But Christianity was an unrealistic...

But Christianity was an unrealistic, imperfect and one dimensional religion, and since it had an unscientific and anti-intellectual basis, it could not last as a permanent and universal religion and ideology. The Renaissance and subsequent changes dealt the church a heavy blow, and Christianity could no longer make its presence felt as a living faith in Europe, and soon became a dead creed.

As we said, Christianity, from the beginning, lacked the dynamism which provides the people with zeal, frenzy, fanaticism and solidarity. After the Renaissance, it retired completely from the political, social, intellectual and emotional life of the people and western ideology was left with an intense vacuum. In the absence of an inspiring force that would revive them, the westerners were left in the dark. Christianity was dead.

Since man cannot live in a vacuum (of belief) and needs an ideology to follow and love, ‘Azar, the idol-maker’ of Western ideas hewed the idol of nationalism, and offered it to the West as anew religion and anew god that was welcomed by thirsty devotees. This vacuum was later on filled by Marxism, and both these schools owed their creation to the weakness and failure of Christianity in satisfying the religious longing of Westerners. But in Islamic East, there never existed such a vacuum.

Here, Islam was already present as a living, dynamic and universal ideology. It contained such dynamism that in the first century after its advent, it unified all the lands stretching from North Africa to the farthest parts of Asia, and from Spain to Mongolia, and joined together peoples of different races, languages and cultures as a single Ummah. Even now, Islam still possesses in the Muslim world afar greater power of rousing revolutionary zeal, devotion and solidarity than any other ideology.

It can inspire its followers to sacrifice their life and wealth in the way of the school, and for that reason there is no need in the Islamic world to import nationalism as a Western commodity which is produced in accordance with the peculiar conditions of that region. Nationalists and Western intellectuals of the Islamic world ignore the facts of their own country and its cultures and fancy that any experiment which has been successful in the West, may be repeated in the East.

But this is illusory thinking.