Allah Most High proclaimed the truth in saying...

Allah Most High proclaimed the truth in saying: Never would the unbelievers from among the People of the book and the polytheists have abandoned their ways until there came to them the clear evidence: a Messenger from Allah reciting from purified pages (Al-Bayyinah 98: 1-2).

Man could not have grasped the need for this Message, the need for abandoning the falsehoods and the errors in which humanity was lost, and the need for arriving at a clear decision in the matter of belief until he was informed about the enormity of those mountains of rubbish.

Never could he have grasped this Message until he had rejected that tangled welter of beliefs and concepts, myths and philosophies, ideas and superstitions, customs and traditions, and morals and manners which, at the time of the advent of Islam, had blackened the con­science of man in every place. Never could he have seen the truth until he had grasped the nature of the babble, the confusion, and the complexities that had entered into the remnants of the earlier Divine revelations.

It was necessary to expose the deviations, distortions, and interpolations that were mixed in with what had been previously revealed by Allah, as well as to expose the influences of the philosophies and myths, and the paganism contained in them. Our aim in writing this book, however, is not to present these concepts, but to present the Islamic concept and its characteristics.

We shall confine ourselves therefore to giving a few examples from the religious concepts of Judaism and Christianity in the form in which they had reached the Arabian Peninsula, as well as a few examples from the days of pre-Islamic ignorance, with which Islam had to contend. Judaism, the religion of the Children of Israel, was full of pagan concepts and was also greatly affected by their ethnic chauvinism.

Many Messengers of Allah had come to the Children of Israel, among them their ancestor Israel, that is Y'aqub (Jacob), who was the son of Ishaq (Isaac), the son of Ibrahim (Abraham), may Allah's peace be on them all. Israel was one of the earliest bringing the Message of the Oneness of God in the pure form taught to them by their ancestor Ibrahim.

Then came the greatest of their Prophets, Musa (Moses), may Allah's peace be on him, who, together with the Message of the Oneness of God, brought the Mosaic Law based upon this belief. But, with the passage of time, the Israelites deviated, and descended to the level of idolaters in their concepts.