Studying the Prophet’s Life in the Light of his Message

of religious coercion to an end, so that the task of dawah—a task which had to be performed in the past in very difficult circumstances—could be performed in a propitious atmosphere. The other aim was to lend the full support of rational argument to God’s religion, so that no other religion could compare with Islam in terms of ideological veracity. These two tasks have been performed on a large scale in modern times. We give below a brief description of this. In ancient times the rule of monarchy was prevalent all over the world. Such a system, based as it was on personalities, could be upheld only by force. That is why kings everywhere had resorted to coercion to establish and maintain their positions, inevitably crushing any tendency towards intellectual or religious freedom. This state of affairs was a permanent obstacle to performing dawah as well as to the general development of human thought. The aim of the revolution brought about by the Prophet and his Companions was to abolish the oppressive political system of the times and to usher in an age of freedom and democracy. This revolution gradually influenced the course of human history and remained alive until in modern times it reached its culmination. Now calling people to accept religious truth can be done in total freedom. Earlier this task was seriously hindered by the atmosphere of oppression. In ancient times polytheism (in Arabic, shirk) dominated the minds of people all over the world. Whole nations were so mentally fettered by superstitious thought that the development of science had become well-nigh impossible. The Prophet and his companions, however, put an end to the irrational beliefs arising from superstition. In this way they opened the doors to the scientific way of thinking and paved the way for the advent of the age of science. Now the scientific revolution of today has, in turn, opened up vast opportunities for Islamic dawah. One result of this scientific revolution, which was, in fact, a by-product of the Islamic revolution, is our modern system of communications, which has made it possible for the first time in human history to perform the task of the propagation of Islam much more rapidly and on a world-wide scale. According to a tradition of the Prophet, a time would come when God’s word would enter all the homes of the “world” (Musnad Ahmad, Hadith No. 23814). It is a prophecy, in an indirect sense, of the coming of this age of fast communications. For, without the modern media, the universal propagation of Islam could never have become so accelerated. This modern scientific revolution has resulted in the development of a new, scientific rationale in support of Islamic beliefs. Earlier, dayees of Islam had only traditional types of arguments to draw upon. In present times, it has indeed become possible to authenticate Islamic realities by measuring them up to accepted scientific norms. In ancient times, religion was considered sacrosanct, so that any study of it could only be uncritical. That is why, academically, no distinction could be made between reliable and unreliable religions. In present times, under the influence of the scientific revolution, religion has begun to be treated in the same objective and critical manner as other non­-religious matters and subjected to the same scientific scrutiny.