Prophetic Guidance for the Modern Age

Prophetic Guidance for the Modern Age The Quran tells us that the Prophet of Islam was sent as “a mercy for all mankind” (The Quran, 21:107). There is nothing mysterious about this. It is a natural reality, which can be understood by making an academic and rational study of it. When a human being is born, he finds himself in a world, which is astonishingly vast and complex. How man has to relate himself to his world and how he has to form his ideas are matters of which he is totally ignorant. Neither is his birth accompanied by a guidebook, nor does he find a board set up on some hill-top inscribed with the necessary guidelines, which he is to follow. That is why man continues to grope in the dark, finding only scraps of knowledge to lay his hands on. Science and philosophy are two such cases in point. What is philosophy? Philosophy is an attempt to discover the secrets of the universe at the academic and scientific level. Man is born with a feeling of curiosity. Instinctively he feels the urge to find out the reality of things. That is why philosophy has always existed in rudimentary form since the very advent of man in the world. However, philosophy took a proper and organized form three thousand years ago in Greece. Subsequently in various academic and intellectual centers, philosophic discussion and debates were engaged in all over the world. After a continuous effort for five thousand years, philosophy has not been able to give any meaningful concepts to man. During this long period of time the strivings of great minds have ended only in intellectual confusion and dissension (intishar). On the other hand, science gave man, within a period of just 200 years, so many new ideas that we find it difficult to enumerate them. It is science alone which has led man to the age of modern civilization. What is the reason for this difference? The reason may be traced to the fact that science recognized the limitations of knowledge and, by accepting this reality, made full use of whatever knowledge it had at its disposal. But the case of philosophy was different. It remained ignorant of its limitations for thousands of years. In ancient times the fields of philosophy and science were not separate from one another. They were regarded as equal parts of human knowledge. Ancient philosophers considered all aspects of knowledge as belonging to their own sphere and gave thought to all of them in their totality. Three hundred years ago the division of study was worked out, in that the subjects of science and philosophy were separated from one another. Now the perusal of realities of meaning or truths became the subject of philosophy, while the objective realities became the subject of science. That is to say, the chemistry of flowers became the subject of science while the meaningfulness of flowers became the subject of philosophy. This division of knowledge, or in other words, this acknowledgment of human limitation led to the emergence of extraordinary