A Present to Kings — Page 8
(8) the Phillipines, the Soudan, Abyssinia, established at diverse times and flourishing under the auspices of different nations all come to an end almost simultaneously and the rule is everywhere transferred from Muslim to non-Muslim hands, the events prove that the fall has a special significance and is not the result of occurrences that happen every day. Nor can the cause be attributed to human machinations. For the latter can hardly be supposed to affect simultaneously such diverse countries and kingdoms belonging to different nations and following different principles of government. If, however, any hody should contest that the fall was due to material causes alone and there was no secret force working behind it, then he would necessarily have to deny, what is now universally accepted, that there was something extraordinary in the rise of. Islam or that there was something singular in the progress of its early days. In fact this is what is maintained by the enemies of Islam, that there was nothing of the nature of miraculous about its rise. It was, they say, only an ordinary progress, and they mention several causes which led to it. . They argue that the real cause lay in the fact, that the Arabs, by their long life of freedom, had acquired the capacity to conquer the ruling nations of the time, who had reached a state of exhaustion by having long spent up their stock of mental and physical energies, that the prophecy of the conquest of the empires and treasures of the Caesars and the Kesras made by the Holy Prophet was the mere result of his observation of the growing power of the Arabs and of his perception of the signs of the approaching dissolution of the two empires. Else, they say, there was nothing out of the common in the prophecy. . Even if Islam had not come into existence the two empires would have come to their ruin; and if the Holy Prophet (peace be on him) had not formed the Arabs into a nation under the banner of a religion, still they were sure to make a rise under some other leader. There is, however, no Mussalman who would accept such a view of the case. It is a common belief and creed with them that there was something out of the common in the rise of Islam, and that the rise happened under conditions under which it was impossible for any other nation to