FOUR STEPS TO MODERNITY

In Islam, man has found true, unadulterated religion, in the sense that it has swept away all the artificial barriers between God and man forever. Islam’s sacred scriptures, the Quran and the sunnah (the practice of the Prophet to be followed) rise up like mighty towers to shed their light of guidance upon mankind for all eternity.

The Quran at various points stresses the fact that the religion sent by God to mankind in the shape of Islam is not only a source of guidance in the religious sense, but is also a blessing in many other ways (6:157). One very important way in which it was a blessing was that it brought human history out of the age of darkness and caused it to enter into the age of light. This was a revolution in thought which unlocked the doors to innumerable worldly benefits. It is this second, worldly, aspect of the Islamic revolution, which the well-known western historian, Henri Pirenne, describes in terms of Islam having “changed the face of the globe. The traditional order of history was overthrown.¹¹

The present era, which we think of as modern and advanced—the age of science and industry, of freedom and equality—is a direct consequence of this aspect of the Islamic revolution which is called a blessing in the Quran. This period, like most other major historical developments, came about gradually, taking almost a thousand years to reach its culmination.

This gradual process may be broadly divided into four stages, the first three of which are directly connected with the Islamic revolution. The fourth stage is indirectly related.

1. The period of the Prophet, 610-632;

2.  The period of the Pious Caliphs, 632-661;

3.  The period of Umayyads and Abbasids, 661-1492 (including Spain);

4.  The modern revolution brought about in Europe, which started in the 15th century after the crusades under the influence of Muslim civilization.