Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

Part 1: Physiognomy of the West

Genesis of Human Life and Civilization

The very advance in scientific research into the origins of life on this planet pushes the date of its first appearance further back into remoter ages while increasing the riddles to unravel and the puzzles to solve.

Despite the comparatively recent appearance of human life proper-an infinitesimal fraction of the period for which the planet has nourished living matter -much uncertainty obscures the etiology of its production.

Nonetheless, scientists and paleontologists have, by excavations and the discovery of artifacts, corn and other relics of human handicraft, been able to trace the course of man's upward progress through a series of stages in history thus:

1. Paleolithic: marked by the use of simple weapons to kill animals in self-defense or for food: stones, sticks and similar hunting tools: savagery and brutishness in constant fear of the beasts: use of caves and holes in the earth as shelter from voracious carnivores and from the dark. Primacy went to the most capable hunter: all human effort was bent to the conquest of foes- whether hostile nature or animals or humans.

2. The Later Paleolithic: man's first step up from the use of existing objects as tools was to fabricate for himself, e.g. by binding a stick to a stone to make a hammer, or manufacturing a sharp edge by percussion of flints; from which he was led on to the discovery of the art of kindling a fire; and so to the cooking of food; and the overcoming of night and dark. Long centuries were spent on this series of developments until the Paleolithic stage was finally surmounted, and:

3. The Neolithic Age: saw manifold and varied changes in human living. Artifacts were still made of stone and wood, but the crude clumsy devices of the Paleolithic were replaced by beautifully regular, exact and polished tools. Huts were made to live in, woven wood plastered with mud. Mud was molded into crocks and pots, dried first in the sun and later on the fire.

Crops were grown and the soil cultivated in primitive fashion; certain animals were domesticated. Man learnt which grains to sow for food, which trees to protect for fruit and timber. He invented the bow and arrow and so rid himself of some types of dangerous beast; and spears to catch fish. Arrowheads, spears and axes were still of sharpened stone. But skill increased over the centuries (which have left their relics for us to find and so reconstruct their life) and finally led them out of the stone Ages into:

4. The Bronze Age: with the use of metals, came the birth of civilization justly so-called. For Civilization is from the same root as "City" and connotes "social living". So does also "Tamaddun " the Arabic, from the root M-D-N - city or community life: so do also "policy" and "police" from the Greek "polis" : "urbane" from "urbs " and so on. For with it human life assumed a novel aspect and entered a new phase.

Man was no longer a mere hungry animal always busied with the quest for food. From concentration on his belly and its needs he emerged to dreams and visions and an objective consciousness of the world around him. The more victories he gained in his struggle with nature, the more his desires and needs increased. Emerging from barbarism he found the final road toward civilization: freed from the trammels of ignorance and dullness imposed by his conditions, he set out on the pursuit of learning and science.

The human animal's progress was distinguished from other species' stagnation by a spiritual factor. An internal quality we call intellect or reason, the most amazing of all phenomena, gave man hindsight and foresight, to assess the past and improve on it, to be alert to fresh methods and to innovations. Every forward step he took imprinted itself on the memory banks of the race.

A sense of dissatisfaction over imperfections spurred him on to correct them.Thus unfolded the effects of this invisible, indescribable, marvelous phenomenon called "mind". Its light causes him to observe objects and events, reflect on them, learn from experience and store the information for future use in that astounding computer called "the brain" as "memory", where it is available for the construction of new hypotheses, visions, experiments and advances.

Two other revolutionary products of human ingenuity arose in the mists of prehistoric antiquity:

1. The invention of the Wheel for transport - at first mere rolling of heavy objects on logs- to the axle-tree between two roundels-to the developed cart, set between true wheels with axle, hub, spokes, felloes and tire: and,

2. Language: noises accepted as means of conveying the impulses arising in one human mind to another-mutual agreement to interpret certain sounds each time uttered as of the same significance the grunt of fear or warning-the roar of rage-the coo of love-and so to the names of objects-to phrases- to orders like "come", "go", "fetch", "run" and finally to abstractions, concepts, ideas, projects, worship of the forces controlling capricious nature.

With language, social living and so true civilization came to birth. When signs were accepted as representing the arbitrary sounds that represented ideas, prehistory emerged into written history.

Prehistory is traced from vestiges and evidences dug up and inter­preted. History starts when there are written records to consult. This invention of writing was the most revolutionary stroke of genius. It started with inventories of property, bills of exchange, composed by drawing pictures of the objects (sheep, cattle, vessels, grain-measures) then with a series of dashes to indicate number; then with symbols to indicate the nature of the transaction-the names and addresses of parties to it- and so gradually to symbols for every observed phenomenon, for relationships between them, and, finally, for abstractions like color, shape and concept.

Some races like the Chinese stayed in the pictographic stage, like the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic. Other races moved on to analyses the sounds which composed words and to adopt signs to represent always the same sound regardless of its meaning. It is these which carry all we know of the past 6 millennia of humanity's history.

Meantime masonry also made great advances. Exact measurement became possible. Men learnt to extract ores from rocks by smelting, and then to mound and temper them - at first the softer metals like tin and copper and their alloy bronze. When the same arts were applied to the harder iron, the Bronze gave way to the "Iron Age" - the true start of modern times.

Four thousand years ago true religion dawned through the obedience of the Patriarch Abraham to the call of Almighty God in Babylonian territory. The world's Creator charged Abraham with the task of leading Babylon's society out of darkness. His was the first apostolate as God's spokesman to rally mankind out of superstition and wrongdoing.

Naturally he met with opposition and resistance from those with vested interests in falsehood and evil. But Abraham's prophetic proclamation of Monotheism and ethical worship raised a force of followers far superior to the united front of his adversaries, the advocates ofAhriman and the would-be despotic tyrants on the spirit of man. Abraham obeyed the call to leave his ancestral home, and finally after many thousand miles of nomad travel found haven in the Hejaz where with his sonIsma'il he set up Monotheism's central shrine.

Seven and a quarter centuries before Christ, Rome was founded; and in the succeeding centuries extended her rule far and wide. Not long after Rome's foundation, Zoroaster (Zardusht ) arose in Iran and substituted for the magic ofMagianism a rational and moral relationship between man and the God of Good in the eternal battle against Evil.

In almost the same century Confucius and Lao-Tze in China and Gautama the Buddha in Hind laid the basis of the philosophy which was developed by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in Greece during the succeeding century. All this found consummation in the Birth and Life of Jesus Christ, who proclaimed the call to reform human society, to rescue mankind from the pollutions ofJudaistic materialism, to extirpate corruption and internecine combat, and raise humanity towards ethical and spiritual purification. This age was marked by the growth of intercommunication, of industries, and of building and medical skills.

AD476 launched theMediaeval period in Europe. The Church added temporal power to its spiritual leadership and became ruler of the thinking and living of society, while Europe fell into the dark ages of barbarian invasion, ignorance, bloodshed, nationalistic and tribal rivalries.

Meantime in the East, Islamic civilization established its sway (see Part 2). In AD1453 Sultan MuhammadFateh captured Istanbul and a new age began.In Europe the new independent nations- England, France, Germany, Austria-vied with each other for expansion. The magnetic compass enabled ships to cross the Atlantic Ocean and find America.

A Renaissance of thought and science swept over Europe and established more orderly international relations, until the French Revolution of AD1789 ended the Age; and the Industrial Age took over the19 th century and changed the face of Europe. Invention followed invention. Discovery pressed on the heels of discovery. European history entered its newest and modern phase.

Evaluation of Modern Occidental Civilization

The world we live in has been making giant strides, entailing a revolution in thought because of science's daily advance in the study and the satisfying of man's needs. Science and industry have unloaded the work that yesterday imprisoned man in hard labor onto machine-tools. These set man free to enjoy life's luxuries in ease and leisure. They liberated his mind and spirit from the bonds of business to expand into limitless research into Creation's mysteries.

So swift has been this progress that developments which took centuries of the olden "time" measured in "nights and days" take only minutes or even seconds of modern "time". Ships which took months and years to cross oceans by the force of winds on sails, now by steam or electrical power take days for the distance.

Land transport, once dependent on beasts of burden, now moves on trucks, trains and planes with jinn-like speed. Man's gaze, no longer earth-bound, explores our galaxy and outer space, plumbs sea-deeps and penetrates to the earth's core. Old ignorance of this marvelous planet yields to fascinating new knowledge of the facts of nature, from infinite space to the atom's infinitesimal components, magnified a million times and made visible by electronic microscope.

Modern Western civilization’s productivity, affluence, comfort and leisure cannot be denied or decried. Advances in health and welfare, childcare and maternity have cut infant-mortality, increased longevity, produced cures for diseases deemed incurable, swept the plagues and pestilences of the past into oblivion.

Nonetheless, although science and technology have moved mankind farther and faster in the last century than in10 previous millennia rolled into one, we of the Jet, Atom and Space Age know we have only started to learn the ABC of the writings in nature's mighty Book of Truth which await perusal.

It must be regrettably acknowledged that Western civilization’s short comings and weaknesses are no fewer than its advantages. Despite the leisure and ease which knowledge and culture provide for society, despite the new pages of history turned, human happiness has not increased nor have social illsdiminished.

Technology and industrialization have reached a zenith while moral and spiritual life has sunk to their nadir. While science climbs, thought declines, divisions proliferate, and the West, rejecting spiritual and moral values, has bowed its neck under the yoke of worship of the machine. Machine-worshippers will never lay hands on joy or peace or happiness.

Science imposes an order on life which provides affluence but not happiness, since happiness is outside its competence. Science does not distinguish benefit from harm, or ugly from lovely, but only true from false. The order imposed on human living by science alone will set Hell on fire and must be resisted at all costs.

For civilization draws in the train of its priceless gifts a pernicious and deadly insecurity, breeding-ground of crimes and corruptions. It kindles a fire of lusts and longings that burns warp and woof of soul and spirit. It bans calm of mind, spirit, faith. Far from lighting a lamp to illumine human conduct, science haslunged it into deeper dark and murk.

Science's conquests and victories, like those of war, leave an aftermath of ruin and waste, sadness and suffering beyond the reach of remedy. Beside every flower blooming in civilization’s garden grows a thorn that wounds the soul.

Balance theboons of cars, planes, factories, surgery, wonder-drugs and affluence against the banes of bombs, gas, jets and rockets, death-rays, crime and violence. Within its own limits intellect is a good servant. But it cannot grasp the non-material. Hence with the decline of virtue many axioms of ethics have been consigned to oblivion beyond recovery.

The Islamic world, though not in midfield of the disturbances and activities of science, does not escape their manifestations in personal, social, educational or cultural life, and the flood of "civilization" rushes upon us. For ideas and ethics know no national frontiers; they infiltrate from land to land-good as well as bad. Man's inclinations being what they are, the evil and corrupt go quicker and deeper. Hence, though our society cannot compare in scientific or technological advances, it manifests the complete pattern of Western decadence.

A society can suffer no worse disaster than the loss of the power to distinguishgood from bad; no society that has suffered this loss can attain welfare or wellbeing.

Too many see only the fascinating externals of "civilization", but are blind to the painful tragedies and the moral crisis of the modern age. The "civilized" world displays its superficial charms, so that persons who briefly sojourn there willingly abandon their discernment and judgment and shut their eyes to unpleasant facts and wrongdoings, feeling that the slightest difference in their own manners of habits or talk from those that obtain in the West is shameful; and instead of seeking the causes of Western progress and the means of reaching such ends, bring home as gifts a load of moral degeneracy and spiritual degradation. Such self-deception is the worst of defects, causing the loss of personality, of independence of thought, and of appreciation of the treasures of national culture, religion and nationhood.

This misleads thought away from religious conviction. It robs people of the power to assess and analyses events by a deep and universal doctrine that distinguishes good from bad. By this means many a truth is obscured.

East-West Interaction

The nations of Europe have been able to arrive at their modern welfare states without rejecting their religion and manners.

Japan, too, has made notable progress while preserving her creeds, customs and characteristics: and has with lightning speed soared up towards a high level of civilization. From being, through centuries, one of the world's backward lands, Japan has, in a mere60 years, entered the ranks of progressive nations.

Japan never leant towards the West, nor fixed eyes and ears on Europe as a model to copy. She has clung fanatically to her heritage and nationhood. Cherishing the traditions of the great men of her history, she has continued to act as for centuries past, still preserving her ancient "Shinto" and "Buddhism" and pursuing vehemently her own forms of worship - however light-minded a sensible person might consider that worship.

But revolutionary freethinking gives no basis for diagnostics. It cannot analyses orunravel even the most obvious of social problems. Yet it welcomes every form of protest against, or criticism of, religion, with respect and joy, as being tokens of "enlightenment". Such negligence will never be able to face life's realities with a free mind.

