adopted was wrong. He abandons it and embarks upon another
course. This he has to repeat time and again. Often he feels
exhausted during the course of his journey and leaves the
experiment incomplete in dire frustration. Even when he reaches
his destination, the labour involved and the time spent do not
commensurate with the result achieved – the span of human life is
so short and the distance to be traversed so lengthy. This process of
''trial and error'' is another form of cosmic process. Man has,
however, not been left in wilderness to find his way out, unaided by a
guide or without any signposts on his way. He has been blessed with
Divine guidance. If he adopts the course suggested by it
straightaway, not only is he protected against pitfalls but the time
taken to reach the goal also shrinks from cosmic reckoning to
human calendar. Fourteen hundred years ago, a group of believers
made this experiment most successfully, which, apart from the
miraculous results it produced, proved that neither the Qur'anic
Social Order was a utopia nor the programme laid down to establish
it was unworkable. Their later generations, however, abandoned
that course, with the result that they met the same fate as did the past
nations who acted similarly. (This, by the way, is the negative proof
of the efficacy of the Divine Law governing the rise and fall of
nations). The Divine course is still there and can be taken up by any
nation who wishes to reach human destination safely and within the
shortest possible time:
Say: The truth from your Rabb is there; so let whosoever will accept,
and let whosoever will reject (18:29).
Reference- Charter of Labour of 1927, quoted by Earnest Barker, in Principles of
Social and Political Theory, p. 133. - R. Briffault, The Making of Humanity, p. 159.
- Ibid, p. 259.
- Ibid. p. 262.
- Rene Guenon, The Crisis of the Modern World, p. 26.
- Ibid, pp. 126; 131.
- Ibid, p. 136.
- A. Einstein, Out of My Later Years, p. 152.
- Ibid, p. 260.
- C. G. Jung, Modern Man In Search of Soul, p. 251.
- B. Russell, Authority and the Individual, p. 125.
Islam: A Challenge to Religion 281