The world before the Prophet Muhammad

When Almighty Allah sent His lastand greatest Prophet, Muhammad
sallallaaahu 'alayhi wa sallam , , humankind was immersed in a state
of degeneration. The messages of the past prophets had been distorted
and ignored, civilizationwas on the decline and humanity had slumped
into an age of darkness, with disbelief, oppression and corruption
prevalent everywhere. The condition of the world at that time
presented the gloomiest picture ever of human history.
At the time of the birth of Prophet Muhammad, , there existed two
great powers on earth: one in the East and another in the West. In the
East there was the Persian Empire, and in the West, the Roman Empire .
As it might be expected, these two powers were actively hostile and
almost permanently at war with one another. As a result, they were
weak and disunited, though appearing to be otherwise. Despite their
disunity and weakness, they made no serious effort to eradicate the
causes of their instability.
The Arabs were living under no better conditions. They were families
and tribes comprising different attitudes and feelings; but they were
all similar in one respect: they were slaves of habits and impulses.
They used to take pride in invasion and plunder. Moreover, they were
so low in their moral affairs that a number of them used to bury their
daughters alive.
Religiously speaking, the Arabs of that era were mostly idol
worshippers. Some of them used to make their own gods from sweets, and
subsequently, they would eat them when they got hungry. They had
replaced the monotheism of Ibraaheem (Abraham) with the worship of
idols, stars and demons, turning the Ka'bah, which was built for the
One and Only Creator,into a pantheon of idols. In addition, tribal
rivalries and blood feuds ran among them likethe burning desert sands
of Arabia .
The people of Makkah used to practice usury on a large scale with
very high interest rates -- sometimes a hundred percent. When the
debtors were not able to repay -- and that was most often the case --
they were enslaved or obliged to force their wives and daughters to
commit certain sins, in order to be able tocollect enough money to
repay the debt.
Ignorance was not confined to the Arabs alone. On the fringes of
Arabia where the desert gives way to hospitable lands, met the
ever-changing borders of 'world arrogance', the two superpowersof the
age: the Persian and the Roman Empires.
The fire-worshipping Persians, with their strange concept of dualism
were further plagued by the still weirder Mazdakite doctrine (i.e. a
socio-religious movement that flared up in the Sasanian Kavad (488-531
CE) founded by Mazdak son of Bamdad), that advocated communal
ownership and even ruled that women were the common property of all
men. LikeMani a few centuries earlier, who had claimed a new religion
by combining the teachings of Jesus and Zoroaster, Mazdakite's
movement was also a reaction tothe corruption of the traditional
priestly class. Both creeds died away after the execution of their
proponents, who more or less depended on royal patronage. Onthe other
hand, the Sasanian aristocracy aligned with the Zoroastrian clergy was
steeped inpleasures, burdening the oppressed masses with heavy taxes
and oppression.
At the other end was the Byzantine world, which though claiming to
profess a divinely revealed religion, had in fact polluted the
monotheist message of Prophet Jesus with the sediments of ancient
Greek and Roman pagan thoughts, resulting in the birth ofChristianity.
In 381 CE, the Greco-Roman Church council rejected the doctrine of
Arius of Alexandria, to which most of the eastern provinces of the
empire adhered, and in its place the council had coined the belief
thatGod and Jesus are of one substance and therefore co-existent.
Arius and his followers had held the belief in the uniqueness and
majesty of God, Who Alone, they said has existed since eternity, while
Jesus was created in time.
There were colonies of Jews scattered across West Asia and North
Africa to whom several Messengers had been sent by Almighty Allaah.
However, even these divine favors had failed to reform them. The laws
sent to Prophet Moses had been distorted and tampered with.
Further to the east lay the once flourishing cultures of China and
India which were groping in darkness. Confucianism had confused the
Chinese, robbing their minds of any positive thinking. On the other
hand, Hinduism had no universal pretensions whatsoever, and
waspeculiar to the geographical confines of India or more properly
Northern India and its Aryan invaders. Conversion of foreigners was
difficult because one had to be born in a particularcaste and it was
the mystery of 'Karma' that determined one's fate.
In short, wars, bloodshed, slavery, oppression of women and the
deprived held sway everywhere, might ruled over right. The world was
in dire distress but no one seemed capable of delivering it from
darkness. No religion, ideology, creed or cult during those times,
could offer any hope to the agonies and frustrations of humankind.
None of the religions in currency had any universal outlook or
evenpretensions and were limited to insurmountable geographical and
psychological barriers, preaching discrimination and the narrow-minded
superiority of a particular race.
Thus, it was in such a chaotic state of depression that AlmightyAllaah
sent His last great Prophet, with the universal Message ofIslam to
save humankind from disbelief, oppression, corruption, ignorance and
moral decadence that was dragging humanity towards self-annihilation.