The vast extension of scientific exploration into all aspects of material life has enabled human living to make an astounding leap forward. But while scientists busy themselves laying bare nature's powers and channeling their discoveries into technological industries, they fail to notice that they are only occupying one corner of a vast laboratory and neglecting all but the physical side of human nature. Could this be the deep cause of the mounting tide oflicence and excess?

The perfecting of material science has not been accompanied by increasingly profound ethical insights. In fact the two disciplines proceed on different courses - so different that progress along one course may even precipitate retrogression on the other, from sheer satiety.

Recently a European professor said to a science conference held in Tehran: "In the field of morals the West envies the East. For the East's moral achievements are richer and finer than the West's. While the East profits from Western science and industry, the West needs to profit from Eastern ethical achievements."

To keep alive, human society needs other principles alongside industrial and technical culture. When the political and social set-up cuts the human community off from its basic philosophy of living so that life is bereft of altruistic ideas of mutual help and turns into a monotonous unremitting pursuit of enough to eat, the masses fall prey to the type of violence which the poet called "man's inhumanity to man."

Unfortunately mankind today is still in the kindergarten stage. We still have to attain an adult intellectual level if we are to make full use of the priceless reserves hidden in the heart of nature and at the same time to invest our spiritual capital in ways that yield dividends of happiness of heart and enhancement of spirit.

Infant mankind is childishly at the mercy of passing moods and passions instead of obeying the dictates of mature common sense. The bulk of humankind fails to recognize its prejudices and superstitions as idols, but worships them as much as "progressive" people worship "science".

Millennia of unpalatable experiences, and constant fresh miss adventures, must finally drive man to realize that the only alternative to inevitable annihilation is self-committal to the Road of Right and of Divine Guidance.

The sociologist Stanwood Cobb writes: , in his "Lord of 2Ka'abas " (p.1):

"Each vital facet of Western society's life, organization and culture is marred by some extraordinary crisis. Its whole body politic and soul are sick. Its nerves are on edge because the world is teetering on the brink of the divide which separates the moribund age of materialist scientific glory from the dawning age of tomorrow's moral culture.

We are experiencing the thoughts and deeds of the last minutes of a 6-centuries­ old materialist civilization; and glimpsing the first faint rays of the new. They are still too weak to sustain a sure hope. The long dark shadows cast by the old as it sinks below the horizon dim nascent brightness, making the road towards the new even more difficult to descry.

Human culture is experiencing that longest night of the winter-solstice as it broods over our past culture, and torments our spirits with nightmares and bogies and phantoms, ghosts andghoulies and gooseflesh and horrors. Yet beyond that nightlies the morning of the new culture, truly universal and moral, awaiting its chance to bless mankind."1

We boast our "realism". But it is highly unrealistic blindly to accept, to follow and copy, the manners and customs, the institutions and formulae, of others. Such imitativeness merely binds a yoke of obedience on its own neck. Initiative is the fount of independence. Imitation is the parasite that devours independence.

The confusion in our ideas and ethics is due to the torpor caused by imitation. Nor does our turning our back on our own historical and spiritual traditions in favor of Western habits help us towards clarity.

In his book, "Islam and Others" (p.42 ) a great Islamic thinker wrote: "We do not ask for intellectual or social seclusion. We do not draw aside from the course which history compels civilization to follow, for we are fellow-travellers and partners in mankind's caravan. But we have been Muslims and, as such, have given great treasures to human culture.

The positive achievements of our great past laid the foundations of the modern world edifice. Yet we fail, alas!to give this pioneering due credit, and to preserve its esteem and dignity. When we learn to value our past successes properly, we shall free our hearts of the inferiority complex which bows the neck to tyranny, and take up the pure reasoning of free men.

Instead, like beggars cap-in-hand on the rich man's threshold, we accept gifts when we should throw them back in his face-or act so nobly that we win him to imitate us. In fact, for us civilization has a two-fold significance.

It comprises, first, our own far from undistinguished share in founding civilization, which we must not consign to oblivion but preserve in the stable practices and personality, the bright and shining extension of human experience provided by our people's way oflife : and, in the second place, those fascinating manifestations of others' culture, prepared and matured by them for themselves, from which we must choose such a selection as will suit our needs without damage to our heritage.

"Civilization" derives from the same root as "city", and belongs to the sublime side of human thought. To debase its creativeness for mere imitation is to reduce whole communities to mere monkey-life."

Materialist Europe's Religious Practice

So far has the materialist spirit infiltrated civilized peoples that today you will find hardly one European with any aim in life loftier than scratching up alivelihood. Nonetheless many hold religious beliefs, and cling to their inherited Christianity, however adulterated it with heresies, and incapable of meeting anyone's spiritual or moral needs.

It may seem odd that such a religion can still exercise any authority in this "progressive" world: yet it has shaped and still shapes the spiritual and ethical mound of Western civilization. On Sundays shops and secular institutions are closed. Church bells ring out on all sides with their distinctive clanging. Congregations of all social classes gather and attentively listen to sermons. The TV gives special religious broadcasts supervised by the churches.

The religious take their babies to church to be christened at the priest's hands, and affirm their faith before him. Religious leaders are respected and called "Father" i.e. spiritual father of the community. During the long centuries of the Church's ascendancy, while all Europe's economy was based on land-ownership, a tithe of all agricultural produce was exacted to support the heavy expenses of religious institutions.

During the last200 years or so, with the increasing secularization of society and the shift of the economic base to industry and commerce, one land after another has abolished the system of "tithing" and of the parson's "Glebe Land". But huge endowments have remained, while the faithful make regular voluntary contributions, often under a system of "stewardship". This is how Christianity's spiritual leaders come to command an adequate budget for their vast undertakings.

A committee on printed matters controls publications, and in this the Church plays the leading role. The Church supervises educational planning for nursery and primary schools. For all nine years of their schooling, pupils are obliged to attend church on Sundays for services specially prepared with religious instruction suited to their age-group. Strangest of all, innocent babes have to go into the confessional and admit their sins to a priest.

Films may not be shown without the permission of a board consisting of church leaders, doctors, sociologists, economists and psychologists; and the angles of religion, psychology, sociology and economics are all taken into account.

An Iranian in Europe

The writer had the misfortune to require medical aid in Europe. I was taken into a Catholic hospital in Germany. I was welcomed and accorded the attention they give to religious who come as patients; in my room, as in all rooms, was a statue of Jesus and a painting of the Virgin and Child. Regular prayers were offered in the chapel for the cure of the sick!

One day I sawthem lighting candles before the statue of Jesus in one of the large halls of the place. Fancy that! Lighting a candle in broad daylight beside a man-made statue - and that in the hub of science and learning! What an outcry there would be if a simple peasant in Iran were to light a candle on a dark night at the shrine of a saint! How our "lessoned" youth would mock him and his "old-fashioned" ways!

I shall never forget one occasion when blood was needed for a transfusion. The head of the hospital asked me: "What sort of blood does Islam allow for transfusions? May Muslims accept non-Muslim blood? We will prepare blood for you according to Islamic principles!"

Developed countries set voluntary limits in the true interests of freedom. For the limits are intended to prevent misuse of the products of civilization. Thus the TV shows sports matches, holds teaching sessions, pictures the life of distant lands, and, in brief devotes the major part of its screenings to educational programs.

In the name of freedom it is prohibited for anyone to turn up his radio so loud that it bothers neighbors or passers-by. No-one may give parties that last on into the small hours if they disturb his neighbors. In fact, when you are in the streets you never hear a radio.

Though it is true that I did once hear a radio noise that made the welkin ring. I was just leaving my hotel and was astounded; for this was the first time I had ever heard anything like that in Europe. And what type of sound fell on my ears?.

Iranian music! I decided to investigate. Next day I chanced to meet an Iranian who had taken up residence near the hotel. In the course of conversation I casually mentioned the event. Putting his finger to his lips, he confessed with a smile that it was he who had perpetrated the noise on the day before just to see what would happen!

It is truly sad that in Iran we have not mastered the right use of modern amenities. This is because we have deviated from the track traced for us by our ancestral principles, and plunged into disgrace. Everyone knows the undesirable effects of TV's presentation of life. Much of the blame for the decline of the morals of society lies at its door. All thatviewers gain from such films and programs is an increased urge towards moral corruption and mayhem.

Everywhere in Iran radio noises reverberate from every side in nerve-racking volume.

Industrial discoverers and inventors never meant to guarantee the sort of profits now obtainable from the exploitation of their brain-children­ nor could they have offered any such guarantee, for nothing was further from their thoughts than the idea their products, conceived for a rightful use, might one day fall into the hands of people who would turn them to purposes which are positively harmful and, for the population of a country like ours, threaten mortal peril.

Without exception, all the phenomena of industry, its tools and its products alike, are capable of falling victim to the process by which mercenary profiteers squeeze personal advantage out of public demand. The natural unreason of man, the tendency to mistaken attitudes, rapidly makes selfishness epidemic, so that people compete in technological profiteering to the tragic loss of others.

The root of this tragedy must be sought in the fields of learning and wisdom rather of ignorance and folly! For a Muslim to desert the humaneness and courtesy which his religion enjoins is surely a moral blemish of shocking proportions! God forbid that in our country such unbridled self-seeking and wrongdoing should be allowed in the name of "Freedom" to spread its evil disease unchecked.

Reasons for Christianity's Advance

Two sorts of religion exist - "Revealed" and "Natural". Today both suffer from such deformities that nearly all their manifestations not only have ceased to grow but in fact daily dwindle towards extinction. Apart from Islam, Christianity is the only exception, since it makes such enormous efforts on a world-scale that it is expanding all the time, and therefore is coming to confront the almost equally widespread Islam all over the place.

A conjunction of factors favors Christianity's spread. The world-climate is propitious. Popular thinking is easily influenced by skillful propaganda to move in any desired direction. This is due both to mankind's innate suggestibility and also to the subliminal effects of modern advertising techniques. The social renascence of recent centuries has made these techniques a life-and-death matter. In this crisis Christian leaders have launched a global campaign, with the full weight of the various Christian bodies behind it, to put Christianity within reach of everyone everywhere.

While waves of religious propaganda thus flood over these civilized peoples, lust for the brilliance of materialism sets limits to men's thinking and robs them of the ability to go deep into moral and spiritual questions. Men are so fascinated by the manifestations of material prosperity that they are turned aside from the pursuit of truth and from the quest for the treasures of the spirit.

All the factors enumerated above have combined to help Christianity flood the world with the irrational tenets that are so ineradicably rooted in Western minds and spirits.

It cannot be said that our own Islamic efforts at propaganda have been either energetic or effective. We have been so unschooled in the elementary essentials of successful publicity that we have nothing to declare. Yet the shining force of Islam's holy doctrines could be made to meet the crying needs of man, if we changed.

For centuries, Islam has made no noteworthy effort at propaganda. After the first outburst of its revolutionary up rush from the Arab homeland, Islamic landowners and viziers have preferred to maintain the status quo for their own comfort. Meantime schism split Muslim unity. As a consequence Islam lost political supremacy in world affairs, and its various portionsfell victims to Western imperialism piecemeal.

Church Resources and Organization

Christianity was launched without any definitive social principles, laws or system for running affairs. This deficiency long prevented Christian spiritual leadership from interfering in social, political or governmental matters. So it continued until the sixth century of the Christian era.

On Christmas Day AD800 the king of the Franks was crowned "Caesar" and transferred some of his territory to the over lordship of the Pope. With this began the epoch of Christian leadership's supremacy and glory. The Church grew in power and wealth. Conflicts over the control of power arose between political and religious leaders. Europefell prey to the oppressive wars of Popes and Emperors.

People who regarded the Church as the manifestation of the spirituality of Christ were stubborn partisans of the clergy: and by their help the Church's temporal power and influence increased daily until its unrivalled hegemony was fastened upon the nations of Europe.

In early days, before deep rifts split Christianity, each Christian city had its "Bishop" and groups of neighboring cities were jointly administered by an "Archbishop" or "Patriarch".he Bishop of Rome gradually came to assume supreme authority as Pope (which means "papa" of all Christians). He interfered in all religious matters, including the appointment and dismissal of Bishops and Archbishops.

Finally this became too much for the "metropolitan patriarchs" of Constantia (i.e. Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul), and they decided to withdraw from Papal jurisdiction and set up a separate domain of their own, in recognition of the fact that the imperial capital of the Empire had been moved from Rome to Istanbul. After a series of violent clashes between the Pope and Istanbul Patriarchs, final separation occurred in AD1052 . Christianity split into two camps.

Eastern Europe was subject to theConstantinian clergy, self-styled "Orthodox". Western Europe from Poland to Spain remained obedient to the Pope as self-styled "Catholics". These two religious bodies followed different rites and hurled charges of heresy at each other.

