Preface

The title of this book was inspired by a verse from the Bible:

Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered:
Let them also that hate Him flee before Him.
As smoke is driven away, so drive them away:
As wax melteth before the fire, so let
the wicked perish at the presence of God.
But let the righteous be glad; let them rejoice
before God: yea, let them exceedingly rejoice.

  Psalms 68:1-3

This is one of those passages in the Bible which prophesy the revolution that was to be brought about by the Prophet Muhammad, may peace be upon him. Before his time, pantheism and polytheism had held sway all over the world. From Noah to Jesus, prophets and reformers had been sent by God to the world where they appealed to the people to renounce their evil practices and in particular, to reject polytheism and to worship only one God. But it was never more than a tiny minority which responded to the call of God’s messengers, and that is why a civilization with its roots in polytheism continued to dominate throughout the known world of the time.

It was then that God sent His final messenger, Muhammad, may peace be upon him, with exactly the same message as had been brought by his predecessors. As he was to be the last in the chain of prophets, God decreed that he should not only bring revelation to mankind, but should, with divine assistance, be successful in extirpating the practice of polytheism once and for all.

This event did indeed take place through the instrumentality of the Prophet, and it is to this that the above-mentioned biblical quotation alludes.

This monotheistic revolution continued to predominate for one thousand years. Then history witnessed a new age—the age of atheism. It was in the 18th and 19th centuries that it reached its culminating point. During this epoch, it was asserted, on the strength of scientific findings, that modern research had destroyed the foundations of religion quite definitively. It is this claim, which has thus been expressed by a certain atheist: “Science has shown religion to be history’s cruelest and wickedest hoax”.

But today, that very same weapon – science – which was supposed to have brought religion to an ignominious end, has at last, been turned against the scoffers and atheists and we are, at the moment, witnessing the same momentous revolution in thinking as took place in the seventh century with the advent of the Prophet of Islam. God himself has razed the walls of atheism to the ground and science stands ready to bear out His word.

This book is an attempt to describe and explain this new revolution. It strives, moreover, to demonstrate how 20th century research has, on academic grounds, totally demolished the atheistic claims put forward in the 18th and 19th centuries.

In the seventh century, God had opened up new possibilities, which were at once availed of by the Prophet of Islam and his companions. As a result, monotheism attained intellectual dominance and the polytheism of that civilization was banished forever. In a like manner, through a modern scientific revolution, God has once again created new opportunities. If alerted to these trends, people of a religious bent of mind can quickly seize these opportunities, and can certainly turn the tide against atheism and set up monotheism in its place. In so doing, they will ultimately be setting history upon one of the finest courses of our human era.

Wahiduddin Khan

August 26, 1964
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