initially, the same fate befell Prophet Muhammad. (38:10)
However, the Quran declared: ‘Your Lord may exhalt you to a position of praise and glory’, (17:79). This divine proclamation meant that his prophethood would pass from the stage of doubt to the stage of full acceptance. The stage of Mahmud (worthy of praise) is the final stage of recognition and acknowledgement.
Whenever a Prophet is born, his good faith becomes a subject of doubt to his people. “Is he really a prophet, or does he just claim to be one?” To the end, such thoughts keep coming to people’s minds. Prophethood, in its initial stage, is merely a claim. It has no such in-built proof as people will be forced to acknowledge.
That is why, whenever a prophet comes to any community, he becomes in their eyes a controversial personality, established historical proofs not having been gathered in his support. Supportive arguments do come into existence, but always only after a certain time has elapsed. Generally, the Prophets did not reach this second stage of full acceptance.
All other prophets came to the world and also left the world in what was a period of controversy. They were not, therefore, able to leave behind them a group of sincere and dedicated individuals who could preserve their traditions and prophetic sayings. If these prophets were never wholly acknowledged by their contemporaries, either at the outset or in the later stages of their careers, it was because their teachings were never fully borne out by advances in human knowledge.
Of all the prophets, the only exception in this respect is that of the Final Prophet, although, like the other prophets, he too began his prophethood amidst controversy. It was at a later stage that he achieved such extraordinary success, and along with his companions, came to hold sway over a major part of the globe. In a period of less than a century his religion, Islam, had subjugated the great empires of Asia and Africa.
The Prophet of Islam emerged successful in all the challenges he faced: all his predictions proved true and all the powers that confronted him were vanquished. These events during his lifetime established his reputation not just in the eyes of his contemporaries, but for all time to come. Throughout the history of the Prophets he alone secured such extraordinary success that his prophethood soon left all controversy behind, reaching the stage of firm establishment referred to in the Quran as mahmud. His sayings as well as his achievements remained so perfectly preserved that there could be no room for any doubt.
In the present world the dayees of the True Religion have an exclusive advantage such as no other dayee group had ever possessed in the earlier phases of Islam history. That is, we are in a position to present the call to monotheism before the world from the pre-eminent position of established prophethood.
We are the inheritors of the certainties of established prophethood, while the followers of other prophets are still floundering in controversy.
God has provided all kinds of favourable opportunities for presenting the divine message before the nations of the world. If, in spite of all such provisions, Muslims do not perform this task of bearing witness to the Truth, or if they engage in communal, political and worldly disputes with other nations, they will find themselves on the Day of Judgement in the serious predicament of being unable to justify this lapse before their Lord and Creator.
