The Failure of Judaism and Christianity
THE PURELY MONOTHEISTIC faith preached and practised by the great Israelite prophets Moses and Jesus, had totally failed to exercise any more of its correct influence on the minds of the Jews and the Christians who had gradually sunk deep in all sorts of idolatrous beliefs and pagan practices. The followers of Jesus, the most recent of the apostles of God, preceding the Holy Prophet Muhammad, had become polytheists in worshipping three gods instead of the One Whom they were commanded to serve:
The New Testament:-
Inspite of the definite Commandments from God conveyed to the people by the holy prophets Moses and Jesus, the Israelites and the Christians had started deifying their prophets and their saints, worshipping them. Among the Christians had sprung up schools worshipping the idols of Mary, Jesus and also the other saints of their own fancy. The Christians condemned the Israelites as being meaningless in their faith and the Israelites criticised the Christians similarly in return, while both of them were on the wrong track, diametrically opposed to what they had been preached by their respective teachers, Moses and Jesus.
The Darkened Earth
EVERY NATION HAD a guide in an apostle from God and there was not left any place on the Earth which had not a warner or a guide (10:47, 16:36, 35:24) to fight the satanic forces of evil and wickedness which effectively ruled over the thoughts and actions of the human race. Satan had beguiled every nation of the world and had taken every nation far away from goodness in thought and action. Corruption ruled all over the world:
Asia, which was the birthplace of the religious guides and the apostles of God, had become the seat of all sorts of idolatry and heinous crimes were committed in the name of religion. People in India worshipped not only their own gods and goddesses but also animals, the serpents, the trees, the mountains, the rivers, the sun, the moon, and the stars. Many such objects were invoked as demigods or the agents of God, who were believed to be able to grant the prayers of man. To appease the anger or to gain the pleasure of the deities, all kinds of rituals and offerings, including human sacrifices were offered. The teachings of the sacred Vedas in India had created sects and sub-sects and had instituted communal hatred and caste distinctions as a part of the religious
observances. Women had been deprived of any place in the human society and denied the right of inheritance. Woman was not only freely used by man in the licentious satisfaction of the sexual urge in him, in the uncontrolled and the unrestricted polygamy but was subjected to the disgraceful system of Polyandry. In India a woman had no right to live after her husband but to burn herself to death, in the same fire in which her husband's body was cremated.
Persia was worshipping fire as God and the people believed in two independent gods of virtue and vice, i.e., Mazda and Ahriman. The countries towards the Pacific were also buried deep under similar fantastic beliefs. Buddha had come to create the spirit of self-annihilation or self-denial in the day-to-day life of man but he was misunderstood and quite a new and most impracticable creed became innovated in his name, deMahding humanity to tear itself away from the human society and to resort to wilderness and to live on begging as the Bhikshus.'
The countries professing the religion of the Church founded in the name of Christ, had started preaching the belief in three gods: Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. This peculiar phenomena of three in one and one in three, had created diverse schisms and conflicting sects which vied with one another in exploiting their brand in the riddle, how the man Jesus could also be God and how one could be three, am., same three could remain one. The most impracticable ideals were preached, i.e., turning the other cheek when one is smitten and surrendering the coat also when the cloak is taken away.Such horrible excesses were committed by the Christians in their heartless persecution of even the monotheistic Jews, that the records of their barbarous atrocities are absolutely unsurpassed in the history of the world.
Not to uproot any evil but in their madness to swell the ranks of the followers of their own established churches, the inhuman atrocities and the brutal conduct of the Christian authorities would
need volumes to relate them in all their details. Gibbon has pictured their character and conduct in his famous work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' :-
Why go far to explore the ancient history of Christianity ? Let us take into account the recent atrocious and inhuman attack of Rome (Italy), the seat of the supreme head of the Christian Religion, the Pope, on another poor Christian country, Abyssinia, in World War II: Italy played havoc upon the poor, helpless, ill-armed Abyssinians, merely for some territorial lust. Should not the intelligent ones and the free-thinkers question these Church authorities, if these acts were according to the teachings of Jesus ? Should not the intelligent ones and the free-thinkers among our Christian brethren question their Church authorities ? What happened to the commandment referred to in Luke 6:29, 30?
Arabia presented a consolidated view of all kinds of vices and crimes which were current in the different countries around it. Along with all the barbaric inhuman character and the brutal conduct found elsewhere in the world, Arabia had added something still more grievous and further heinous in nature.Idolatry had been so much ingrained in the nature of the people that besides the three hundred and sixty idols in the very
sacred shrine of the Ka'ba, the House built by Abraham and his son Ishmael, exclusively for the worship of the One True God, there were also household gods of every family and every house. And every individual had his own fancied favourite guardian deity which he held as his personal favourite god. Before a man started on a journey, he would carry with him four stones, three to make the hearth, and the fourth to be worshipped, and sometimes only three stones were thought to suffice, for after the cooking was over, one of the stones of the hearth, could be worshipped.
Stepmothers were inherited by the issues of a dead father, to he wifed, and female babies were buried alive because of a fanciful shame against giving away one's daughter to another man to be his wife.
