THE CONCEPT OF THE CALIPHATE

Man sometimes uses this freedom properly. At other times, he misuses it. But the All-powerful God is managing history and taking it towards the stage that is its real stage—the completion of the realization of God. Since the beginning of human history, God sent a series of messengers to the world to tell people of His creation plan. They tried to keep the journey of human civilization progressing in the right direction. But a study of history reveals that people did not prove to be responsible in using the freedom that they had been granted. Soon, history in general deviated from the path of monotheism and began travelling on the path of polytheism. This was because people found that they did not see the God that the prophets told them about, while they could see the things made by God abounded all around them. Because of this, people left the invisible God and began considering visible objects their deities. They began considering every object that appeared to them to be great as gods or partners of God. This is how ‘nature worship’, emerged. Nature worship spread far and wide. One reason for this was kings in ancient times found nature worship to be convenient to them, and so they patronised it. They employed this form of worship to claim a mandate for their rule. In this way, in ancient times polytheism acquired the status of official religion throughout the world. As a result of this nexus between nature worship and political power, polytheism acquired dominance all across the world. Monarchy In ancient times—and this continued for thousands of years—much of the world was under monarchy. Monarchical rule would very soon turn into personality cult. And personality cults gradually acquired the form of idol worship. This is why in ancient times monarchical rule finally turned into religion based rule. For instance, the Egyptian ruler at the time of Moses, the Quran (79: 24) tells us, proclaimed, “I am your supreme Lord”. The system of monarchical rule emerged as the greatest evil in ancient times. It was the gravest misuse of human freedom. This system was To properly understand the journey of civilization, it is necessary to set apart the evils produced as a result of human freedom and then see how God is managing human history.