In the early16 th century a third body formed itself in Europe, initiated by Luther and styled "Protestant". Luther and his followers started by opposing the Pope's habit of selling sites in heaven together with "indulgences" remitting sins: and went on to attempt to reform the whole Church and purge it of errors and corruptions.

They only succeeded in creating another split in the unity and simplicity of Christ's religion: the huge number of people who followed Luther in rejecting papal authority and sacerdotal dogma became a third sect including most of northern Europe.

The Pope's absolute power in Catholic Europe of the12 th and13 th centuries provoked its inevitable reaction. A number of heretical movementsarose promoting doctrines condemned by the Papal Office. So great became the anxiety of the Pope and of the Catholic party about these insurrectionary movements that in1215 AD the Pope set up the "Inquisition" to combat and eradicate such heresies. The Inquisition had branches in every city of France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Spain and other Christian lands. Persons accused of heresy were hauled up before the inquisitors, and, if condemned, suffered severe penalties.

This institution used its excessive powers in such a way as to suppress all freedom of thought. Anyone suspected of ideas and opinions regarded as contrary to those held by the Church was subjected to hellish tortures. These courts even sometimes passed sentence for heresy on the dead, ordering the disinterment of their coffins- a process described by Will Durant in his "History of Civilization" (vol.18 , p.35 ) thus:

"The 'Court for the Inspection of Ideas, Laws and Religion', had a legal procedure all its own. Before a local assizes of the Court was held, the 'Faith-ace (Autoda Fe) was read from all Church pulpits, demanding that information be laid against anyone suspected of atheism, irreligion or heresy: and that such persons be hauled before the Court of Inspection.

Neighbors, friends and relatives were encouraged to turn informer. Informers were promised complete secrecy and protection. Anyone who harbored an atheist, or failed to denounce him, was himself incarcerated, and threatened with the church's excommunication, curse and ban. Sometimes the dead were charged with atheism and blasphemy.

Special ceremonies were employed for their judicial condemnation. Their property was confiscated: their heirs were stripped of their inheritance. From30 to50 % of the property of a deceased person who was condemned were given to the successful accuser. Trial by ordeal assumed different forms in different times and places.

Sometimes the accused man's arms were bound behind his back and he was suspended from them. Sometimes he was so bound that he could make no movements and then water was poured down his throat so that he died of suffocation. Sometimes ropes were tied so tight round arms and legs that they cut through flesh to the bone."

So powerful did the Christian hierarchy become in Europe that no fewer than ten kings and political leaders of Germany and France were excommunicated by Popes. Some great landed proprietors lost all. Some were compelled to do public penance. Thus in AD1075 Pope Gregory VII excommunicated the Emperor of Germany, Henry IV, for disregarding a PapalFirman , and told him that he must give up his throne.

Henry promptly donned penitent's garb and hurried to the Papal Court, where the Pope kept him waiting three days before receiving him, accepting his repentance and granting him absolution.

In1141 Pope Innocent II excommunicated Louis VII. In1205 Pope Innocent II excommunicated King John of England for attacking certain bishops.

Finally John felt compelled to send a message to the Pope saying: "An angelic messenger bade me supplicate Jesus and His Apostle, our benefactor Pope Innocent, and his catholic successors, on behalf of England and Ireland. From henceforth we hold these kingdoms as Viceroy of the Pope and the hierarchy, and have commanded that the sum of £1,000 English be paid to the Roman ecclesiastical coffers annually, in half-yearly installments of £500 each, in silver. Should I or any of my successors on the English throne transgress against the purport of this decree, we forfeit right to the English sovereignty."2 .

The same author writes: "During this period 5,000 ,000 people were punished for offences against orthodox thought, or contravention of a papal decree. They were hanged on the gallows; or left in the pitchy dark of well-like dungeons. In the18 years,1481 -99 , the Inquisition burnt 1,020 people alive, sawed 6,860 asunder, tortured97 ,023 to death."3

Victor Hugo wrote: "The real history of the Church will be read not on the pages, but between the lines, of the official annals. The Church causedParnili to be whipped within an inch of his life for declaring that 'stars do not fall from their appointed paths.'

The Church castCampland into prison27 times for claiming that innumerable other worlds besides earth exist. The Church tortured Harvey for the crime of proving that the blood circulates through the arteries and veins of the body.

The Church incarcerated Galileo for claiming that the earth orbits round the sun, in contradiction of theories put forward in the Old and New Testaments. The Church imprisoned Christopher Columbus for discovering a land not mentioned by St. Paul.

They claimed that it was sacrilege to discover laws of the heavenly bodies, or the orbit of the earth, or an unforeseen continent not foretold in scripture. The Church excommunicated Pascal andMontey for immorality, and Muller for sacrilege and immorality."4

The Church also exercised her power against Islam. On the pretext of treeing Jerusalem, she launched campaigns of bloodshed and atrocity in what she called "Wars for the Cross" or "Crusades", during the years1095 to1270 .

Although the prime cause of these wars was the hatred and jealousy of Islam nursed by the Pope and the hierarchy, they stirred up the common people to enlist by false promises of loot and by ingenious calumny against the Muslims. Pope Urban II called a congress of clergy and religious leaders to decree a war against Muslims: at which the Pope ordered all bishops and clergy to enlist men for the battle against the Muslims, and himself led the recruiting campaign in France.

So vast was the first army that started out for Jerusalem that it seemed as if all Europe were afoot toward Asia. Some say there were as many as a million men on the march. En route these plundered, burned, mutilated and drowned the local citizens.

They slew soldiers and civilians alike, women and children included. When they finally took Jerusalem in1099 , three years after the start, only20 ,000 survived out of the original million. Civil wars and pestilence followed this "Christian" sacrifice of myriads of their own and of other nationals.

In the words ofGustave Le Bon: "The atrocities committed by the Crusaders against friends and foes, against soldiers and innocent peasants, against women and children, against old and young, give them top place in the annals of savagery.

One of their number, Robert the Monk, wrote: 'Our army raged through alleys and piazzas and over the flat roofs of adjoining houses like a mother lion robbed of her whelps, rampaging, tearing children to shreds in savage delight. We put old and young to the sword. To speed up the work we used one rope's loop to hang many people together.

Soldiers stole anything that came to hand, even ripping open the bowels of corpses in their search for jewels or coins. Whatever they found they pocketed. Finally,Bohemond assembled all the survivors-men and women, maimed and helpless, together-in the castle, and butchered them all, saving only the young for sale in the Antioch slave- market.'

And GodfreyHardouinville reported to the Pope: 'In Jerusalem Muslims who fell into our hands were slain by our people in Solomon's porch until the temple precincts flowed knee-high with blood'."5

The Inquisition's torture of the learned and thinking class of its day roused an inevitable reaction against the Church. Independent-minded scientists pushed on with their work, despite severe censorship, until Church bigotry was compelled to beat a retreat and leave the road open for enlightened study and investigation.

But by now scientists had come to regard all religion as the partisan of superstition, of ignorance, and of the suppression of science and erudition. The atrocities of the Crusades and barbarities of the Inquisition aroused abhorrence and suspicion in the popular mind against every form of religion.

In Russia, too, the Church's neglect of the poor and destitute, and patronage of the rich, roused a reaction which aided the rise of the communist movement, and caused its leaders to declare war on religion, stigmatizing the religious as "capitalist lackeys and exploiters of the working class," and declaring that it was only "by obliterating the myth of God from the mind of man" that the revolution of liberty, equality and fraternity could be realized.

Ferdof , in his book "Religion in the U.S.S.R." (p.7), writes: "In Czarist Russia the Church owned vast properties in lands, buildings and furnishings, with millions ofrobles in gold in the banks. She drew an income from forests, pastures, fisheries, commerce, industry and much else.

In fact, the Church was the biggest capitalist of all, the biggest landowner, the biggest banker of Russia. She mercilessly exploited merchants, small and large. She made no attempt to improve industrial working conditions. So great was the hatred this conduct aroused amongst working and shop keeping classes that the clergy were called `wolves in priests' clothing'."

Christianity, in its day the preserver of ancient manners and customs, the conservative reactionary, has today learned to strengthen its own foundations by adding to its brilliant historic past all that science and culture has to offer to modern genius.

The Catholic Church alone wields 4,000 propaganda organs spread all over the globe. Their budget enables them to extend their efforts at conversion to darkest Congo, to remotest Tibet and to the most primitive tribes of Australia.

The annual budget of the Church of England is well over900 ,000 ,000 tomans .

Such figures, when compared with the pittance at Islam's disposal, pain the heart.

The Gospel has been translated into more than 1,000 languages. In1973 the American "Society for the Publication and Distribution of the Gospel" put out24 million copies.

The Vatican publishes its own newspaper "L'Osservatore Romano" with a daily circulation of300 ,000 . It produces some50 monthly periodicals with a total circulation of several millions per month. It runs32 ,000 primary schools, universities and hospitals. Four powerful agencies dispatch missionaries to the other continents.

Christianity employs three methods of propaganda:

1. Translation of the books of the New Testament;

2. Erection of churches and places of worship;

3. Dispatch of missionaries to all parts of the world.

Protestant sects likewise exert remarkable efforts at spreading their faith. "The Reader's Digest" wrote: "The revolutionary foundation of the Protestant Church of America was a revolt against efforts in Europe to renew the exaction of the 'tithe' which has been the Church's ancient right.

Yet from1950 on, the movement of 'stewardship' has been taken up increasingly, so that many congregations have doubled or trebled their contributions, and thus made possible hundreds of new church buildings, and the reinforcement of missions at home and abroad.

Most important, congregations and their members have realized the joyful results and unexpected rewards of the revival of this ancient custom."

Christianity and Islam in Africa

The Christian religious establishment has no fears of Judaism, Hinduism or Buddhism, since these are religions of national groups which exert little influence outside their native environment. So the only danger which they feel to be menacing is Islam. For it has an ideology and way of thought which they know, some as friends, and some as enemies. The "Suddeutscher Zeitung " reported the Pope as saying to the bishops assembled at the Vatican Council 1: "Islam constitutes a more serious threat in Africa to Christianity than does Communism."

Although Islam's missionary efforts are practicallynil , its sheer breadth of culture and emotional power win many converts in a number of places, particularly in Africa, where oppressed blacks find its inclusive brotherhood so attractive a refuge that the Church cannot fail to take note of the numbers which it draws.

"Belgian Institutes" reports that, at the start of the20 th century, there were 4,000 Muslims in one province of the Congo, and that by the1960 s inManiyema and Stanleyville and Kivu this number had increased to236 ,000 .

The Paris periodical "Peru" quotes MarcelCorder , European expert on Islam in Africa, as saying: "Islam, once the religion of chiefs and princes, has recently become a faith of the masses, who like rushing floods are on the move toward a better, quieterlife ; and, carried on this tide, the realism and urgency of Islam spreads from the north of Africa to the south with irresistible speed."

"The Revue de Paris", assessing Islam, paganism and Christianity in Africa, says: "Islam is advancing at a phenomenal rate, winning on the average half a million new adherents annually, not on the ground of its ancient roots, but of the new conditions of life developed in the last century, so that a conservative estimate might reckon50 % of black Africans as in some measure Muslims In1950 four graduates of Al-Azhar opened Muslim schools inMabaku , which were making lightning progress until the French government stepped in and swiftly closed them down."

Dr. LauraVeccia Vaglieri , Professor at Naples University, writes: "What is the reason why, despite the considerable freedom allowed to non-Muslims.

____________

1 The Vatican Council draws Catholic leaders from every continent to Rome, where it is held aboutfont-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-bidi-font-family:"Traditional Arabic"'>110 %; once a century. Its object is to settle issues which may have arisen in any part of the world. At the lastvatican Council 7,000 Church leaders assembled under the chairmanship of the Pope. Its discussions on church affairs occupied three series of sessions, each two months long, at a total cost of some650 million Italian lire!

Islamic communities, and the total lack of any Muslim missionary work nowadays, and the general weakness of all religions everywhere, Islam has nonetheless been making great advances in Asia and Africa in recent years? Today it is not the sword which compels acceptance. Indeed, many lands once ruled by Muslims are now under non-Muslim governments which push their own religions at the Muslim populations-yet in vain! What is the power hidden in this faith? What in the inmost nature of humanity finds contentment and satisfaction therein? What profound element in the human spirit is moved to respond to Islam's call with so enthusiastic and glad a shout of 'Here am I'?"

Christians stop at nothing in their efforts to destroy Islam. Professor MuhammadQutb writes: "A shipping line of English origin runs establishments in South Africa. It once employed many South African Muslims on its ships, but, being a Christian company, decided not to employ Muslims. To achieve this end it paid part of its employees' earnings with alcoholic drink. Since alcoholis forbidden to Muslims, nor may they sell it, they lost this part of their wages. A Muslim lawyer learnt of their plight and advised them to refuse to receive this form of payment, unknown anywhere else in the entire world, and to take the company to court if it objected to their protest. The company, as soon as the protest was made, promptly made it a pretext for firing every Muslim from their employ." Philanthropy indeed!