Heartless plunder of travellers and of the unprotected habitations had become a proud profession.
Use of all sorts of intoxicants had neither any restriction nor control.
Angels were hailed as the daughters of God. Famous ancestors of the people were worshipped as the agents of gods.
Fantastic superstitions had gained the strongest hold upon the minds of the people.
Internecine feuds were of the greatest concern to the people which engaged their whole attention for generations together.
Human destiny was imagined to be determined and decided by certain stars.
A controlled and disciplined life was a mockery to the people. People led a nomadic life, wandering with their cattle and camping under the tents of camel-skin wherever they found water and shade and forage for their animals. A settled and a peaceful life which was essential for cultivation of the human society and culture, was not only unknown to the people but seemed to be impracticable. Petty groups of people lived in small villages and still smaller groups had settled down in small townships. The whole of the peninsula was divided into independent petty habitations, each tribe and clan assuming itself into a separate political unit. Hostilities once started continued for generations together.
Women were treated as mere chattels, as objects to serve man, to satisfy his animal passions (i.e., his sexual lust), without any right to inherit their deceased fathers, husbands or other relatives. A woman could be teased and tortured to any extent at the uncontrolled fancy of man. She could be left in suspense, neither being allowed to marry nor divorced. Woman's lot was very miserable. Besides polyandry which was freely practised, prostitution was also rife as a recognized profession. The treatment meted out to womanhood was saturated with contempt.
The dreadful belief in the existence of genies and evil spirits, played havoc in the minds of the people and had found a solution in the use of fanciful charms and incantations. Peculiar and fanciful beliefs about the existence of the human soul after its leaving the corporeal body, were maintained by the people and the worship of the dead formed a part of their religion.
Nowhere on the earth were current the practices or original teachings of any of the apostles of God. Corruption ruled all over the earth, and vice and wickedness had darkened it altogether.
The Land of Advent of the Last Apostle of God
THE PEOPLES IN the various parts of the earth had been given guidance from God in their respective languages through the apostles. Yet man followed Satan and led a wild and brutal life. The people of the barren sandy desert of Arabia, led a nomadic life, roaming in the waterless plains with their herds of cattle and settling down wherever they found water for themselves and pasture for their animals. Most of the land was not cultivable for grains and the soil and the climate could grow only date palms on it. The staple diet of the people was dates and the milk of camel and sheep. Owing to the scarcity of any other means of earning their livelihood, the people in groups preyed on each other for their own survival and thus got addicted to the worst of crimes such as plunder, pillage and carnage which had become their personal traits and profession. Drinking and debauchery were a part of daily life. After the death of their fathers, the men possessed their stepmothers as their wives, and out of a fanciful shame against giving their daughters to be the wives of the others, they buried alive their own female babies. Individual selfishness and group interest had been so much ingrained in their blood and emotions that a mere trifle of an offence against any individual was sufficient to generate warfare
between the tribes for ages and generations together. There was no law for man to resort to, and might alone was considered to be right. The people were not only drowned in ignorance but were also most unyielding in nature.
The Darkness Demanded the Promised Light
THE HOPELESS SITUATION on the earth against which the infinite knowledge of the All-Knowing and the All-Merciful Creator Lord had already determined the panacea, had dawned. The darkness which shrouded the earth, demanded the dawn of the Brightest Light which had been promised by the Lord. At last dawned the heaven's Brightest Light in the arrival of MUHAMMAD the Last Apostle of God who was called by Buddha as Maetrea (i.e., the Mercy), by the Prophets preceding Jesus as The Prophet, and by Jesus with several glorious titles viz., 'The Spirit of Truth,' 'The Conforter,' and 'The Holy Ghost' etc.
The Lord's Covenant with Abraham Fulfilled
AT LAST ON the 17th of the Lunar Month Rabiul-Awwal in the Year of the Elephant (Amul Feel) A.D. 587, Muhammad the Divine Light destined to expel once for all the darkness, and destined to abide in his law with mankind for ever, had his birth in this physical world, in the seed of Abraham through Ishmael, in the fulfilment of the Covenant which the Lord had established with Abraham.
Heaven's Announcement of the Advent of the Last Apostle of God
EVENTS RECORDED BY the historians relate that as the Holy Prophet Muhammad was born in Mecca, there were heavenly signs announcing the great advent of the Promised Mercy to the Worlds, the Last of the Apostles of God, and the deliverer of the Lord's Final Word to humanity, i.e., the Holy Qur'an, the Final Code of Discipline for Mankind.
I. The idols installed by the pagans, in the Holy Ka'ba, themselves fell down striking their faces to the ground.
2. In the distant land of Persia, where Fire was worshipped, the fire burning continuously for a thousand years in the altar, got itself extinguished.
3. The palace of Naushirwan the Just, the Persian King was shaken to its foundation.
4. A quake shock shook the Earth.
5. There was an extraordinary issue of the shooting stars from heaven.
It is quite obvious that the above signs were given to awaken man from his slumber to know the arrival of the Promised Prophet with the Final Word of Guidance from the Lord, for mankind as a whole.
