Islam Creator of the Modern Age
1. Islam: Creator of the Modern Age
~ 15 ~
indirectly but it also gives guidance, which is of
great practical utility.
FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT
God created a perfect world. Then He created man
in perfect form. Next He commanded man to live in
the world and make use of everything he found in
it. Man was told, moreover, that there was only one
Creator who should be worshipped. Man was to
worship this God alone, and none else besides Him.
But man went astray. He began to worship
anything, which was visibly prominent, such as
rivers, mountains, etc. He could not continue to
make an invisible God the centre of his attention.
Worse, his inclination towards visible gods went on
increasing. Anything large and impressive was
regarded either as a god, or as possessing divine
attributes. This engendered, on the one hand, the
concept of the sacredness of certain personalities
and, on the other, the practice of nature worship, or
pantheism.
This worship of some thing or person other than
God finally developed into
shirk,
or polytheism.