Muslim missionaries face a wide-open door in Africa. The people of that continent are ready to embrace Islam with heart and soul if we would show any sort of zeal in carrying the message to them. For all Africa is seeking a religion that can harmonies the spiritual and the material, promote social equity and equality, and call all mankind to peace, to quiet and to truth.

Modern Christianity cannot, because of its own poverty and deficiencies, meet this longing. The Church itself is a divisive factor, supporting discrimination, not allowing black and white to worship the same God in the same building at the same time! In fact, the Christian attitude to the blacks is inhuman.

Lumumba, Congo leader now dead, once told a Paris newspaper: "I could never understand why we were taught in our schools that Christian principles merited our respect, while outside our schools Europeans acted in ways entirely contrary to those principles and trod all civilized humane precepts underfoot. The way the Europeans treated the blacks gave the lie to all that their schools taught."

It is not only in Africa that Christianity is being challenged by Islamic advance. In America Islam bids fair to win the allegiance of the black population. Every effort is made to suppress Islamic agencies. The Senate requested the president to ban the Black Muslims and make their activities illegal. But preventive measures only increase Black Muslim membership and strengthen the enthusiasm of their activities. They now run70 branches in27 states. Islamic cultural centers exist in Chicago and Detroit: while Islamic centers and mosques have been built in numerous other cities of the U.S.A. The Muslims run a newspaper called "Muhammad Speaks". They stage protest-demonstrations at which they carry banners inscribed: "There is no God but Allah: and Muhammad is His Prophet."

Black Muslims perform their religious duties with exemplary enthusiasm. Their womenfolk wear the veil. They try to buy only meat slaughtered in accordance with Muslim law, stamped with the "Moon and Star" guarantee. The fact that certain individuals have made personal fortunes by monopolizing sales of proper dress, foodstuffs and other Muslim essentials in exploitation of the new piety; the fact that a few extremists have resorted to irreligious violence; and the fact that many of the new converts have still only a rudimentary grasp of the theological truths underlying their faith - these facts do not negate the blessings already brought to the converted masses. They are ills which will be cured as instruction and practice deepen the newfound faith. For Black Muslims eagerly learn Arabic and insist on schools and colleges teaching their children Arabic to enable them to read the Qur'an in the original. Amongst them thieves may be executed. Even enemies admit that Islam has brought a change of heart to Black Muslims.

Christian missionaries in Africa do not attempt to assist the Africans to progress to equal the whites. They wish them to remain subject to the white church and state. As ProfessorWestermann "Imperialism and the Gospel" writes: "Conversion to Islam raises the convert's social status, increases his self-respect, shows him his possibilities, teaches him to be a world-citizen,defines his relations with Europeans in dignity. The black man who previously carried garbage on his head gains in Islam a status which wins respect, even amongst Europeans. But a black man who abandons paganism for Christianity sees himself in a different light from the Black Muslims, since the foundation of our society is different from that in which Africans were brought up. They see the outward benefits of our civilization, but cannot grasp its inwardness because we have not given them the requisite training to do so. Nor have they grasped their own distinctive contribution and specialties, because we have not understood our duty to study the black cultural background, and to help the Africans progress on lines that are a natural continuation of their historical development to date.

Comparing the African background with our own as superficially as the African regards our way of life, we offer our fellow-Europeans an unflattering and one-sided picture of the black man. We present him as an inferior European. But Islam presents him as a black African to be respected as such byhimself and by others. Islam gives him a natural equality which we fail to see. He is a human being with his own history and tradition. But Christians, who think of their present level of culture as natural to man, treat black converts to their religion with the condescension due to poor savages living amid rubble and rubbish. They provoke the blacks to vindicate their superiority. Here the Black Muslims offer them their chance, while black Christians are pushed back into inferiority. For this reason American Negroes surge towards Islam and away from Christianity.":

Anti-Islamic Propaganda

Church leaders face the advance of Islam apprehensively. To prevent the harmony of Islam's truth reaching men's ears, Christian leaders use smear tactics in a world-wide propaganda of calumny and denigration which stops at nothing.

I saw an example of this on German TV. A Yemeni Muslim described the mosques of Yemen and the worship in them. Then the TV interviewer gave a detailed description of the region's poverty and distress. He blamed Islam for acting as an obstacle to the progress of the Yemeni people. "A bigoted adherence to the tenets and principles of Islam," he said, "kept the Yemen in primitive backwardness and weakness, lingering two centuries behind the forward strides of civilization in the rest of the world." This he called an example of "Islam's failure to keep pace with the changes most of mankindare enjoying."

Imagine the effect of such poisonous propaganda, backed by skillfully selected film, on European minds,either uninformed , scantily informed, or wholly misinformed about the nature of Islam! Surely such distortions are a betrayal of humanity.

These propagandists should be asked: "If the Yemen's lack of progress in material living is to be accounted for on the background of their religion, why is the south of Italy so backward when the Pope reigns supreme there? Why do so many leave southern Italy to seek menial employment in wealthier lands? Why is Christian Greece so far behind many Muslim countries? Why did Greece, which before the rise of Christianity pioneered man's upward road, itself go downhill towards ruin after accepting Christianity, until it came under the Turkish flag and started to rise again? Or again, why do the non-Muslim peoples of Asia suffer miseries far worse than any Muslim land knows?"

In Bosnia, where Muslims, Orthodox and Catholics, live cheek by jowl, the Muslims are the better off. In Russia Muslimsare no whit inferior to their Christian neighbors. Chinese Muslims are ahead of Buddhists there. Singapore's Arabs enjoy greater material prosperity than any other of that island's inhabitants, including the British.

Most Westerners present Islam in a false light, repeating baseless fabrications which betray blank ignorance of Islam's principles: and churches encourage such errors.

MuhammadQutb "Islam and Misconceptions of Enlightened Thinkers" (p.298 Persian ed.) writes: "I spent some hours discussing Islamic matters in Cairo with a U.N. delegate. Suddenly he exclaimed: `All very fine! You have made a powerful case for the rightness and truth of Islam. But I can't give up the benefits of modern progress. For instance, I like flying in supersonic planes...He added a few other technological advantages until I broke in, astounded: 'But what's to prevent you enjoying modern comforts?' He replied: 'Well, I thought you Muslims advocate a return to tent life in the desert, and want me to go back tonomadism and wilderness-living like a savage!"

In Germany I lodged in a hotel where the manager was a man who had studied in English and French universities, gained high degrees, and even studied Arabic. He said to me: "As a Unitarian I know my God well and have implicit faith in Him. But I cannot accept the God whom the religious establishment bid their followers serve and worship in their buildings. It seems to me wholly alien to the rationality of a Creator to expect His creatures to follow a path which runs directly contrary to enlightened thought and to human nature itself." He added, with the depth of his feelings written all over his face: "The worship of the One God must decide man's destiny, eradicate the evil consequences of misleading ideas, and raise human culture to pure monotheism."

This highly educated European knew nothing of Islam's creed of the pure unity of God, nor of the basic difference between the Holy Qur'an on the one side and the Old and New Testaments on the other. He imagined that the Qur'an resembled Torah (O.T.) and Gospel (N.T.) in its presentation of God. So I gave him a book in German on Islam to enable him to learn its principles.

It is unfortunate that some of our compatriots commit acts when abroad which Westerners attribute to Muslims in general, and on them judge Islam, whereas the perpetrator acted (a) as an individual, and (b) contrary to his religion. Indeed, my hotelier, on the ground of the behavior of a few Iranians, had refused to accommodate any more Iranians, and only made an exception in my case because an old and trusted friend of his insisted. Even then he only agreed to a stay of a few days. In the course of that visit he gained confidence in me, solely because he never saw me overstep the bounds of decency and right, and not because I made any extraordinary effort to win his regard. He praised me (modesty forbids my quoting his exact words), and even demonstrated his emotions and affection with presents. Sometimes a guest came to his full hotel, towhom he gave my room, while offering me his own private room instead, leaving his desk in it, open and piled with documents of value!

Finally the day came that I had to go elsewhere. He took down my new address, and from then on, whenever Iranians asked him for rooms, he at once telephoned me and asked for my character guarantee. I went bail for their good conduct, to save fellow-Iranians' difficulties (for foreigners on their first visit to a foreign city, unless they have had the wisdom to reserve ahead, find much trouble in discovering accommodation in the early hours of the night).

One night the hotelier rang and asked about some newlyarrived Iranians on their first visit to Germany. I gave my customary guarantee of their character. But next morning he rang me, and in a voice which betrayed his disquiet and dismay, complained: "Those people you vouched for last night proved shockingly bad guests." I shamefacedly apologized, and decided: "Never again!"

The present world crisis gives Muslims a prime occasion for opening the hearts of the civilized world to the inspiring tenets and programs of Islam. The conditions for making this holy creed known in wide circles are propitious. True, it is the congruence of a religion with the inmost needs of human nature which insures that faith's spread, but circumstances and environmental needs merit study on a world scale also, for discernment of psychological moments favorable to its proclamation. This study and this proclamation we have not yet, alas, undertaken as we should. Yet without it, individual moves, inadequate actions, hit-and-miss efforts,planless propaganda, uncoordinated institutions, can never achieve a satisfactory result, nor advance far into territories where opposition is traditional and deep-rooted.

We err in not grasping the supreme importance of intelligent propaganda with sound organization. Despite the admirable force inherent in Islamic culture for a revolutionary advance, and its specialized lore of society, the factors that should realize this have vanished from our midst. For all our heritage of the soundest canons and most rewarding ideology, our plight is desperate, and of itself leaves a wide field of action open to Islam's foes.

Morals in the West

Life is for Westerners "machine-made". It has lost spirit and warmth. True, many material discomforts, deficiencies and difficulties have been overcome and banished by "civilized" devices. But the social life that results shows no evidence of the glory of the spirit of man.

The glaring divisions and dissatisfactions of modern civilization must be patent to the merest dunce. The inventions and discoveries made to ease life and advance civilization fail to ease man's disillusion and disquiet of mind. Social difficulties and dangerous crises may have been averted, but this has not sufficed to confer happiness and joy on the generality of mankind.

Over and above his varied physical needs, man has a moral urge and a spiritual yearning. The attraction of physical delights is no greater than the pull of ethical impulses and intellectual quests. To confine men's minds within the four walls of materialism is an unforgivable sin.

"The pursuit of happiness" is rightly included with "life and liberty" among "man's inalienable rights". The first step towards happiness involves preoccupation with the perfecting of personality, and not of the material environment alone.

Parallel with his astounding advances in industrial and scientific technology, man must equally advance his inner resources, his spiritual powers and his force of soul. These have been allowed to fall behind. There can be no true human perfection without equilibrium in life's inner and outer aspects-both. If they are in imbalance, "civilization" offers no base for hundred per cent happiness.

Modern ethical and social shortcomings demonstrate that the factors which produce human perfection have not been allowed the attention they warrant. Humanity has erred in failing to recognize and study the factors of happiness and well-being.

History contains no nation so impregnated with total corruption in every department of its life that no single sound section remained. So it is with the West today. Alongside moral corruption, good qualities still exist. There are many who faithfully follow the precepts of honesty, decency and right. But these virtues do not make up for the sins andwickednesses that abound.

Such virtues may be approached from different angles and practiced on different grounds. The West's moral capital has been removed from the Bank of Faith where it belongs. Divorced from its source in religion, it depreciates both in intrinsic value and in interest returns. Where the prevailing motive is profit, righteousness and goodness are judged by their material profitability. Small wonder that they decline in the West!

Sex in the West

In sexual conduct the West has stepped outside all moral bounds. In life's beginnings everyone knew in his heart that purity and continence in sex matters have a moral value of their own, and that transgression leads to moral degradation. But this truth has either been gradually forgotten, or else deliberately obliterated from men's consciences by subversives.

Purity has lost its esteem, and been discarded by society, while all sanctions for control of morals have been abandoned.

A friend told me that he heard a girl ask for advice on one of Germany's regional radio stations.saying : "For some years I've gone steady with a boy, but in the course of time tired of him and decided to take up with another boy. Can I keep them both? Or should I give up the second relationship and stick to the first?"

The Radio Counselor replied with the guidance (sic!): "Until the age of28 you are at perfect liberty to enjoy the company of, and have intercourse with, one friend or several, without any ties or conditions, so have no scruples or worries in doing what you like!"

