ISLAM IN HISTORY — Ideological Power

all kinds of human freedom. Religious persecution was one aspect of it, which was pervasive everywhere in the olden times. The end of this age of kingship and tyranny too came in the wake of the emergence of Islam. There were two great empires in the world in those times. They were the Roman and Sassanid empires. They represented the system of absolutism. The followers of Islam encountered those empires. This encounter was apparently one like of an ant and an elephant. But with the succour of God, the followers of Islam were successful in dealing a death blow to the system of absolutism which brought about the age of human freedom for the first time in human history. In the Bible we find predictions about the advent and the mission of the Prophet of Islam. One of the chapter of the Bible describes the P rophet of Islam and his companions in these words: “He looked and startled the nations. And the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual lulls bowed. (Habakkuk 3: 6)” People accepted Islam due to the ideological quality of Islam, and not because of its political power. The battles fought in the first phase of Islam were aimed at exterminating the system of coercion in order that the doors should be opened to human progress. By his very nature, man wants to gush forth like flowing water towards progress. By his very instincts he wants to go on making progress. So progress is an automatic process which cannot be stopped, except by an external barrier. The ancient political coercion was a severe obstacle of this kind. By removing this obstacle, Islam opened the doors of progress for humanity. At the time of the emergence of Islam, there was only one person who adhered to it, that was, the Prophet himself. But today, there are more than a billion people all over the world, who adhere to it. The general propagation of Islam has nothing to do with battles or the sword. The entire propagation of Islam took place on ideological strength. In the initial stages the historical team of Islam was comprised of mostly Makkan and Madinan people. But we know that no offensive war was waged with Makkah and Madinah. Later on, the believers went to other