PREFACE

Preface ~ 6 ~ which responded to the call of God’s messengers, and that is why a civilization with its roots in polytheism continued to dominate throughout the known world of the time. It was then that God sent His final messenger, Muhammad, may peace be upon him, with exactly the same message as had been brought by his predecessors. As he was to be the last in the chain of prophets, God decreed that he should not only bring revelation to mankind, but should, with divine assistance, be successful in extirpating the practice of polytheism once and for all. This event did indeed take place through the instrumentality of the Prophet, and it is to this that the above-mentioned biblical quotation alludes. This monotheistic revolution continued to predominate for one thousand years. Then history witnessed a new age—the age of atheism. It was in the 18th and 19th centuries that it reached its culminating point. During this epoch, it was asserted, on the strength of scientific findings, that modern research had destroyed the foundations of religion quite definitively. It is this claim, which has