The second of these spiritual standards which apply to the possessor of
knowledge is that he should be the defender of his faith. It is obvious
that these holy words do not refer exclusively to searching out the
implications of the Law, observing the forms of worship, avoiding greater
and lesser sins, practicing the religious ordinances, and by all these
methods, protecting the Faith. They mean rather that the whole population
should be protected in every way; that every effort should be exerted to
adopt a combination of all possible measures to raise up the Word of God,
increase the number of believers, promote the Faith of God and exalt it
and make it victorious over other religions.
If, indeed, the Muslim religious authorities had persevered along these
lines as they ought to have done, by now every nation on earth would have
been gathered into the shelter of the unity of God and the bright fire of
“that He may make it victorious over every other religion”(26) would have
flamed out like the sun in the midmost heart of the world.
Fifteen centuries after Christ, Luther, who was originally one of the
twelve members of a Catholic religious body at the center of the Papal
government and later on initiated the Protestant religious belief, opposed
the Pope on certain points of doctrine such as the prohibition of monastic
marriage, the revering and bowing down before images of the Apostles and
Christian leaders of the past, and various other religious practices and
ceremonies which were accretional to the ordinances of the Gospel.
Although at that period the power of the Pope was so great and he was
regarded with such awe that the kings of Europe shook and trembled before
him, and he held control of all Europe’s major concerns in the grasp of
his might—nevertheless because Luther’s position as regards the freedom of
religious leaders to marry, the abstention from worshiping and making
prostrations before images and representations hung in the churches, and
the abrogation of ceremonials which had been added on to the Gospel, was
demonstrably correct, and because the proper means were adopted for the
promulgation of his views: within these last four hundred and some years
the majority of the population of America, four-fifths of Germany and
England and a large percentage of Austrians, in sum about one hundred and
twenty-five million people drawn from other Christian denominations, have
entered the Protestant Church. The leaders of this religion are still
making every effort to promote it, and today on the East Coast of Africa,
ostensibly to emancipate the Sudanese and various Negro peoples, they have
established schools and colleges and are training and civilizing
completely savage African tribes, while their true and primary purpose is
to convert some of the Muslim Negro tribes to Protestantism. Every
community is toiling for the advancement of its people, and we (i.e.,
Muslims) sleep on!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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