4. LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY

4. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity ~ 157 ~ could rule over them untrammeled by any fear of an uprising. In this way, the rulers of antiquity had become staunch patrons of polytheism and superstition. When the Prophet, with his authority as ruler, announced that eclipses of the sun and the moon were purely physical happenings, and were certainly not expressions of the greatness of particular human beings, this age-old reverence for natural objects and superstitious beliefs very soon disappeared. A new age commenced in which attribution of divine qualities to mere things existing in the world around us gave way to realistic, or in modern parlance, scientific thinking. But, this is not all that humanity had bestowed upon it by the Prophet Muhammad, may peace be upon him. In addition to this, there was the divine book, which laid emphasis on the fact that all the things of the earth and the heavens had been subjugated, by God’s will, for the benefit of mankind (Qur’an, 31:20). This was what induced people to think that rather than bow before them,