COMPLETION OF
RELIGION
The finality of prophethood (khatm-e-nubuwwat) and the completion of religion (takmeel-e-deen) are two aspects of the same reality. According to God’s creative plan, it was necessary that divine guidance remain available to humankind at all times. In earlier times, this guidance was provided through prophets. This process began with the very first human being, Adam, and continued without interruption through the ages. The Quran refers to this in these words: “Then We sent Our messengers in succession.” (Quran, 23:44)
Regarding Muhammad, the Quran declares in verse 40 of the same chapter that he is the last of the messengers. No prophet will come after him. This declaration was not merely an announcement that the list of prophets had come to an end. It also meant that although the institution of prophethood would no longer exist, something would take its place and fulfill its role.
The completion of religion—meaning the establishment and stabilization of religion—is in fact the manifestation of this divine decision. After the finality of prophethood, God made His religion itself the successor to prophethood. In earlier times, religion often remained unstable. Therefore, it could not serve as a substitute for prophethood. But after the last Prophet, through divine support, the religion of Islam was firmly established. As a result, after the end of prophethood, religion itself became its replacement. This state will continue until the end of time. Therefore, the prophethood of Muhammad remains effective until the Day of Judgment. There is no longer any need for a new prophet.
This concept is referred to in the Quran as the perfection or completion of religion. That is, the religion was made so firmly established that no danger now remains to it until the end of time. The Quran declares in Surah 5:
“Today, those who deny the truth have despaired of your religion. So do not fear them—fear Me. Today, I have completed your religion for you, and completed My favor upon you, and chosen Islam as your religion.” (Quran, 5:3)
In this verse, the phrase completed your religion means made your religion stable (Lisān al-‘Arab, vol. 11, p. 598; Tafsir al-Nasafi, p. 1, p. 270). In previous times, religion was repeatedly subject to alteration and distortion. Opposing forces were often successful in erasing the message of the prophets from history. But through the Prophet of Islam and his companions, such a profound revolution was brought about that the problem of religious instability was resolved forever.
According to the Commentator Dahhak, this verse was revealed after the conquest of Makkah in 8 AH—approximately fourteen centuries ago according to the Hijri calendar. At the time, this verse represented a bold prophecy about the future. It declared in advance that history had now entered a new phase. The fear of human opposition to God’s religion had ended forever. The religion of God had become so firmly rooted that no opposing force would ever again be able to overcome it.
1. The present world is a place of trial. Here, all events unfold according to the natural law of cause and effect. When this context is taken into account, the interpretation of the aforementioned Quranic verse becomes clearer: it signifies that in the times to come, the course of history will move in a direction aligned with the religion of God. Future events will unfold in ways that affirm the truth of God’s religion, not in ways that negate it.
This prophecy has been consistently fulfilled across all historical periods. On a purely intellectual and historical level, this affirms that the Quran is indeed the revealed word of God. For, no one other than God has the power to make such a definitive pronouncement about the course of history—and in fact, no one in history has ever dared to make such a bold and decisive statement about it.
In this brief discussion, I will mention three major events in world history. These are events that initially appeared to be revolutions opposing religion. But in terms of their long-term outcomes, they turned out to be revolutions that ultimately supported it. These three revolutions are: freedom, science, and secularism.
1. The present age is an age of freedom, whereas all previous eras were marked by restrictions on expression. In every human community, whether large or small, in every part of the world, and at every point in history, some form of control over speech and writing has always existed. Some form of censorship has appeared in all communities, small and large, in all parts of the world, at all stages of history (Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 3, p. 1083).
This general restriction on freedom of expression meant that religious scriptures were never subjected to open criticism. Due to this prohibition on critical examination, the differences between one religious scripture and another never became clear on purely scholarly grounds. The only way to determine the status of a religious book was through the belief of its followers. Each group described its holy book as a divine revelation, and based on this, people began to assume that every religious scripture was equally divine. In reality, however, the Quran was the preserved divine scripture, while all the others were unpreserved. The Quran remained completely unaltered, whereas the other scriptures had undergone distortions.
In the present age, with the advent of open intellectual freedom, everything came under unrestricted scrutiny—even sacred religious texts. This process has continued for nearly the past three hundred years among scholars and has become an independent academic field known by terms like higher criticism, historical criticism, and textual criticism.
This open examination brought a great benefit: the difference between the Quran and other religious scriptures became clear on purely scholarly and historical grounds. These critics examined the Quran with the same severity as they did the other religious texts. But in the end, it was proven that the Quran is a preserved book, and all others are unpreserved. The Quran is unaltered, and the others are altered. The Quran is a historically reliable book, while the others lack historical reliability.