Where are we when the media, and other authorities, whose duty it is to protect public morals and ban pollution, themselves recommend fornication, and under the pseudonym of "a special relationship before marriage" promote promiscuity ; or posing as "champions of freedom" cast off morality and preach revolt against decency and self-esteem and proper pride?

Will Durant, the sociologist, wrote in his "Pleasures of Philosophy": "City life prevents men from observing the seasons, while sexual passions increase and conditions make indulgence easier. A civilization which makes marriage economically impossible before the age of30 drives a man to sexual deviation, weakens continence, and reduces purity from its original esteem as a virtue to distant lip-service as an impractical dream. Art enhances human beauties. Men cease to count their sins. Women, claiming equality with men, fall prey to passions. Love affairs unlimited and premarital cohabitation become the rule rather than the exception. The streets may be free of prostitutes-but not through fear of the police! It is because women have bankrupted prostitutes by taking over their business for free!"

Human nature is made to desire control of its powers, so that they are employed justifiably. To trespass on ground abhorrent to humanity's essence cannot fail to raise a crop of undesirable growths. To trample the laws ofhis own being underfoot in the name of freedom can never yield the peace of heart and joy of mind men seek.

Western permissiveness has madelicence public. Has this unbridled riot of wantonness subsided? Crime, rape, neurasthenia, riots,strikes - what generates all these but this same sexual "liberty" andlicence ?

Sweden has given total sexual freedom for a quarter of a century. Such savagery now prevails amongst its youth that professors and responsible authorities suffer from it. A Parliamentary commission was set up to study this outbreak of savagery and its insurrectionary perils. The Swedish Prime Minister frankly said: "We shall need at least a generation to redress the disasters caused by an error lasting twenty years."

Freud examined man's animal nature and traced all human actions to font-family: "Bookman Old the sex urge. He thus divorced sex from ethics. Chastity went by the board. No one could think up a frontier to stop its downward rush. In its train it dragged many human values. Thus, "The Reader's Digest" reports : "West German statistics show that occupying troops of the victor nations have fathered200 ,000 bastards, 5,000 of them black, on German women, all now in care at the German government's charges. And this is10 % of the total number of illegitimate children now a charge on the government, not to speak of the unknown number unborn through contraceptives or abortions. Of East Germany we have no facts, but it is more than probable that the problem there, if not worse, is no better. Nor do other Western nations lag far behind Germany. Most painful is a report from Northampton, in Mid-England, that illegitimate births are of all living births, and that this started when Northampton went over from agricultural to industrial employment."6

The psychologist, Dale Carnegie, writes in his "Mirror of Success": "Statistics published by an American foundation show that husbands who were known to be unfaithful to their wives were of all classes and all ages. Some50 % of all husbands are unfaithful, some regularly. Most of those who remain faithful do so perforce, through fear of disease or lack of opportunity. Telephone-tapping in New York over a short period revealed that New York wives are equally promiscuous."

"The Encyclopedia Britannica"says : "Of all U.S. hospitals,650 specialize in V.D. and half as many more sufferers from V.D. apply for help to their G.P. or local specialist."7

Kinsey's book on "Habits of Sexual Behavior" (p.304 ), shows that 3,000 -4,000 infants annually are born in the U.S.A. with venereal disorders. And the proportion of deaths in the U.S. from these diseases is greater than the total mortality rate of all other illnesses added together-except for T.B.

The Tehran Daily "Ettela'at " (Tehran Journal) No.10414 reports from "Psychology" of December1960 : "The number of illegitimate95 %; births in the U.S. has increased so rapidly that it is a headache for the95 %; American government. The statistics for1957 show more than200 ,000 .95 %; illegitimate births in the U.S.A. - an increase of 5% over twenty years."

"Black, White" (No.380 ),reports : "The annual abortions in the U.S.A. exceed 1,000 ,000 .65 % are due to free relationships outside wedlock, and50 % are of unmarried teenage girls."

Dr.Molenz of South London said, according to the Tehran Daily "Kayhan " (No.535 ): "Of every five girls attending church in England, one is pregnant. Criminal abortions in London reach 5,000 per annum. One living birth in twenty is illegitimate. Despite the annual improvement in the standard of living, this number increases year by year. Illegitimacy is most prevalent in well-to-do families; and girls in rich families are more prone to become unmarried mothers."

These facts suffice to demonstrate modern civilized man's enslavement to his sexual instincts. Sexual indulgence has reached such a pitch that many moral and human values best learnt in family life have been forgotten, so that people no longer acknowledge any bounds or limits governing conduct.

Some years ago Tehran newspapers reported that in Idaho men exchanged wives for three-week periods, and gave each other presents to "seal their friendship". An outcry arose and the group was indicted in court in order to safeguard future generations and punish fornication.

So -much for misconceptions in one area of human life, the sexual.

Social Drop-outs

In every nation it is the thoughts of their learned men and the way of life of their leaders which shape the convictions of the public and the thinking of the individual by direct influence."Quis custodiet ipsos custodes ? Corruptio optimi pessima ."

If the ruling class who are trustees and guides of society promulgate filth, what can be expected of the lower orders? If the salt has lost its savor, what will salt the mass? Lustful desires are natural in man. The example set by the leaders who give such desires free rein overrides all moral precepts. A person raised in the school of unbridled self-indulgence conceives of total personal freedom as unrestrained permissiveness. In this the ideas of chastity and purity have no place; only theimpulses of the feeling of any moment decides action.

Those who throw moral standards overboard raise a hedonist insurrectionary posterity, helpless and hopeless in the face of elemental carnal urges, turning a deaf ear to the calls of duty sounded by reason and conscience.

Rajmohan Gandhi, grandson of the Mahatma, declared in1962 in the U.S.A. : "A painful future awaits America, since youth there is sunk in sensuality, unwilling to perform their duties. Of seven young men called up for the draft, six fail their medical because of capacity deficiencies and weakened spirit caused by dissipation."

Khrushchev likewise in1962 forecast : "The U.S.S.R. faces dangers ahead because of the grip that sexual passions have fastened on our youth."

Strange that this age of scientific and industrial progress is being driven to its knees by youth's preoccupation with the sexual problem, at the core of a technological society depersonalized by the heartless monotony of a machine-made environment.

The Beatles are one phenomenon the age has thrown up - undisciplined, inelegant,imbecile , they draw youth in crowds. Next thehippies, like tares in a cornfield of culture, revolt against the dry materialism of the established environment. Rejecting ethical values and spiritual sanctities as ungrounded superstition, they deride rational living, drop out of society, and run riot; until, when they need a moral standard and spiritual refuge, they find themselves destitute and forlorn.

Such social phenomena, results of youth's emotional derailment, reflected in pollution and corruption, show that modern civilization, which treats people as cogs in a machine, can never satisfy the innate longings of human hearts, with their spiritual sensitivity and humane sentiments. The rise in the suicide rate is further evidence that material comfort and ease do not suffice.

Germany's annual "Police Report" (p.1974 ), lists10 ,000 suicides in West Germany, while over 6,000 men and 7,000 women made unsuccessful suicide attempts.

In France, prime home of intellect,35 ,000 suicide attempts are recorded annually.

The consumption of hard drugs amongst American youth is so terrifyingly high that recently New York police found the corpses of38 youths, aged from16 -35 , dead through drug-taking. Some of the victims were drive to such desperation by inability to get drugs that they slashed their wrists. Heroin addicts are the most numerous--100 ,000 in New York alone -- one addict in every70 inhabitants! Among the rich of the U.S.A., addicts rank high. A New York doctor said that one of America's most famous actors injects himself with ten doses per24 hours at $60 the dose! "Many deaths of high ranking personalities, officially attributed to heart failure," he adds, "are, in fact, fatalities due to drug addiction."(Ettela'at No.13015 .)

"The Spirit of Man" (p.32 ), says: "In the U.S.A. a major crime is committed every25 minutes; and every24 hours 3 murders, 5 indecent assaults,30 major thefts and 3,000 petty larcenies. Four billion dollars is spent on combating crime and upholding law, and of this $100 ,000 ,000 is disbursed in New York alone."

Such is the life-style, self-emasculated, yet boasting its brains and culture and elevation, which people seek to emulate, and choose as their life-model!

Worship

For all their propaganda machines and temporal power, the Western churches' intervention in cultural and social matters, and their religious preaching to refine morality and make men's hearts pure, has had little effect. It has not redeemed the bankruptcy of spirit, nor reined in theuntrammelled self-indulgence that besets Westerners. How can a religion which permits its adherents unlimited freedom to commit shameful deeds hope to wrench their collar out of the talons of the subversives' grip on the polluted, or uproot the noxious growths of immorality?

Worship and godliness and true humanity must be approached with the sole aim of drawing near to God in purity of intent. But these practitioners have left the track and been perverted.

Religious leaders, who should constitute a staunch dam to hold back the floods of corruption, have themselvesfallen victims to the prevailing fashion of permissiveness. How then can Christianity possibly produce renascence and moral revolution in the West? How can such institutions recall mankind to that purity of heart without which no man can know the Lord? Yet the world can only emerge from its crisis of morals by that road of purity via revolution and renascence.

The "Tehran Weekly Journal" (No.1089 ) reported: "Church Fathers entice the errant into the church with dancing and music.TheRevd. FrancisMieux of Montreal, Canada,35 years ordained, is a skilled musician, both as composer and player, author of 1,500 popular melodies, a priest who combines the two callings of religion and art."

Surely to perform such works in a place of worship is to make a mockery of religion? Amongst the most solemn pronouncements made by all the prophets of God have been the asseverations that no man can serve both God and Mammon; and that there is no escape from the pollutions of the world, the flesh and the devil except by a resolute concentration of the attention on God. Inordinate attachment to materialist considerations must be set aside in favor of the quest for a personal knowledge of God's being, if human life is to be soundly equilibrated. This is the rock on which to build the house of life. All else is shifting sand.

True worship frees a man from the bondage of fleshly lusts, and draws him into God's presence and to spiritual joys. Observe how this truth of priceless inestimable worth has been squeezed out by the permissive' preaching primacy of carnal desire.

Islamic worship has many aims. One of them is to rip away the curtains of negligence and ignorance and so to usher in a mighty moral and spiritual re-armament and revolution.

Stanwood Cobb, Christian savant, in his book "Lord of the TwoKa'abas " p.227 , compares Muslim and Christian worshipthus : "I was," he writes, "allowed to be present inHagia Sofia Mosque in Istanbul to witness a service of prayer and worship there. In such services repeated genuflections (Rukoo ') and prostrations (Sujood ) play a large part as the accompaniment to fixed forms of prayer and adoration. I was deeply impressed by the solemnity, humility and reverence of the worshippers. It far surpassed anything I have ever met in any Christian church in its sincerity of veneration, depth ofself-surrender, and dedicated devotion to the Divine Essence.

I shared with other foreigners the privilege of watching the ceremonies of the Night of Power (Leilat-ul-Qadr ) on which the Qur'an was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. From a balcony in one of thesquinches we looked down on the 5,000 worshippers who crowdedHagia Sofia, performing theirrukoo's andsujoods in perfect unison, rhythm and order. The rustle of their bending to genuflect or prostrate themselves, the sound of their hands being placed on the floor before them, their united uprising, made deep quiet waves of reverence fill the vast dome, and ascend heavenward.

The sight was splendid, matchless; dignified, numinous, humble, reverent, expressive of a sense of individual freedom, democracy, equality, which allowed no discrimination of persons or classes. I saw an itinerant carpet-vendor cheek by jowl with a Pasha in gorgeous robes, in concord, without fear or favor, standing, kneeling, prostratingthemselves in common worship, while big-bellied dark-faced Negroes busied themselves with their religious observances alongside the most chic of the Turks of Istanbul.For Islam from its inception has pursued a creed of brotherhood which it preserves today."

Western religion's biggest error has lain in treating faith as an individual private affair, unrelated to daily life. This mistaken doctrine casts its shadow over all aspects of Western society. Pollution, national crises, permissiveness, corruption,are all ills directly due to this divorce of religion from practical affairs.

Hence, too, the tug-of-war between inner spiritual values and the outward struggle for a livelihood. A sound creed dictates a man's code of conduct and draws guidelines for him whichapply to every practical eventuality of living.

Belief shapes thought and action. Living cannot evade the formative effect of creed.Hence the downright sinfulness of separating religion from practical life. Such a separation runs directly in the face of the law of nature. AsDampierre writes in his book "The Conflict between Science and Religion": "Constantine decreed that Christianity was an official religion of the RomanEmpire ; and, to please his pagan subjects, permitted many customs of the earlier paganism to be taken up into Christianity. Thus arose the idea, which prevailed in medieval religious days, and still prevails in modern irreligious days, that `religion is a private matter' concerned solely with the individual soul and its relations with God."

Alcohol

A frenetic consumption of alcoholic beverages augments our social ills, daily producing sinister perversions in manners and morals, and in religious, psychological and medical health.

