Islam Rediscovered
13. The Shariah and Its Application
~ 239 ~
This shows that at times defence is required to deal
with persecution. Whereas at other times no counter
move is desirable except for patience. Now the
question arises as to how to find out in which
circumstance the way of patience and tolerance has
to be adopted and in which circumstance doing
battle in self-defence is to be resorted to.
The believers of the first phase did not need to take
any decision regarding the answer to these
questions. For the answers according to the
prevailing state of affairs continued to be revealed
by God. But this situation no longer prevailed for
later-day Muslims. For them the questions exist in
relation to the circumstances, but the answers have
to be found by their own questing.
Herein lies the test of the believers of later times. If
the test of the people of the Prophet’s day consisted
of recognising the Prophet, the test of the latter-day
Muslims lies in recognising the command of the
Prophet. The Quran enshrines verses on both kinds
of injunctions together in the same volume. Now it
is the responsibility of the believers themselves to
reflect deeply, objectively, without any bias, to find
