1. ISLAM: CREATOR OF THE MODERN AGE

~ 17 ~ Rooting out shirk, or superstition, was not a purely religious undertaking. It had, a bearing on all human concerns. The truth is that this allpervasiveness of superstition served as a hurdle to all kinds of human development. Placing nature upon a pedestal of sanctity had completely discouraged an investigation of it. Without such investigation, scientific and industrial progress was simply not possible. Progress towards the general acceptance of human equality was likewise barred by beliefs concerning the superiority or inferiority of a man’s birth, which had grown out of a variety of baseless suppositions, all governed by superstition. The emergence of all those factors, which today add up to enlightenment and progress, had been rendered impossible by a complete absence of scientific vision. It was superstition, which was responsible for delaying the birth of such an outlook by many centuries. Efforts on the part of the prophets over a period of thousands of years had proved that any struggle, which was confined, to intellectual or missionary fields was not sufficient to extricate man from the