No sane thinking person can fail to remark these bitter facts. Hospitals are filled with D.T. patients and with mentally deranged alcoholics, while outside them thousands, under the influence of drink, take to murder, suicide, theft, blackmail and character assassination.

Alcohol offers an escape from problems and worries: but always ends by multiplying them. Instead of diminishing life's sufferings, it adds material and moral bankruptcy to them, and crushes rather than relieves the sufferer. It makes the bells of doom and disaster toll even louder in his ears. He flees from theirclamour back to his alcoholic solace. He seeks to drown his sorrows, in the hope of enjoying an imaginary paradise where his burdens will roll away, in the brief span of his drunken stupor.

"Be not drunk with wine but be filled with the Spirit" is the motto of a wise man who realizes that to resort to means which dull reason may lead to insanity, and to the loss of all those intellectual powers which raise man above the level of the beasts.For alcohol is indeed "the poison that men put into their mouths to take away their brains."

In Hamburg I was able to gain admission to view the inside of a synagogue to which I had been drawn by its splendid exterior. A guide showed us its various parts. To our surprise, these included a special room for wine and cheese parties. In consternation I asked: "Is wine drunk even on these sacred premises?" He replied with serious mien: "Only by a select group who have the right to drink wine in this room!"

So widespread has alcohol consumption becomethat universities and health authorities have set up organizations to check it. But they have not yet penetrated to the root of the problem - the cancer at the heart of Western creeds which leaves individual free-will too much rein in matters which should be of social concern, and so allows people to imbibe a poison that breaks up sound family life and ruins nations. The fear is growing that the working classes and the youth of tomorrow will be turned into an alcoholic mob, to the tragic disaster of the sufferers and of the peoples of the world.

Doctors attending the24 th International Congress for the Combating of Alcoholism in France issued the following statement concerning the effects of alcohol on mind and spirit : "20 % of women and60 % of men entering hospital are alcohol addicts:70 % of mental patients and40 % of venereal patients were so afflicted as a consequence of misuse of alcohol. In England, experts affirm,95 % of mental cases are due to mental disease induced by alcoholic drinks."('Health Magazine').

And the same magazine (No.12 , p.5) states: "French newspapers headline as 'shaking' the report of the French Minister of Health on the number of deaths due to alcohol, for it said that in one year20 ,000 deaths in France were due to excessive alcohol-consumption, and cited the Secretary- General of the Committee for Combating Alcoholism as authority for the statistic that25 % of industrial accidents and57 % of automobile accidents in France were due to alcohol."

The former French PresidentPoincaré was also head of the anti- alcohol society, and stated in a book on the WorldWar : "French youth! Your biggest enemy is drink! Do more than skirmish with Germany! Take up arms against drink! Drink caused more spiritual and material damage in1870 than the war with Germany then cost France. The drink which pleases your palate is a deadly poison. It ages you prematurely and robs you of half your lifetime, rendering your body far more vulnerable to the attacks of disease and infirmity of all kinds."

"The Reader's Digest" Persian edition reported that in Germany "in one year some150 ,000 cases are tried in the criminal courts on charges arising from misuse of alcoholic drinks." A United States Cabinet Secretary said, according to "Health Magazine" (No.12 , Year 5): "We must keep an eye on the effect of alcoholism on our finances. Experts tell us that their research fixes the cost to the state (apart from private costs) at $15 ,000 ,000 ,000 in one year. Of this one billion dollars goes to hospitalization, five billion to public assistance and charity, two billion to police and similar costs, seven billion to courts and prison charges. Over and above this must be set the fact that the tax on alcohol only brings in $8 billion to the Treasury."

Nor is the Soviet Union immune. The Tehran Daily "Ettela'at " (No.13108 ) reports the institution of severe measures to diminish the dangerous levels of alcohol consumption there, since, the Premier of the U.S.S.R. declared: "Alcohol has caused an increase in the crime level, a rise in absenteeism from factories, and a fall in production such that the state must perforce undertake a far more severe campaign against this."

The same addiction must be blamed for many air-accidents. The industrial psychology specialist Dr. ClementKorn Gould, in an article in the Persian edition of "The Reader's Digest" (No.37 , Year26 ), lays the majority of accidents of U.S.A. airlines to this account, both amongst hired pilots and private owners of planes and helicopters. He adds: "Research has established that the majority of air crashes are due to inattention, often due to alcoholic after-effects on the minds of pilots and co-pilots, and this more among Americans than any other nationality.

"Further, investigation has demonstrated that a majority of pilots involved in crashes had imbibed during the flight. The increase in air crashes has made responsible authorities determined to get to the root of the causes; and their researches have shown that a large number of accidents during the last few years have been due to drunkenness in the pilots or to their sexual indulgence before the flight."

Shortages andUncharitableness

Daily increasing affluence and the technological revolution have produced deep divisions in human living. One group of human beings rakes in huge dividends from investments in trusts or cartels or companies, and seems able to have anything it wants, to such an incredible extent that some even provide luxury accommodation for their dogs and cats. Another group scrapes up a miserable livelihood at subsistence level, hardly able to lay hold of the barest essentials of life.

All thinking people feel pangs of conscience at the desperate sufferings allowed in all parts of the world by modern social conditions. Many misfortunes, which in the past would in a very short time have been alleviated, now fester on as uncured tragedies. No wonder a violent hate against those who enjoy excess riches invades the hearts of the under­privileged!

The developed countries make a global effort to improve their economic conditions: but with no advantage to the masses-indeed, even to the disadvantage and decline of poorer lands. So the class difference gapes wider. Many lands groan under poverty and famine.

"TheFerdosi Magazine" of July28 th,1948 , in an article on "Nutrition", makes the following points:

1. Underdeveloped lands number 2,500 million inhabitants, of whom500 ,000 ,000 suffer from undernourishment;

2. 1,500 million suffer from malnutrition;

3. As a direct or indirect consequence, 8,000 ,000 die of hunger annually.

In Brazil alone a quarter of a million infants die annually from under­ nourishment. In India infant mortality balances the natural increase of population. The food an average American family throws away as waste daily, equals the food of the average Indian family for four days.

Worse, some unscrupulous and frivolous persons cause artificial shortages of foodstuffs in order to raise prices and line their own pockets, hard-heartedly ignoring the fact that these foodstuffs might lengthen the lives of untold millions. Legislation to suppress such inhuman prodigal self-indulgence could end hunger in the world very quickly. So says the periodical "Enlightened Thought" (719 ): "In1960 125 million tons of grain for bread disappeared from the warehouses of America. It would have sufficed to fill the bellies of India's more than500 million inhabitants for a year. America destroys a great deal of her harvest annually simply to keep prices up. Capitalist institutions in the West have deliberately caused starvation to increase throughout the world. America fills silos and warehouses with foodstuffs. They then compel poor nations to purchase at high prices to the detriment of their economy. Thus a few selfish power-hungry persons pile up fortunes while being, in fact, guilty of the murder -no less-of millions of innocent fellow-humans."

Philosopher Bertrand Russell writes: "During the last14 years America has spent 4,000 million dollars on purchasing its farmers' surplus wheat crops. Millions of tons of wheat, barley, maize, cheese, butter have piled up in American storehouses and rotted, simply to keep up prices on the world market : and now they are marking mountains of butter and cheese 'unfit' with a color-code, to prevent the price of dairy products falling."

Sociologist and philosopher Stanwood Cobb writes in his "Lord of TwoKa'abas " (p.145 /6): "Expansion in technology, industry and scientific instruments has produced a deeper sense of our moral poverty. Developed lands cannot boast of ethical superiority over backward nations. Modern materialist civilization is full of inner contradictions and incongruities, between words and actions, between thought and speech, between reason and feeling. Materialist culture in its various manifestations proclaims the theoretical equality of all human beings; but in practice produces inequities and injustices in the ethical, intellectual, social, spiritual and family spheres, and fanatically vindicates these wrongs.

"Democracy claims to be 'Government of the people by the people for the people'. But at its best it is oligarchy, and soon turns to dictatorship of an individual.

"It claims to aim at 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number'. In fact, it gives rise to frustration, failure, anxiety,misery .

"It encourages altruism and a social conscience in its rhetoric, but its policies are selfishness run riot, with.no regard for the fate of others. Individuals and groups that get in the way are trampled ruthlessly underfoot. This age surpasses all others known to history in exploitation, profiteering and power-hunger."

In "Sociology" (p.157 ), SamuelKonig writes: "The developed lands comprise25 % of the world's population and own85 % of its capital assets; leaving15 % for the remaining75 % of humanity. The lapse of time only widens this gap. In affluent lands themselves, wealth is the property of a minority only. A U.S. Senate Committee in1946 affirmed that 5% of America's great industrial concerns owned80 % of American industrial capital, controlling60 % of the total work force and drawing80 % of the total industrial profits."

The world president of the United Nations' "Farming and Agricultural Organization" says in an article entitled "Hungry Man" (by Jose de Castro, No. 8, p.24 ): "Today two thirds of the inhabitants of the earth live in constant hunger ; and about 1,500 million people live on the subsistence level, suffering constantly from this most horrible of social ills."

Savagery in a Civilized Age

Some sociologists held that war is inseparable from human life, which "was from its inception cruel, brutal and nasty." Other sociologists and psychologists deny this, holding that war can be removed from human life, since bloodshed is caused by ethical derailments, social disorders and economic disruptions; and is not an ineradicable ingredient in human nature. Instruction and education in basic truths, and an equitable ordering of social conditions, can remove the causes of war. The terrible and irreparable damage which war brings down on the devoted heads of innocent millions can thus be averted, they say.

The matchless triumphs of science and technology have made the20 th century a bloody holocaust. It is stamped as the age of greed, ambition, insurrection, violence, and of history's most inhuman wars. A glance over the first75 years of the20 th century is enough to make manifest that in that short time our advanced and civilized peoples have perpetrated more crimes than in the whole previous course of human history.

The West possesses industrial techniques and atom bombs. Its knowledge drives man through mud and blood. It turns once fertile lands to deserts. The cry of the oppressed rises to high heaven, bewailing the West's weakness of thought and decline in morals.

The aftermath of two world wars between imperialist powers pursuing conflicting material interests has been dire for all mankind. No excuse can wash the grime of wickedness, heartlessness and cruelty from this century'swarmongers' garments.

World War I lasted 1'565 days. Nine million died. Twenty-two million were maimed and left unemployable for life. Such are the statistics of casualties on the actual battlefield. The number of deaths and injuries caused in crowded cities as a side-effect of the fighting is incalculable. The cost of that war is reckoned as more than $400 ,000 ,000 ,000 .

The Carnegie Peace Trust, in its report "The Twentieth-Century World", claims that that same sum could have built, at prices of that date, a decent house for every family in England, Ireland, Scotland, Belgium, Germany, Russia, the United States, Canada, and Australia. The survivors weep, like Rachel for her children, "for they are not", and will not be comforted. Its ravages were not repaired before World War II broke out.

Statistics say that in World War million were killed;20 million lost a limb;17 million liters of blood were spilt;12 million children were born deformed;13 ,000 primary and secondary schools, 6,000 universities and 8,000 science laboratories were destroyed;319 thousand million bullets were fired.

In1945 America dropped two small atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In Hiroshima70 ,000 people were vaporized and70 ,000 others crippled. In Nagasaki40 ,000 died and40 ,000 were maimed. Buildings were laid flat. Nor were innocent babes or animals spared. Within five days Japan surrendered unconditionally.

World press reports said that after the war Russian artificial-limb factories placed an order with their American counterparts for 4 million feet, to fit out those who had lost a foot in the war, since such levels of production were beyond the means of their own industrial installations. If so many feet were needed in Russia, how many irreparable injuries must have occurred amongst her people, and how many in other lands, for which no statistics can ever be affirmed?

The August1945 bombs held235 units of uranium, and239 of plutonium, the equivalent of335 ,000 units of T.N.T. An average atom bomb of today is 5,000 times more powerful, and a hydrogen bomb 5 million times more destructive than an atom bomb. Yet one atom bomb would suffice to flatten a city like New York, Paris, London or Moscow. They no longer need manned planes. Guided missiles can deliver them right on target 2,000 miles away.

The seismographic echoes of one such explosion can be recorded 7,000 miles from its center. The Nobel Prize-winning U.S. chemist, Dr.Linus Pauling, says that in the first hour of a new war10 ,000 megaton bombs would wipe out175 million inhabitants of densely populated lands. The U.S.A. had a stockpile of24 ,000 ; the U.S.S.R.80 ,000 ; England15 ,000 , at the moment he was writing.

