FROM PROPHET ABRAHAM TO PROPHET MUHAMMAD — Raising A New Generation

no other place was suitable as wherever there were people, they were under the infl uence of superstition and false beliefs and were unable to think diff erent to their cultural conditioning. At that time, there was not a single house that in the world of God that had been made for the remembrance of God. For such a House of God also, this very place in the desert of Arabia was the most suitable. Here, Prophet Abraham, with the help of his son, Ismael, constructed a house dedicated to God which is known as the Kabah or the House of God. The eff orts of Prophets Abraham and Ismael culminated some 2500 years later in a new generation that is referred to in the Quran as ‘qair-e-ummah’ (3: 110). In the days of Prophet Abraham, his followers numbered just a handful, but by this time a team had been created that would refl ect the supplication of the Prophet, ‘...make of our descendants a nation that will submit to you....’ (THE QURAN 2: 128). The Islamic scholar-historian Philip. K. Hitti, referred to them in his book, History of the Arabs (1937), as a ‘nursery of heroes’. English scholar and orientalist, David Samuel Margoliouth has described them as a ‘nation of heroes’. This kind of acknowledgement was nothing but acceptance of an established fact that was well recorded in history. Quranic words are a prediction about the companions of the Prophet, which no one knew about at the time of revelation of these verses. It was in this generation that Muhammad-bin-Abdullah was born in 570 A.D. God chose him to be a prophet in 610 A.D., and when he breathed his last, in 623 A.D., his companions numbered over 125,000. This was the team that was the culmination of a historical process that had started 2500 years before. Through the generations of Prophet Abraham and Ismael, a group of precious individuals were selected who would devote their lives to God and who for the fi rst time in history would take the message of the Oneness of God towards an ideological revolution. The pilgrimage of Haj is an annual reminder of this great mission that was originated by Prophet Abraham. o