THE EMERGENCE OF PROPHET MUHAMMAD

and the Byzantine Empires. With the fall of those two great empires of the world, Islam annexed the territory extending from Iran and Iraq to Bukhara in the east, while in the west, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and then the whole of North Africa, were conquered by Islam. And the torrent did not halt there. In AD 711, Islam surged forward across the Straits of Gibraltar into the Iberian Peninsula. In 732 a Frankish prince, Charles Martel, arrested the advance of Islam at Tours. Then followed the Crusades, stretching over two centuries, and after the Crusades the horrific onslaughts of the Tartar tribes. But despite these attacks from outside, the Islamic Empire held its own until the 15th century, when, due to infighting among the Muslims themselves, Spain was lost. It was then the turn of the Turks and the Mughals to be aroused by the spirit of Islam. In 1453, the Turks conquered Constantinople and advanced into Eastern Europe as far as Yugoslavia. A Turkish army remained encamped outside Vienna until 1683. In the 16th century the Mughals established Islamic rule in India and Afghanistan. Over the last thirteen centuries Muslims have spread to every corner of the globe. Close on four dozen countries of Asia and Africa have come to constitute a Muslim world. According to a 2015 study reported by Wikipedia there are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world today. This was all the result of a twenty-threeyear effort conducted in Arabia under the Prophet’s guidance. In this short space of time, the Islamic revolution not only assured itself of a permanent place in human history; it also created a new history of its own. Man does not have it in him to accomplish such a gigantic task; it can only be accomplished by God. The Islamic revolution was truly the work of God. It seems as if God had made special arrangements for all this beforehand. From the bare Arabian desert, He raised up a people of extraordinary tenacity, a people whose characters had been tempered by their environment. They knew only acceptance or denial; for them there was no third alternative. In them were preserved all the natural qualities needed for dedication to a cause. Added to this was the fact that the two great powers of the day lay on the borders of their country. It was only natural that the mighty empires of Rome and Persia should The Islamic revolution opened out hitherto unexplored opportunities for man. It made God’s revealed religion a historical reality, something that it had not been before.