A future war, U.S. Army General Neumann writes, will claim as its victims not so much soldiers as civilians. Entire communities, women and children included, will perish. Our physicists have taken war out of human hands and transferred it to fighting machines, which make no distinctions of age or sex, belligerent or non-belligerent. The new theatre of conflict will not be a field of battle or a fortress, but those cities and villages in which manufacturing and commercial centers exist. On these would hail down flying missiles filled with explosives, incendiary devices, poison gas, and disease-bearing bacteria.

These two wars have cast all humanity into the vortex of self-destruction. But their horrors have not had the slightest effect on the moral attitudes of the West, nor changed its intoxication with affluence and alcohol -witness the many regional wars today which might at any moment coalesce into one total war of world annihilation. Civilized nations use their mental, physical and financial powers, not for the proper ends of peace and prosperity for all, but to prepare and stockpile the instruments for everyone's destruction.

Bertrand Russell writes: "Governments competing in sending astronauts to the moon and beyond will between them destroy this world. In past ages sheer want drove tribes to attack their neighbors for the scanty supplies available. Today affluent societies commit suicide in competitive insanity."

The "Economic Record" reckons that400 billion dollars were spent on armaments in the first half of the20 th century -enough to feed every human stomach for the same period and simultaneously provide housing for one-third of humanity-all this in a world where two-thirds of thepopulation live barely at subsistence level in illiteracy and indigence.

The W.F.T.U. estimates that70 % of the world's working personnel are on jobs which have some connection with armament manufacture.

So terrible are modern weapons that a Third World War would leave neither victor nor vanquished, but only a funeral for all humanity.

SociologistPetrim A. Sorokin writes: "The key question of our day is not the superiority of capitalism or communism, nationalism or internationalism, but the replacement of a materialist culture by a superior philosophy of life. In World Wars I and II, each side claimed that peace would ensue if its rival group were wiped out.

In World War I the Allies blamed Kaiser Wilhelm ofGermany ; while he held that the suppression of England was necessary for world peace. In World War II differing views held that peace could only come by Hitler's resignation or death; by Churchill's removal ; by Mussolini's never having been born ; by Hirohito ceasing to be the deified ruler of Japan; by Trotsky replacing Stalin in Russia. Yet now that all these persons are departed, the fever of crisis and war still inflames theworld ; and men's hearts fail them for fear.For it was not the individual Kaiser Wilhelm, or Hitler, or Mussolini, or Churchill, or Stalin who caused the20 th century's troubles.

They merely headed up the multitude of human passions which would have produced similar leaders with other names in any case. A boiling pot produces scum. The scum can be removed. But fresh scum soon covers the brew unless a purifying element is introduced that eliminates the cause."

True, our age has produced the "Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals" and prolonged human lives by heart-transplants. But its deadlier products like atom bombs weigh heavy in the balance. The United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, vindicate the20 th century's claim to be champion of the oppressed and enemy of the oppressor. Yet millions starve to death or are killed off in wars between hostile political groups, despite these idealist institutions.

Are the multifarious agencies that condemn war themselves wholly blameless? Are not those who shout that "all differences should be settled by diplomacy", themselves guilty of pressing their views on others by unjust and forceful measures? Are not Christian leaders, who preach "peace on earth and goodwill towards men" and "war shall be no more", merely adding to the cynical disillusionment of the younger generation, who see that violence and bloodshed are still countenanced as instruments of policy, and do not forget how the Roman Church turned a blind eye on the crimes of Nazism and Fascism?

Apartheid

The theory of apartheid, based on the utterances of some innovating thinker ("philosopher") denies racial equality. Its promoters want "the superior race" to run the world while "weaker inferior races" serve them.

Such a notion is, of course, totally incompatible with any philosophy of man that professes principles of "freedom", individual and/or social, as basic. Further, it prevents any growth in the weak. Most modern investigators regard the doctrine of the superiority of one race of humans over another as unfounded and artificial superstition, when viewed in the light of history and of scientific research.

"No pure race exists. No scientific evidence proves the race theory definitely. An "Aryan" race is a myth. History does not relate the actuality of a race which called itself "Aryan". The "Aryan" family of languages is a fact. But there are many instances of different racial stocks employing the same language for communication."("History of Religion", p.219 .)

National Socialism's rise was part cause of World War II. Hitler's Germany's ideology was "One race shall rule" - of course the "German Nordics"-who were to found a strong center of government in mid-Europe. Its brief brutal regime, by means of Congresses at Nuremberg and elsewhere, and fanatic racial propaganda, drew the loyalty of German nationals who made great, if illusory, profit from their dominance of the neighboring lands.

Dr.Gustaf le Bon in his "Bases of the Spirit of Dictatorship" (p.194 ) writes: "Racism played a major social role, regarded as pivotal by politicians, so that after much bloody conflict it settled to an armed peace which burst out again in devastating violence. Behind all this was the idea that the strongest nation, and that most secure from danger, is that with the largest territories and most numerous population, whereas it is just these nations that live nearest the verge of overthrow."

Today the most advanced nations consider "white" superior to "cultured" and cherish racial superstitions. In the cradle of civilization "sin" is called "black" : and cultured people are bereft of many human rights and liberties. In some states of the U.S.A. no black man may marry awhite ; and schools, colleges, hospitals segregate black and white. So do many associations, hotels, restaurants, public transport lines, and-most shameful of all-even some churches.

"In1954 the Supreme Court made integration of schools obligatory. But white schools only accepted 4 blacks per100 students, and the entry of some even of them into their schools was only achieved by force and the use of troops." ("Tehran Illustrated News", No.1174 .)

The whites resorted to brutal atrocity in their struggle to hold back the blacks, reminiscent of the worst barbarities of theMiddle Ages.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has not had the power to enforce its principles of racial equality. In the space-age earth is torn by racial conflict based on the color of men's skins.Stahwood Cobb ("Lord of the twoKa'abas " p.198 ) writes: "I am against Kipling's sentiment; `East isEast and West is West, and never the twain shall meet'. Why not? What human difference exists between one man and another? Christ taught us two millennia ago that virtue and humanity are linked with good intents, good works and love. But20 th century people know better, and say that superiority depends on skin color! Hitler is called bad for exalting one race: but today's scene is peopled by littleHitlers . Take S. Africa. Take our own America. Apartheid and discrimination everywhere! Take Viet Nam. Was there not a racist element in our pressure there, on the basis that 'the Western white race is superior to the Asian yellow'?"

South Africa, where blacks outnumber whites by 7 to 1, has made racial discrimination its law-apartheid makes whites, blacks, Indian immigrants, cultured, live in separate communities. The identity cards state which group they belong to. The separation applies in buses, trains, churches, restaurants, telephone-kiosks, hospitals and cemeteries. Interracial marriages are prohibited. A black may not work in a white area nor take up a job of high intellectual or scientific level. Menial tasks are reserved for blacks. Small wonder that sometimes half a million are in prison! White judges preside over cases involving blacks. "Keyhan " (the Tehran Daily) (No.7013 ) reported that a black girl, born in the house of a white S. African family, was only allowed to remain in her father's home as a maid, according to the S. African law, or else go and live in the black section of Johannesburg. The father preferred to move house and home to a land where his daughter could live with her parents, as she should, rather than bow to the inhuman law enforced by the highest instance in S. African law.

"March12 ,1960 ,Sharpville was one of several S. African cities where demonstrations protested against the law that all blacks must carry identity cards and show them whenever ordered.Sharpville police fired on a peaceful demonstration walking past the police H.Q., killing69 , and wounding180 ."("Ettela'at " (Tehran Daily) No.13149 .) What is such repression but the enforcement of slavery?

Harry Harwood, in his book on "Freedom", writes: "True, slavery in the old form is abolished; but it lingers on in the form of class enslavement in our society, with the endeavor to keep the blacks on the lowest rung of the social ladder."

Landslide in Family Life

The family is the community in microcosm. It is the root from which nations grow. It is the basic unit of society. Its climate must be love and its soil character. In it human life begins-and ends! It must be happy, a citadel of heart-warming peace and quiet, where affection reigns, which runs on oiled wheels of confidence and trust, security and sincerity. The more firm its spiritual and moral edifice, the more sure its joy and happiness in today's troubled, explosive, insurrectionary atmosphere. Every human being has a greater need than ever for a home and family which will provide a haven of quiet and a refuge for thought and reflection.

The West pursued a simple agricultural life before the industrial revolution. In those days the family was a center of consideration, caring and constancy. Men went out to the fields to work for a living. Women set the care and upbringing of their little ones above all else. The family circle bounded the lives of all its members.

But industry needed hands. One of the first effects of its need was the dispersal of men, women and children to industrial centers, government offices, commercial houses and other large institutions. Conurbations grew in which the sole object of existence was to increase the outward comforts and luxuries of life.

This break-up of family life weakened the marriage bond. Gentleness and affection grievously diminished. Women felt lost without the single-minded devotion to their family and the upbringing of their children which had been their sole preoccupation in previous epochs. They spent their energy in exhausting factory work. The dual role of factory worker and mother proved too much. The necessary time, the adequate opportunity, for leisure of heart, for ordering family life, was missing. She must clock in at the fixed time at work; and housework lost its charm in the weary hours of exhaustion which were all she had left to give to it.

Further, the new "freedom" was so limitless that it uprooted family life, casting chastity and decency to the winds, leaving disaster and division to replace the morality of family and social unity, which had relied on religion and conscience for their sanctions.

The mounting tide of divorces is sweeping the civilized world on a dangerous course, yet it is helplessly unable to stem the flood.

A petty difference in taste between husband and wife is found sufficient ground for ending a marriage-contract. Minor conflicts and incompatibilities are all treated as evidence that a marriage has irretrievably broken down and that a family unit should be split. The storm-clouds of passion and prurience, with hurricane force, blast the tender growths of family oneness; and the most sacred inheritance of thecenturies falls victim to the violence of the most unstable and ephemeral desires. Yet a modicum of common sense could solve the tiff and quench the fire, while tolerance and unselfishness would stabilize the relationship on a sure foundation of principle, justice and love.

An Iranian living in Germany told me that in the last few years all his neighbors, without exception, had ended their marriages in the divorce courts!

The Iranian national daily "Keyhan " (No.6926 ), reported that marriage guidance councils had been set up all over East Germany to check the flood of divorces and broken families. Doctors and lawyers, too, had joined the campaign. Newspapers were devoting column after column to the matter. The rising curve of divorce statistics was blamed primarily on the wives' employment in industrial jobs which kept them outside the home.

Sheer economic need drove70 % of married women to take a job simply to gain an adequate family income.Of these60 % had children. The toll of the double call on her energies by job and family house holding on a woman's nerves naturally is so severe that she and her husband quarrel constantly, until their morale cracks and divorce seems the only solution for an intolerably strained situation.

Tolstoj wrote: "One main cause of the upsurge in the divorce rate is women's excessive freedom of choice, which the capricious and touchy feminine nature cannot carry. Of course it is also true that the machine-age does produce nervous strain, and throws men and women into relationships of intimacy and familiarity which easily cross the bounds of legitimate companionship, and may arouse jealousy within the family ; while women's employment outside the house rouses a host of further problems."

Statistics in New York and Washington show that divorce amongst intellectuals (sic!) outnumbers those amongst all other classes; while those in Hollywood were so shocking that the authorities refused to publish them.

"Keyhan " on28 Farvardin 1339 reported that divorces in the past year in England were a record total-50 % due to unfaithfulness,50 % to other causes.

America's "Wake Magazine" reported that the divorce rate had increased 1,000 % in the last ten years.

French courts heard 9,785 suits for divorce, 8,000 on the wives' initiative.

World War I, and World War II still more, increased youth's rejection as an expression of "freedom", of traditional moral standards, and divorces increased in consequence. G. dePels in his book "Matrimony and Modernity"says : "The excess of divorces over first marriages is due to the effects of World Wars I and II."

"The Reader's Digest", Persian Edition (No.103 , Year25 ), reports a request to the French government by the French Family Federation that divorce be prohibited in the first three years of wedlock. England has enacted the same law with two exceptions only: extraordinary brutality by the husband, or extraordinary corruption in the wife.

In the U.S.A., 3,000 ,000 children's parents are separated (Tehran Weekly Journal "Ettela'at " (No.1206 )). Lawson writes: "Anyone with a grain of philanthropic sense must feel the pain of these terrifying figures and seek to cure them. Since most separations are due to the women's initiative, both cause and cure must be found in them."

Alas, Iran's own Westernized classes are afflicted with the same divorce-disease. In the last decade in Tehran alone over 1,000 divorces have occurred because of quarrels over money, and been reported in the papers. Many more went unreported. Of15 ,335 weddings in Tehran in1339 , 4,839 ended in divorce - almost one in three.86 % of these divorces were demanded by the wives-all Westernized materialist intellectuals (save the mark!). It is a warning of a menacing peril which must be averted. The type of "civilization" which destroys the family cannot be left as it is if we are not to see division cleave our people asunder and unbridled passions annihilate our culture. It must be replaced by the practice of Islam's stabilizing and constructive social lore.

