ancient prejudices, and to build the Earth.(12)
Arnold Toynbee, the great historian, also visualises a world order "in
which the whole of mankind will be able to live together in
harmony, as members of a single all-inclusive family.”(13)
He elaborates this point in his small, yet very elucidating book, The
Present Day Experiment in Western Civilisation, (1962), saying:
If we avoid committing mass-suicide, there is no reason why we
should not eventually be able to have a world-state with a democratic
parliamentary constitution. But if we are to avoid mass-suicide, we
must have our world-state quickly, and this probably means that we
must have it in a non-democratic constitutional form to begin with.
Parliamentary government – and, a fortiori, democratic parliamentary
government – is practicable only in a community whose members have
a number of things in common-common political principles deriving
from a common outlook that derives, in turn, from a common way of
life. The different races, nations, civilisations, and religions of the
present-day world are still far indeed from having even approached
this degree of homogeneity and solidarity (p. 67).
And this is exactly what the Qur'an emphasised fourteen
hundred years ago when it said:
Mankind is but one single community (2:213; 10:19).
The social order laid down by the Qur'an is the practical means to
integrate mankind into one harmonious community. Such is the
religion which Erich Fromm looks forward to appear within the
next few hundred years,
a religion which corresponds to the development of the human race;
the most important feature of such a religion would be its
universalistic character, corresponding to the unification of mankind
which is taking place in this epoch; it would embrace the humanistic
teachings common to all great religions of the East and the West.
..... It will be the first fully human religion in history.(14)
According to Wagar:
A rational, ethical, practical faith, in harmony with science and
enabling man at last to live in harmony with himself and the cosmos.(15)
The world need not wait for hundred years for such a "religion"
to appear: it is already there preserved in the words of the Qur'an.
The difficulty is that it has not been presented to the world in its true
colour. And for this, we confess, the blame lies on us – the
custodians of that Book.
Islam: A Challenge to Religion 245