The Religion of Humanity – Part 1
Mohammad Yaqub Khan
ln his article, Comparative Religion – A Brief Survey, published on another page, the learned author, drawing his inspiration from the insensible imagination of a tenth century Syrian poet who trifled with Religion calling it a mere work of fiction or a feigned fairy tale, has also chosen to hold up this Divine Institution to ridicule, and deny the existence of the Most High God, with the remarks that “man in his weakness has always taken refuge in belief in one or the other sort of supernatural beings.” The learned author, it appears, has tried to pick up holes in all the great religions of the world not to seek and search after truth, but just for the fun of it. For, he writes in his/conclusion: “If I have brought some charges against each one of them it is not because I am unaware of the four explanations that have been given by the apologists of those religions, but explanations cannot explain away a fact. Such explanations for the most part convince only those who long to be convinced at all costs.” And the converse of it is even more true, that no amount of argument and explanation will be of any avail to a man who is determined to not to be convinced at all costs. Anyone who refuses to admit the life-giving light of the sun into chamber, will certainly be deprived of its benefit, for no fault of the bright and clear sun.
A fact is a fact, our learned correspondent assures us, and explanations cannot explain it away. We invite him and others of his way of thinking to ponder over the following two historical facts with an open and unbiased mind. A single, unfriended man, the Holy Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, arose in the midst of a nation, sunk deep in all kinds of vice and wickedness. He was to accomplish the most difficult task of the reclamation of that fallen nation, and thereby the reformation and regeneration of the whole world. No temporal power nor any terrestrial authority was on his back to support him. The whole peninsula to a man rose in arms against him and subjected him to the most terrible persecution. Even his own kith and kin deserted him. To a human eye it was nothing but death and destruction that stared this solitary man in the face. But under such fearful and fatal conditions he received from One High repeated assurance that he would triumph over his enemies and his mission would certainly succeed. A few verses of the Holy Qur’an:
أَلَيْسَ ٱللَّهُ بِكَافٍ عَبْدَهُ
Is not Allah sufficient for His servant? (39:36)
يُرِيدُونَ لِيُطْفِـُٔوا۟ نُورَ ٱللَّهِ بِأَفْوَٰهِهِمْ وَٱللَّهُ مُتِمُّ نُورِهِۦ وَلَوْ كَرِهَ ٱلْكَـٰفِرُونَ
هُوَ ٱلَّذِىٓ أَرْسَلَ رَسُولَهُۥ بِٱلْهُدَىٰ وَدِينِ ٱلْحَقِّ لِيُظْهِرَهُۥ
عَلَى ٱلدِّينِ كُلِّهِۦ وَلَوْ كَرِهَ ٱلْمُشْرِكُونَ
“They desire to put out the light of Allah with their mouths, but Allah will perfect His light, though the disbelievers may be averse.
He it is Who sent His Messenger with the guidance and the true religion, that He may make it overcome the religions, all of them, though the polytheists may be averse” (61:8,9)
سَنُرِيهِمْ ءَايَـٰتِنَا فِى ٱلْـَٔافَاقِ وَفِىٓ أَنفُسِهِمْ حَتَّىٰ يَتَبَيَّنَ لَهُمْ أَنَّهُ ٱلْحَقُّ
أَوَلَمْ يَكْفِ بِرَبِّكَ أَنَّهُۥ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَىْءٍ شَهِيدٌ
We will soon show, them Our signs in farthest regions and among their own people, until it is quite clear to them that it is the Truth. Is it not enough that thy Lord is a witness over all things?
(41:53).
The enemy conspired against his life that no vestige of Islam and its Founder be left on the surface of this earth; and they besieged his house with drawn swords. But the Prophet ﷺ escaped most miraculously. Is not Allah sufficient for His servant? In the Divine Word, quoted above, the Prophet ﷺ had been told in clear, categorical terms, when his persecution had reached fatal proportions that:
1.All the efforts of the enemy to annihilate Islam will fall to the ground and fail, and the huge hordes will lie helplessly at his mercy.
2.Islam will predominate and prevail,
3.Not only in Arabia, but also in the farthest regions of the earth.
No human mouth could utter these words in the face of the cruel and crushing conditions stated above. The world, however, saw with bewildered eyes that the violent opposition broke into pieces within a short space of ten years, and the formidable enemy was made to bite the dust most ignominiously. Islam spread in the lifetime of the Prophet ﷺ throughout the length and breadth of Arabia, and within a hundred years after its birth it reached the farthest corners of the earth, both in the East and the West. Who was it, we put it to our learned correspondent to explain, who disclosed to the Prophet ﷺ that deep secret of the unborn future many years beforehand? Who was it who protected the Prophet ﷺ when he was surrounded by sharp swords drawn to slay him, and granted him power and predominance over his numberless enemies?
It was stated in the Bible that the Pharaoh of Egypt and his army, when they pursued Moses and the Israelites, were all drowned in the sea: “And the waters returned and covered the chariots, and the horsemen, and all the host of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them ; there remained not so much as one of them” (Exodus, 14 : 28). The Pharaoh’s body, according to the Biblical record, was never found, and the sea became its grave. But two thousand years after this event, an Ummi of the desert, a perfectly illiterate man who knew neither history nor philosophy, nor any science of this world, proclaimed in full confidence:
فَٱلْيَوْمَ نُنَجِّيكَ بِبَدَنِكَ لِتَكُونَ لِمَنْ خَلْفَكَ ءَايَةً وَإِنَّ كَثِيرًا مِّنَ ٱلنَّاسِ
عَنْ ءَايَـٰتِنَا لَغَـٰفِلُونَ
“But We will this day deliver thee (Pharaoh) with thy body that thou mayest be a sign to those after thee” (Quran, 10:92)
Thirteen hundred years passed over this strange statement and the Christian critics found occasion to rail at and ridicule the Qur’anic revelation, calling it a fabrication of the Prophet ﷺ. It was however, in the last century, the 19th century C. E. of astounding discoveries and inventions that the body of Rameses II, the Pharaoh of Moses, was discovered, preserved among the mummies of Egypt. The body must have been cast ashore, and then embalmed by the Egyptians. It has, since then, been set forth and exhibited in the museum to be a sign for the coming generations. Now, who was it who gave this knowledge of a sealed secret to the Prophet ﷺ, when no one in the world knew of it, and the ancient Biblical record had stated in clear terms that the Pharaoh had perished in the sea?
God is certainly above all material conception. Human vision comprehends Him not, and nothing is like a likeness of him. The strongest proof of His existence, therefore, is furnished by His speech. The fact that He speaks to His righteous servants and reveals to them the deep secrets of the great unknown, and answers the prayers of mortal beings, and comes to their help in moments of distress and affliction, is an incontrovertible argument upon His existence. Even in our age, God spoke to Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, Founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement and he produced himself as a living testimony on God’s existence, proclaiming:
”God speaks to me, and the secrets of the unborn future that are beyond the bend of mortal man, are revealed unto me. The atheists and unbelievers who spare no pain for the achievement of mean motives of this perishable world, should come to me, if there is left in them any spirit for the investigation of Truth, and see with their own eyes heavenly sign which prove the existence of God beyond the last shadow of doubt ; and learn from me the ways, taught by the Holy Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, treading whereon man even today can have communion with the Most High God ; for He has said in the Holy Qur’an Those who strive hard for, We shall certainly, guide them in Our ways.
Kashti Noh
M.Y.K
(The Light – August 8, 1959)