Love of Animals

Certain Western nations are dog-lovers to the point of madness. An Iranian scientist who took his medical degree in Germany wrote: "My landlord loved his dog, kissed it and cuddled it. I tried to warn him of the danger of infection withhydatid cysts. He dismissed my remarks as unfounded, so I fetched him a medical book, which he studied with dismay, and then asked me: 'If contact with a dog is so dangerous, why do physicians and university professors keep dogs in their homes?' I replied that there are many habits professionally recognized as harmful to health which medical men indulge in because they like them, making a mockery of commonsense, science and reason, preferring to risk their welfare!"

Iran's National Society for the Protection of Animals, in its journal, quotes an American magazine, which sent a questionnaire to all its dog-loving clients (mostly women), asking:

1. Do you like your dog or your spouse best?

2. If you and your dog were both hungry, with insufficient food even for one, would you give that little to your dog, or eat it yourself?

3. Does your dog sleep in your bedroom?

4. If your dog died would you shed tears?

5. Do you credit your dog with a personality above animal level?

6. If your dog bit your child and your child hit the dog with a stone and both were howling, which would you rush to comfort?

7. If your dog and your husband both fell sick simultaneously, which would you call the doctor to first?

8. Does your mind frequently wander to thoughts of your dog while you are working at your office?

Of75 ,000 replies, the answers worked out as follows:

1. Close on two-thirds loved their husbands when the husband loved the dog. A number roundly stated that their dog was everything for them!

2.60 ,000 said they'd give the dog the food, since it mattered less if they starved to death themselves than if the dog should fail to survive.

3.49 ,000 had their dog sleeping in the bedroom. "He's better than anyone else," wrote the women.

4. Two-thirds would shed tears if the dog died, and give it a funeral ceremony.

5. Practically all replies regarded their dog as more than an animal, with a spiritual personality.

6. We'd try to quiet both."

7. "First the vet, then the doctor."

8. "Of course our thoughts frequently turn to our dogs while we're away at work-or anywhere else, for that matter. The dog plays too important a part in life for anyone not to keep on thinking of it."

Fancy crediting a dog with a spiritual personality and mourning its death! These are idealists, who espouse the cause of freedom and independence. Yet they condone the ruthless bombing with incendiaries and atomic warheads of entire nations without a qualm. They let the dog sleep in their bedroom yet they refuse entry into society to millions of fellow-humans, just for the crime of having a black skin.

They call the vet as soon as the dog is ill and fix its cure yet they let humans die, in groups, of famine, poverty and disease, without compunction. In America the special shops fordogs stock ten kinds of eau de cologne and even sell toothpaste, cosmetics, combs and all beauty-specialties for dogs!

"Time Magazine" is quoted in "Ettela'at " (No.13241 ), thus: "Some of our great cities are literally 'the dog house' - e.g. London, Tokyo, Mexico City. In these, dogs are so numerous that they cause discomfort and dirt everywhere. They bite children in growing numbers and make confusion more confounded. Tokyo has280 ,000 ; Los Angeles300 ,000 ; New York500 ,000 ; London700 ,000 ; Mexico City over a million. Dogs are making a mess of the world."

The French periodical "Animal" reported that American dog-owners spend $300 ,000 ,000 annually on beauty goods and garments for their pets. In New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, beauty-shops for dogs do a roaring trade. Their attendants have to take a six or twelve-month course for a "Diploma of Dog-Beautician" to get the job! Most cities have at least one dog cemetery with funeral-rites for dogs.

Meantime, five million unemployed suffer neglect and indigence.

Of course, Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals are maintained by humane and tenderhearted people. Should they not extend their humane care to their own kind? Dr. Alexis Carrel rightly voiced the protest of all sane people against the contradictions tolerated in this world."This should ye have done; and also not have left the other undone." Meaning "Do the lesser humane work (i.e. for animals) without neglecting the greater humane work for people."

Childhood Traumas

The physical and biological equipment of a woman fit her for certain creative functions in life, peculiar to her sex, which she is called to fulfill. Her capacity for motherhood carries with it certain emotional, mental and nervous conformations of spirit. She is formed to care for and to bring up children with supreme art and heart. The meeting of an infant's many wants, and the careful nurture of its delicate instincts in the secure climate of a loving home, is, amidst the raging passions and deadly violence prevailing in our modern world, the most vital and basic task offered to any human being. No nursery school, no infants' crèche, however well-equipped or psychologically planned, can supply a mother's place. A child deprived of mother-love suffers psychological injuries.

Western women, busied with jobs outside the home, have abandoned nature's destiny; and diverted the wonderful talents innate in the feminine personality into unnatural and disastrous sidetracks. The materialisms of East and West are alike incapable of changing the ingredients of human nature. Both have removed woman from the role for which she was designed. Untold malformations result -in personalities, in communities, in moral conduct. Juveniles brought up without the proper home-environment suffer incurable traumas. Nurseries run by people whose only motive is to make a living and who lack the passion to bring children up, treat their charges from the start as potential rebels, and thereby rob them of patience and of self-respect.

Dr. Alexis Carrel writes:

"Modern society has committed a serious mistake by entirely substituting the school for familial training. The mothers abandon their children to the kindergarten in order to attend to their careers, their social ambitions, their sexual pleasures, their literary or artistic fancies, or simply to play bridge, go to the cinema, and waste their time in busy idleness. They are, thus, responsible for the disappearance of the familial group, where the child was kept in contact with adults and learned a great deal from them. Children brought up in schools with a crowd of other children of their own age [Carrel writes `young dogs brought up in kennels with others of the same age do not develop as well as puppies free to run about with their parents'. Translator] do not develop as well as those living in the company of intelligent adults. The child easily molds his physiological, affective, and mental activities upon those of his surroundings. He learns little from children of his own age. When he is only a unit in a school he remains incomplete. To reach full strength the individual requires the relative isolation and the attention of the restricted social group consisting of the family."8

Tehran weekly "Ettela'at " (No.1206 ) quotes a foreign report that in America25 % of women in divorce suits suffer from mental ailments, while150 ,000 children per annum fall victims to the ills consequent upon a divided home. Women, after a day's work, go home tired out; while home-lifeitself is so painful for many that they take tranquillizers or other pills, and frequent psychiatric clinics, in search of relief from nervous debility. Youth psychiatrist Dr. GeorgeMally says: "Many psychological ailments in young people are due to memories of babyhood for which their mothers bear the blame. Lying, torturing dumb animals, delinquency, appear in young people who have lacked a mother's care."

Where affection and love between father and mother is weak, children feel less sense of duty to parents. In some families the members never see each other for years, and children by the age of17 turn surly and rebellious. Some parents turn the children out of the home to fend for themselves at the earliest age allowed by law. Others allow the children to continue to live at home, if they contribute the expenses of their board and lodging, and replace any crockery they break at once out of their own pocket. Such treatment is worse for girls, who tend to seek solace for the loneliness caused by lack of parental care in undesirable friendships with boys.

Conurbations where machines do so much of the work have banished the ancient warmth and joy of heartfelt affection in family and neighborly relations. Townspeople forget what tenderness, unselfish­ness, fellow-feeling and sympathy are; and come to count those they call "friend" on the fingers of one hand. Civilized living has dried out the wellsprings of humanity with its "new order". On the assembly-line, cooperation is enforced by legal and financial sanctions. But the team-work of heart, by which one person voluntarily helps another who is in difficulties, vanishes amongst the depersonalized crowds of un-neighbourly neighbors. "Bear ye one another's burdens", which for our tribal forefathers was normal living, has nowadays become something which few people will do unless they are paid for it.

While I was a patient in that German hospital, my visitors, though few, were more numerous than those who visited native German patients, much to the hospital staffs surprise.

Let me add a true story from my own experience. Some years ago a German university professor accepted Islam under the tutelage of the Hamburg Islamic community. Later the new Muslim fell ill and was hospitalized. When the Islamic leader heard of this, he straightaway went to visit the professor in hospital. He found him unexpectedly dejected and downcast. After a long silence the professor broke out with a sadtale : "Today my wife and son visited me. They had learned that I had an incurable cancer, and said they had come to say 'goodbye' for the last time as they understood I have only a few days more to live. It's not the fact that I am dying that gets me down, but my wife and my son's heartlessness."

"Never mind!" said the Imam, "Islam's your family now. And we believers will come and sit around you here and see to your every need until the end and after. To do this is for us a winning of merit in heaven, a sacred duty, a divine command and sincere expression of our brotherly love." This news made the patient's face light up. Thereafter he gradually weakened and died.

The Muslim community undertook his funeral and escorted his body to their cemetery. Whilst the cortege was proceeding with due solemnity, a youth rushed up and angrily demanded the professor's corpse. They asked "Why?" He said: "That's my father you are burying-illegally, for I sold the hospital his body for30 marks some days before he died!"

The scandalized Muslims stood firm. After some heated altercation the young man had to withdraw his demand. Asked later what his job was, he replied: "I work days in a factory and evenings in a dog-beauty-parlor." To such depths can family love, human feeling and a sense of proportionate values sink in a society that is "civilized"!

Conclusion of Part 1

Mankind's downhill rush from moral levels plunges into a materialist flood of social unrest and sedition. The greatest thinkers realize that some way must be found to end the avalanche if the world is not to collapse from its own depravity. Thinkers, as one man, declare that only in a revival of faith and morality can there be found a safe ground on which to build the new society,A change of heart in countless individuals must precede, and lay the foundation for, family, community, financial, national and international renewal. It is a hopeful sign that the masses of ordinary people submerged in the sea of troubles caused by materialist, heartless, machine-made living are beginning to realize the inhumanity and hopelessness of such a way of life and type of society.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, as U.S. President, voiced this realization in powerful words: "Our affluent society rests on shaky moral grounds. We reach the moon and pollute the earth. We long for peace and go to war. An age that has split the atom must heal the splits in humanity. Empty hands must be filled with work, empty stomachs with food, and empty hearts with satisfaction. To cure the moral crisis that blights our world, each of us need only look to ourselves. If we each listen to the still small voice of conscience we shall soon perceive that simple basic things, like goodness, purity, unselfishness, love, integrity, are our greatest and most priceless treasure. Seek affluence in these, and the tragedies of misused material affluence will end in happiness for all."

Dr. Alexis Carrel in his "Way and Rule of Life" (pp.15 and34 ): "We need a world in which every person can develop their innate talents to the full, with no separation between material and spiritual. We have learnt that life cannot be lived right without a guide and a compass. But too few are alert to the grave perils which await human life if we do not follow that guide's directions. Too many are guided by their fleeting passions, intoxicated by the materialist ease which technology provides, unwilling to renounce even a small portion of those comforts, pursuing pleasure, bobbing like corks on the flood of lust for gain and fun which will soon drop us all over the falls.

Instead of letting the assumptions of an orderly universe, on which science bases its work, shape our human institutions, and bear us upward towards supreme truth, we have poured them into the molds of ideologies which can never satisfy our real need. Putting the material first, modern man sacrifices spiritual to economic affluence, and abandons peace of heart for hedonism. We think 'freedom' includes independence of nature's laws. Liberalism and Marxism preach doctrines which neglect the fact that man was not made only for 'production and consumption'.

He was designed for pure love, religious feeling, intellectual treasures, creative imagination, self-sacrifice and heroic living. To live solely for economics is to amputate a vital part of his personality, and this is why both liberalism and Marxism not merely neglect but actually destroy and cast away the basic elements which nature itself included in man's composition."

To eradicate the causes of these tragedies and miseries, the modern world's sole hope is a return to Divine Truth as revealed by God's inspiration through His Prophets. The next sphere for exploration must be that interior space which is within the mind of man. For this we must first disperse the storm-clouds of passion which darken it : we must lose the fetters of lust which bind the human spirit : we must expel the corruption and filth which confine him in the valley of the shadow by means of a cleansing revolution which refines both thinking and living. Only so can man regain true humanity and enter into his rightful heritage of those spiritual values which should be his distinguishing characteristic, by means of which alone the deep inward happiness Man was made for can grow and expand to all his fellow humans everywhere.

Notes

1. Stanwood Cobb, "Lord of 2Ka'abas " p. 1.

2. Marcel Cache "Social History," Vol. II.

3. Marcel Cache "Social History," op. cit., Vol. II, p.123.

4. "History of Free Thought", p.147.

5. "La CivilizationIslamique etArabe ", p.407.

6. "Divorce and Modernity", p.34.

7. "The Encyclopedia Britannica", Vol. 23, p.45.

8. Alexis Carrel, "Man, the Unknown", Harpers, NewYork : 50th edition p.270.