God Arises
The Challenge of The Qur’an
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but the dawn of red democracy has yet to rise over
that city.
Another important, but ill-fated prophecy was
made in 1798 by the British economist, Robert
Malthus (1766-1834), more than a thousand years
after the Quran was revealed. In his book,
An Essay
on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future
Improvement of Society
, he set forth his famous
theory on the growth of population. ‘Population,
when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio.
Subsistence only increases in an arithmetical ratio.’
Simply stated, growth in population and growth in
sustenance are not naturally equal. Human
population grows geometrically, that is at a ratio of
1-2-4-8-16-32, while the growth of food supplies
maintains an arithmetical ratio: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8.
Sustenance, therefore, cannot keep up with the
astronomical growth in human population. The
only solution to this problem, according to Malthus,
was for mankind to control its birth rate. The
population should not be allowed to exceed a
certain limit. If it did, the number of people on earth
would become greater than the amount of
