Muhammad a Prophet For all Humanity
17. Manifestation of Prophethood in the Present Day and Age
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polytheism really comes down to is worship of
forms. The polytheistic urge in people used to make
them turn in worship to any particularly striking or
spectacular worldly phenomenon, whether it was
the sun in the sky, or the king on earth. For this
reason scientific research could not be conducted
during the polytheistic era. As the historian Arnold
Toynbee has pointed out, natural phenomena were
considered objects of worship, so they could not
possibly become objects of investigation. With Islam
and the advance of monotheism, the awe in which
worldly phenomena had been held collapsed.
People realized that all things besides God were
objects of His creation. There was no cause to
consider worldly phenomena as sacred: their
natures could be analysed and investigated. The
liberation of the human intellect, which Islam
brought about, started at the very beginning of the
Islamic era, in the time of the Prophet. On the
occasion of a lunar eclipse, the Prophet Muhammad
pointed out that lunar and solar eclipses were signs
of God. They were not signs of the birth or death of
any human being, as had been thought during the
age of superstition that preceded Islam. In this way
the Prophet refuted both human and material
