Islam in History

oppression soon bore fruit during the rule of the second Caliph, Umar Faruq. During his caliphate, the light of these two despotic empires was forever extinguished. The French historian, Henri Pirenne, has rightly observed that, if the Arab Muslims of the seventh century had not liquidated the Sassanid and Byzantine empires, mankind might never have been freed from tyranny, and the world might never perhaps have witnessed the age of human freedom with its sweeping intellectual revolution. Abdullah ibn Umar, a companion of Prophet Muhammad and son of the second Caliph, observed on one occasion: “we fought according to the Quranic injunction to end fitna, religious persecution, until fitna was abolished from the face of the earth forever.” (Sahih al-Bukhari). This means that fitna, or the ancient political coercive system, had been dealt a severe blow during the period of the pious caliphate itself but, like many other major historical revolutions, this new phase only very gradually reached its culmination. In the wake of the revolution in the first phase of Islam, religious freedom took a decisive course in history, spurred on in the initial stages by Muslim action, and in the later stages by the active participation of non-Muslim nations. In the first half of the twentieth century, firstly through the League of Nations and later through the United Nations, all the nations of the world unanimously declared that religious freedom was a fundamental right for all, and could not under any circumstances be abrogated.