The Qur’an An Abiding Wonder
Divine Arrangement
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extraordinary circumstances. Here this task is to be
performed by us normal human beings, and
through historical processes, without the veil of the
unseen being lifted. Events throughout human
history bear out God’s fulfillment of His promise-
Muslims as well as non-Muslims, individuals as
well as communities have been pressed into this
service by God. So far as the former prophets are
concerned, they were unable to secure sufficient
numbers of followers to provide a strong guarantee
of the preservation of the book of God. But the case
of the Prophet of Islam is distinctly different from
that of the other prophets. On the occasion of
Hajjatul wida, the last pilgrimage, which the
Prophet performed two and a half months before
his death, he was accompanied by one lakh and
forty thousand Muslims on the plains of Arafat.
One can guess from this that by the end of his life
the number of believers, both men and women
taken together, must have been around five lakhs.
This number is quite extraordinarily large,
considering that the world population in ancient
times was much less than it is today. After the death
of the Prophet this number went on increasing as
nation after nation embraced Islam. In this way a
