Claims and Teachings - Ahmad The Promised Messiah and Mahdi — Page 386
386 means that all nations, whether civilized or uncivilized, had become a hotbed of corruption. Now when all testimonies show that in the days of the ap- pearance of the Holy Prophet, of all people that lived in the east or in the west, that peopled the land of Arya Varta or were the denizens of the sands of Arabia, that had their abode in the islands or were settled on the mainlands, there was none thafe had a true relation with God and that misdeeds had corrupted the earth, cannot an intelligent man then see that that was the time when a great Prophet should have appeared on the stage ? The question may be asked, what was the reformation which that Prophet brought about. I emphatically say that this question with regard to the Holy Prophet can be answered by a Muharn- madan with a clearness and reasonableness with which no Christian, Jew, or Arya can answer the question with respect to his Prophet. The primary object of the Holy Prophet was to reform the Arabs. The Arabs were then in such a degraded state that they could hardly be called men. There was no evil but was to be found in them and there was no form of shirk but prevailed among them. Thieving and dacoity formed their business and the murder of a human being was with them like the trampling under foot of an ant. They killed orphans to appropriate their property and buried their daughters alive under the ground. They took pride in adultery and openly spoke of indecent things in their poems, which were immoral in the highest degree. Drinking prevailed to such an extent that no house was free from it, and in gambling they beau every other people. In short of, they were a disgrace even to the beasts and the snakes of the desert. But when the Holy Prophet rose to regenerate these people