Badges mark quoted or attributed material (Qur'an, hadith, another author, an opposing view). Unbadged passages are Maulana Wahiduddin Khan's own words.
Conclusion
T
he nineteenth century was the century of the knowledge explosion. Man came to feel that, under the influence of science, the attainment of boundless knowledge was within his reach, and that he was now in a position to build his world on his own. However, by the end of this century the picture was quite different. It was discovered with great frustration that science can give but a partial knowledge of reality. And limited knowledge is an insufficient basis on which to construct an ideology that will provide answers to all his questions. The first phase—of hope—was outlined in a book written by the British author, Julian Huxley: Man Stands Alone. The second phase—of frustration—found expression in a book written by the American author, Cressy Morrison. Its title: Man does Not Stand Alone was truly meaningful.
But again, there was the thrilling news brought by the twentieth century: that of the atomic explosion. Man believed once again that he had managed to acquire the greatest power of nature; now the time had come for the first time in human history to build the most successful civilization on earth.
Events showed, however, that atomic power, having assumed the form of the atomic bomb, became a source of such great destruction as to threaten the very existence of human civilization.
The truth is that prior to the knowledge explosion, or the atomic explosion, man has been in need of a reliable ideology to furnish him with a complete interpretation of life, and instruct him as to the goal of his existence and the direction of his actions and how to exercise knowledge and power. The spread of communism in the nineteenth century had given man the false conviction that he had discovered the perfect ideology that he had been seeking all along. But, in 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, this false sense of conviction vanished into thin air. In this new scenario, the world is experiencing an ideological vacuum. Islam alone can fill this vacuum for it is a religion of nature—a complete and preserved guidebook handed down by God to His Prophet.
The trend of studying Islam all over the world shows that this process has already begun and the twenty first century will be the century of Islam. If the nineteenth century was marked by the knowledge explosion and the twentieth century by the atomic explosion, the twenty first century is destined to be marked by the Islamic explosion.
The fact is that, for the building of life, man is in need of divine guidance. Religion is the name of this divine guidance. And Islam is the only preserved and reliable version of religion. Just as there is no source of physical light save that of the sun, similarly there is no other source of divine guidance for life except that of Islam. Islam is the only reliable, authentic and dependable answer to this question.
Man, born to live on the planet earth, has been endowed with free choice, but he is not the master of his destiny. The most crucial aspect of life is that he is accountable to God Almighty for all his deeds. There is no escape from this accountability. After a brief span on earth, he is destined to face his death and find himself before God for his fate to be decided in the form of eternal hell or eternal paradise. The greatest of man’s concerns is that he should prepare himself for the world to come. The present world is like a great examination hall, where man’s only task is to pass the divine test set by God, so that he may save himself from divine punishment in the next world, and be held deserving of God’s rewards in the form of paradise. In paradise there will be no fear and no regret.
Everyone is heading towards a fateful leap into the next world. Only those who can pass the divine test are the successful ones in this life and the next. This is the goal towards which people ought to strive. (Quran 37:60).