ArabiaIt was the will of God that the glorious sun of humanity's guidance, which was to illumi-
nate the world without end, should rise from Arabia. For it was the darkest corner of this
terrestrial globe, it needed the most radiant daystar to dispel the gloom setting on it.
God had chosen the Arabs as the standard bearers of Islam for propagating its message to
the four corners of the world, since these guileless people were simple hearted, nothing was
inscribed on the tablets of their mind and heart, nothing so deep engraver as to present any
difficulty in sweeping the slate clean of every impression. The Romans and the Iranians and
the Indians, instinctually thrilled by the glory of their ancient arts and literatures, philoso-
phies, cultures and civilizations were all crushed by the heavy burden of the past, that is, a
conditioned reflex of 'touch not-ism' had got itself indelibly etched in their minds. The im-
prints in the memory of the Arabs were lightly impressed merely because of their rawness
and ignorance or rather their nomadic life, and thus these were liable to he obliterated
easily and replaced by new inscriptions. They were, in modern phraseology, suffering from
unpreceptiveness which could readily be remedied while other civilized nations, having vivid
pictures of the past filled in their minds, were haunted by an obsessive irrationality which
could never be dismissed from their thoughts.
The Arabs were frank and unassuming, practical and sober, industrious, venturesome and
plain spoken. They were neither double-dealers nor liked to be caught in a trap. Like a
people true souled, they were always outspoken and remained firm once they had taken a
decision.
The Greeks, the Byzantines and the Iranians were peoples of a different mettle. Accus-
tomed to improving the shining hour as a godsend opportunity, they lacked the grit to fight
against injustice and brutality. No ideal, no principle was attractive enough for them: no
conviction or call was sufficiently potent to tug at their heartstrings in a way that they could
imperil their comfort and pleasure.
Unspoiled by the nicety, polish and ostentatiousness usually produced by the display of
wealth and luxury of an advanced culture, the Arabs had not developed that fastidiousness
which hardens the heart and ossifies the brain, allows no emotion to catch the flame and
always acts as an inhibition when one's faith or conviction demands stirring of the blood.
This is the listless apathy which is hardly ever erased from one's heart.
The common ignorance of the Arabs, exempted from the shame or reproach it involves,
had helped to conserve the natural briskness and intellectual energy of these people. Being
strangers to philosophies and sophistry, ratiocination and lame and impotent quibbling,
they had preserved their soundness of mind, dispatch, resoluteness and fervidness of spirit.
The perpetual independence of Arabia from the yoke of invaders had made the Arabs free
unacquainted with the pomp or majesty or haughty demeanor of the emperors. The servile