Commonsense About Ahmadiyyat — Page 19
Umar and Othman-when the call of Islam had reached North. Africa in the West and Oxus River in the East. This progress was arrested by the eruption of dissensions which killed the third. Caliph and plagued the fourth Caliph Ali with civil wars and ultimately killed him also. . Thus ended the Islamic Republic of the Righteous Caliphs, and began the hereditary monarchy of the Umayyads, with. Muawiya as the King, misnamed as 'Caliph'. This was the first major deviation from Islam. Although the forces of Quranic. Revelations and God's continued grace took Islam further afield for a century or so, and kept Muslim supremacy for a few more centuries, the esoteric Islam receded gradually as the Companions of the Prophet and their immediate successors died out, and the exoteric Islam established itself with the bigoted ulemas and mullas at the helm. The Muslim world became more and more this-worldly, secular, fragmented and disunited, fighting for themselves and not for God any more. In thirteen hundred years the benighted priesthood severely persecuted 43 known great sons of Islam as we have stated above, including 15 of them who were foully murdered. The misdeeds of each century made the. Muslims of later centuries ashamed of themselves, though the newer misdeeds still continued. As exoteric Islam became one of the many religions of the world and the original idea of Islam for all mankind was forgotten, the greater part of the world remained non-Muslim. God's grace was withdrawn. The punishment came in the form of Mongol invasion, Christian Crusades, and the. European imperial domination of the latter days. . Now we are entering the fourteenth century, which is crucial for us, as well as our immediate concern. . The Fourteenth Century Hijra (AD 1879–1979). By the beginning of the fourteenth century of the Hijra and the last quarter of the nineteenth century AD, the European world ascendancy, headed by Britain, was complete. All non-` -West. European countries of the world were ruled either directly or 19