The Prophet Muhammad: A Simple Guide to His Life

This has established on a purely intellectual level that, historically, Islam is the only reliable religion. All other religions are lacking in this historical credibility. It was only after this intellectual awakening that it became possible to verify the truth of Islam by the standards of pure human knowledge, and to advance arguments for its being, out of all the religions, the only true religion. These modern developments have brought Islam to the point of unopposed victory. Now the need of the hour is for Muslims to end unilaterally all activities characterized by hatred and violence against their madu nations, so that normal relations may be established between dayee and madu and Islam may be communicated to them in strife-free circumstances. There is now the possibility of initiating a serious and fruitful dialogue between Islam and nonIslam. Undoubtedly the results of such efforts will be in favour of the former. A Great Potential Since direct argument is not possible so far as religious beliefs concerning the unseen world are concerned, only indirect or inferential argument can be applied in order to prove their veracity. This fact had led the scholars to believe that religious realities were a matter of beliefs alone; they were not scientific truths. But in present times, after the smashing of the atom, a revolution has taken place in the science of logic, and now it has been admitted that inferential argument too is, in essence, as valid as direct argument. Subsequently, it has become possible to establish religious realities at the same scientific level on which proofs (or disproofs) are offered for material or non-religious theories. In ancient times when man looked at the world, he would see that apparently there was in existence a great variety of objects so different from each other as to seem at times to be almost the opposite of one another. This observation produced the mentality of shirk. People thought that if things were diverse, there should also be a diversity of creators. But scientific studies have shown that this difference, or diversity, is only on the surface. Otherwise all things have originated from the same matter. This discovery deprived the shirk of any scientific basis, while scientific findings established an intellectual basis for monotheism. According to the statements of the Quran, the signs of God lay hidden in the heavens and the human mind. Scientific studies brought them to the knowledge of the people (The Quran, 41:53). Ultimately, the Universe assumed the form of a great book of divine arguments. With the new discoveries of science, many things have come to light as have made it possible to use new arguments to establish realities which are of religious importance. For instance, carbon-14 dating has made it possible to specify the exact age of the body of Ramses II (Moses’s contemporary) so that the following Quranic statement could be scientifically verified: This day We shall save your body, so that you may become a sign to all posterity. (The Quran, 10:92) Islam and the Modern Age