MAN AND RELIGION

Third: The Historical Proof

This can be discerned in the long history of religion and messages; in the numerous prophets and messengers, ever since the dawn of humanity till this day. Mankind, even during the darkest periods of ignorance and blindness, and with every era and generation, has beheld some guiding prophet, a preaching messenger, and a changing message, as an expression of Allah's grace, and His beneficency to His

servants.

This successive coming of the prophets, spread over a long time, generation after generation, alongside man's progress, and parallel to his historical existence, is an explicit proof of the truthfulness of the prophets' mission and the soundness of their preachings. Otherwise, there would not have been such an enormous number of prophets during different historical stages, all of them proclaiming a similar truth and forwarding the same principles. It is incredible that so great a number of men,

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in diverse ages, nations and places, should falsely claim to be prophets, and yet they should all be identical in their message. Were the preachings of those prophets false and groundless, contradictions and differences would have been quite obvious

in them. Every message would have borne its special specifications, contradicting those of the other, and the objectives of those prophets and their concepts of Allah, religion and the hereafter would have also been contradictory. Actually, it is the contrary  which we see. We discern a unity of call in the messages of all those

prophets; the call to believe in the Oneness of Allah, to have faith, to believe in the other world, to be interested in reforming mankind and in correcting its conduct and the order of its life. This confirms the unity of the source, Allah, and the unity of the call and goal.

Fourth: The Objective Proof

This proof can be inducted by scrutinizing the message of religion and monotheism, and the final code of divine laws (the Islamic laws). By induction and studying the Islamic laws individually, in detail and aims, one can recognize the truth of the divine message, and discover its humanistic and reformative side, its keen interests in the welfare of man and in delivering him, regardless of colour, social position, time and place. Then, one would realize the falsity of the accusations attributed to religion, as a consequence of explaining it vis.a.vis the ignorance of the materialist interpretation, some aspects of which we related earlier. We know religion to be a message of deliverance, a call to salvation and luminous sign on the dark road. Its purpose is to save mankind, to break the bonds of slavery and open the channels of light and a happy life before a straying humanity.