Observe the
influence on material situations of that training which is inculcated by the
true Educator. Here were tribes so benighted and untamed that during the period
of the Jáhilíyyih [Age of Ignorance] they would bury their seven-year-old
daughters alive—an act which even an animal, let alone a human being, would
hate and shrink from but which they in their extreme degradation considered the
ultimate expression of honor and devotion to principle—and this darkened
people, thanks to the manifest teachings of that great Personage, advanced to
such a degree that after they conquered Egypt, Syria and its capital Damascus,
Chaldea, Mesopotamia and Írán, they came to administer single-handedly whatever
matters were of major importance in four main regions of the globe.
The Arabs then
excelled all the peoples of the world in science and the arts, in industry and
invention, in philosophy, government and moral character. And truly, the rise
of this brutish and despicable element, in such a short interval, to the
supreme heights of human perfection, is the greatest demonstration of the
rightfulness of the Lord Muhammad’s
Prophethood.
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (‘Secret of Divine Civilization’)
