The Quran (5:48) says:

To every one of you We have ordained a law and a way, and had God so willed, He would have made you all a single community, but He did not so will, in order that He might try you by what He has given you. Vie, then, with one another in doing good works; to God you shall all return; then He will make clear to you about what you have been disputing.

The Quran (42:13) says that the deen or religion that God has sent humankind is one and the same and that it has been sent to every messenger in the same form. Yet, from the above cited Quranic verse (5:48), one learns that God had given different messengers different shariahs and different minhaj (methodologies of religious practice).

Here the Quran employs the terms shirah and minhaj. Shira or shariah refers to rules of worship, while minhaj is religious methodology. This Quranic verse (5:48) is not to be understood in the absolute sense. It is not that each prophet’s shariah was totally different from that of the other prophets. The differences were in matters of minor details.

Worship has a spirit or an essence. For instance, according to the Quran, the essence of namaz (five times daily prayer) is humility and that of roza (fasting in the month of Ramazan), is gratitude. While the inner reality of worship never changes, it has certain external forms, where there can be variations. Worship is given to one prophet in one form and to another prophet in another form.

One example of difference in the external form of worship is that of the qibla or direction in which prayer is offered. As is known, the Bait ulMuqaddas (Jerusalem) was made the qibla for the Jews. But the Kaaba, which is in Makkah, was made the qibla for the ummah (followers) of Prophet Muhammad.

As far as minhaj or method is concerned, God gave different methods to His prophets to accommodate the different circumstances. Only that method can be proper that takes into account the prevailing circumstances. For example, Prophet Joseph directly told the ruler of Egypt “Place in my charge the storehouses of the land” (THE QURAN 12: 55), but Prophet Moses did not make this sort of demand on the king of that country. On the contrary, he asked for permission to depart from Egypt, taking along with him his people, the Children of Israel. (THE QURAN 26: 17)

It is wrong to claim that the differences in the shariahs of different prophets were on account of evolution—that the rudimentary shariah of the earlier prophets kept getting refined till the finally-evolved shariah was given to the final prophet, the Prophet Muhammad.

The above cited Quranic verse rebuts the evolutionary explanation of different shariahs to different prophets. According to the Quran, the differences in the shariah are on the basis of God’s testing people, and not on account of the supposed evolution of shariah laws.

Every act of worship has a spirit as well as an external form. Those who gather around a prophet and adopt a life of faith know this difference, and hence are more particular about the spirit of worship. But in later generations, stagnation gradually sets in, and people lose the inner spirit of worship. The performance of external forms of worship in a ritualistic manner is mistaken as true worship.

God gave different methods to His prophets to accommodate the different circumstances.

When stagnation sets in and a community loses the spirit of worship, God commands, through His prophets to changes in some external forms of worship. Thereafter, those who had taken the external forms to be the real thing continue to cling onto these ancient forms, unable to adopt the new forms of worship. They even deny the prophets of their times. But those in whom the spirit of deen (religion) is alive give no importance to the external differences and willingly adopt the new. This is precisely what happened in ancient Madinah, when, through Prophet Muhammad, the qibla or direction of worship was changed (2:142).

Such changes in shariah are brought about through prophets. Now, no changes are possible in the external forms of worship that Islam prescribes, because no new prophet will come. However, as far as minhaj or method is concerned, the case is different.

Minhaj is essentially based on ijtihad (exercise of judgement with reasoning). Since ijtihad will remain operative among the Muslim ummah (followers of Prophet Muhammad) till the Day of Judgment, Muslim scholars agree that differences or changes in issues related to minhaj will continue to be made.

Addressing the Prophet, God says in the Quran (6: 90):

Those [the previous prophets] were the people whom God guided. Follow their guidance then and say, “I ask no reward for this from you: it is only a reminder for all mankind”.

Hence, the Prophet repeatedly adopted the manner of earlier prophets in matters of minhaj. One can discover examples of this from the Quran—for instance, exercising patience in the face of the oppression of opponents (46:35), following the sunnah or practice of the Prophet Joseph in the wake of the victory over Makkah and forgiving the oppressors (12:92).

The differences in the shariahs of the prophets is no mysterious matter. It is based on a proven law of nature—that even if people’s beliefs are exactly the same, the external circumstances in the context of which they function can never be identical. Even a prophet may face different circumstances at different points in his life. Hence, it is absolutely natural that in the application of the shariah there would be differences according to the prevailing circumstances. That the shariahs of different prophets have been different is because of the need to take into account the differences in the prevailing circumstances that the different prophets faced.

Every act of worship has a spirit as well as an external form.

