Tabligh Guide — Page 83
(American Edition) 83 and in the experience of Christian saints, possibly also of Hindus and devotees of other religions. Such visions, moreover, have often marked the beginnings of lives of great sanctity and of heroic virtue. To attribute such phenomena to self-delusion scarcely seems an adequate explanation, for they have been experienced by many persons divided from one another by thousands of years of time and by thousands of miles of distance, who cannot conceivably have even heard of each other. Yet the accounts which they give of their visions seem to bear an extraordinary likeness to one another. It scarcely appears reasonable to suggest that all these visionaries “imagined” such strikingly similar experiences, although they were quite ignorant of each other’s existence. ” “The list 1 seems to have included very nearly all the persons who had accepted Islām a nd the Messenger of God must have remained with a much reduced group of adherents, among the generally hostile inhabitants of Makkah, a situation which proves him to have possessed a considerable degree of moral courage and conviction. “ When the fugitives 2 had whispered goodbye to Abū Bakr’s son and daughter outside the cave on Mount Thaur and the camels had padded silently away into the darkness beneath the sharp Arabian stars, the curtain rose on one of the greatest dramas of human history. How little did Caesar or Chosroes, surrounded by their great armies and engaged in a long and bitter war for world supremacy (as they thought), realise that four ragged Arabs riding silently through the bare mountains of the Hejaz were about to inaugurate a movement which would put an end to both their great imperial dominions. ”(Lieutenant -General, Sir John Bagot Glubb) 1. The List of Prophet Mu ḥ ammad (may peace and blessings of Allāh be upon him) companions who migrated to Abyssinia to flee persecution. 2. Prophet Mu ḥ ammad (may peace and blessings of Allāh be upon him) and Ḥ a ḍrat Abū Bakr ra. “One other circumstance we must not forget: that he had no school learning; of the thing we call school-learning none at all. The art of writing was but just introduced into Arabia; it seems to be the true opinion that Mu ḥ ammad never could write! Life in the Desert, with its experiences, was all his education. What of this infinite Universe he, from his dim place, with his own eyes and thoughts, could take in, so much and no more of it was he to know. Curious, if we will reflect on it, this of having no books. Except by what he could see for himself, or hear of by uncertain rumor of speech in the obscure Arabian Desert, he could know nothing. The