For instance, as conditions grew severe for Prophet Muhammad in Makkah, God commanded him to leave Makkah and migrate to Madinah. In contrast to this, though conditions that the Prophet Jesus faced in Jerusalem had also become severe, he was not commanded by God to leave Jerusalem and go somewhere else. One reason for this difference is that when Prophet Muhammad migrated to Madinah, the conditions there were very different from those in Makkah and the centre of Islam could very easily be established there, while at the time of Prophet Jesus, there was no place outside Jerusalem like Madinah where he could have gone in order to preach under better conditions.

Here it is necessary to clarify that the sequence of conditions and events in the 23-year span of Muhammad’s prophethood is a part of the history of Islam, and not a part of Islamic creed. For instance, the Prophet engaged in peaceful dawah (conveying the message of God) in Makkah. He then quietly migrated (hijrat) to Madinah. Thereafter, there were incidents of jihad (in the sense of qital or war). Finally there was the victory over Makkah. If someone takes this sequence of events to argue that the Islamic movement is but a name for three stages—Dawah, Hijrat and Jihad—it would be incorrect. This sequence of events was not based on any sacred concept but was wholly a result of temporal conditions, and not of any ideology. It is related to minhaj, and not to the deen; to method, and not to religion. Its status is entirely relative. It is an event of history that happened because of prevailing conditions and there is nothing sacrosanct about it.

Differences in matters of method were not specific to earlier prophets. This principle will continue to operate among the Muslim ummah even after the last prophet, the Prophet Muhammad. This is because the principle on which it is based is an eternal one—that is, of differences arising in the external circumstances. Hence there will be repeated need for differences in method.

In ancient times, much of the world was under despotic monarchism. A single tyrannical ruler controlled all the affairs of a country. Given this, one option for a God-worshipping people to lead a life of faith was by departing from the ruler’s domains, as the Prophet Moses did. He could not lead a peaceful life worshipping the One God in Egypt under the rule of the Pharaoh. That is why, he left Egypt, taking the entire community of the Children of Israel with him, and went into the uninhabited Sinai desert to establish a God-worshipping society.

When stagnation sets in and a community loses the spirit of worship, God commands, through His prophets to changes in some external forms of worship.

Another example is provided by the Companions of the Prophet. In their time, the powerful Sassanid and Byzantine empires ruled in the neighbourhood of Arabia. Both these empires were based on political coercion. Under their rule, it was not possible for the votaries of monotheism to fulfil their responsibilities. The aggression of these rulers led the Prophet’s Companions to confront them. With God’s special help, the Prophet’s Companions were victorious. These oppressive empires were finished off and the votaries of monotheism got the opportunity to lead a life pleasing to God on God’s earth.

Today, conditions have vastly changed. The world is free from dictatorship and coercive political systems. The collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1991 ended coercive rule in the history of mankind.

These political changes have revolutionised the issue of ‘method’. Followers of Monotheism no longer need to migrate from one land to another. Nor do they need to resort to military confrontation with ruling powers in order to lead a free life—because all these are available as a result of historical processes. There are two major aspects of this revolutionary transformation: complete religious freedom and modern means.

For the first time in human history, intellectual revolutions and the establishment of the United Nations has given every person and group the inalienable right to believe in, practice and preach the religion of one's choice. The only condition is that one should not engage in violence against anyone. In other words, today there is no external obstacle whatsoever for leading a peaceful religious life and for engaging in peaceful preaching work.

Under such circumstances, Muslims should thank God for the new age of freedom and welcome it whole-heartedly. Unnecessary confrontation with political rulers on the basis of some self-invented ideology is meaningless. A Companion of the Prophet, Abdullah bin Umar, remarked that God had ordered Muslims to engage in war only to end religious persecution. The age of religious persecution had ended in a partial sense in Abdullah bin Umar’s time. The establishment of the United Nations has put a definite end to religious persecution. Given this religious freedom, the order to fight to end religious persecution is no longer valid. Muslims must abstain completely from any involvement in such violence.

Following the scientific and industrial revolutions, modern technology has given such capability to ordinary people with its wide impact that political power has become secondary. What was thought possible only through the acquisition of political power, can be achieved in great measure through technology.

The media, with its potential for tremendous impact, can be used to pursue one’s goals very effectively. It is no big effort to organise large international conferences, bringing together people from across the world. Modern means can be used to establish magnificent Islamic centres. Spreading the message of Islam to every corner of the globe is quite possible with the Internet. If these modern means are employed with wisdom and vision, one can establish ‘religious empires’ that were unimaginable in the earlier age of political empires.