For example, modern scholars collected different copies of the Quran from various countries. They gathered handwritten and printed versions of the Quran from different historical periods. When these thousands of manuscripts were compared with each other, not even the slightest difference could be found. Some differences were noted in pronunciation (qira’at) in a few words of certain verses. But as far as the written text was concerned, not a single partial or complete variation was found among them.
The situation with the other scriptures was entirely different. Their various versions displayed thousands of clear differences. For example, in some versions of the Torah, the number of a group was stated as ten thousand, while in others, the same group was referred to as thousands. In one version of the Gospel, Jesus was referred to as the son of God, while in another version, he was described as the son of David.
The present era of freedom appeared as a challenge to the Quran and Islam. But in terms of the final outcome, it turned out to be beneficial to Islam. It provided a new historical argument in favour of the Quran. The distinction between the Quran and other religious scriptures, which until now was based only on Muslims’ personal belief, has now become an established fact in academic scholarship. This storm of freedom seemed at first to be a difficulty for Muslims, but in the end, it proved to be equivalent to ease.
2. The second intellectual revolution was the modern scientific revolution. In particular, during the nineteenth century, a method for discovering things was developed, which came to be known as the scientific method. This method involves evaluating things in the light of observable or experimentally verifiable phenomena. With the spread of this method, human beings became aware of many new realities—for instance, detailed knowledge of the solar system or precise information about the layers of the Earth.
Following these material discoveries, a distinct philosophy emerged, commonly known as positivism. Under this philosophy, it came to be believed that the sole criterion for attaining real knowledge is direct experience or observation that is verifiable.
When viewed from this perspective, religious beliefs did not meet this standard of knowledge, as they were entirely based on indirect reasoning or inference. For example, the existence of God was unobservable. The argument presented in support of it was generally that since there is design in the universe, there must necessarily be a designer. Such inferential reasoning was considered invalid according to modern standards of knowledge. Therefore, these arguments were dismissed as pseudo-explanations.
For nearly a hundred years, a major intellectual debate continued in the realm of knowledge. However, this viewpoint carried weight only as long as human knowledge remained confined to the macro-world. At the beginning of the twentieth century, when human inquiry reached into the micro-world, the entire situation underwent a complete transformation.
It then became clear that the domain of direct reasoning was extremely limited. The new realities emerging in human knowledge were so subtle that only inference—or indirect reasoning—was practically applicable. For example, in 1895, the German scientist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen observed during an experiment that certain effects appeared on a glass plate in front of him, even though no known connection existed between the experiment and the glass. He concluded that there must be an invisible radiation traveling at the speed of 186,000 miles per second. Due to its unknown nature, Röntgen named it X-rays. (Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 19, p. 1058)
In the twentieth century, many such phenomena emerged that could not be observed directly. However, based on their indirect effects, their existence could not be denied either. As a result, modern scholars were compelled to accept inferential reasoning as a valid standard of logic, alongside direct reasoning—because without it, X-rays could not be explained, the scientific structure of the atom could not be accepted, and the existence of black holes or dark matter could not be acknowledged, and so on.
With this expansion in the standards of reasoning, arguments in support of religious beliefs became just as valid as arguments supporting scientific theories. The same inferential logic used to establish modern scientific theories was also applicable to establishing religious belief.
Thus, the proclamation made by the Quran 1,400 years ago was reaffirmed in history: that no change in human thought would be able to reject the truth of Islam. Every revolution to come would only serve to confirm divine religion. None would ever succeed in denying it.
3. The third intellectual revolution that Islam encountered in later history was secularism. This thought process emerged during the European Renaissance. Secularism was a movement that prioritized this worldly, material life over the life of the Hereafter:
“...a movement in society directed away from other-worldliness to this-worldliness.” (Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 10, p. 19)
The theory of secularism came to dominate modern society as a powerful social and political ideology. In theory, it meant that the collective policy of a nation should be based on non-interference in religious matters. But in practice, it turned into a strong anti-religious force. It began to appear that the wave of secularism would first push religion to the margins of life, and then eventually eliminate it completely as an obsolete belief system.
But once again, the Quran’s prophecy proved decisive. It became evident that divine religion is rooted in the eternal nature of human beings. The awareness of religion in a person is just as unchangeable as the sensation of thirst. Even the largest institutions and most powerful governments founded on secular principles could not succeed in making human beings abandon divine religion in favour of secularism.
A particularly instructive example of this can be found in Turkey. After gaining political power, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk officially abolished the Islamic Caliphate in 1924. He declared an aggressive secularism as the state policy of Turkey. Using state authority, he abruptly shut down all religious schools and institutions. Through new legislation, he restructured the entire Turkish system on the basis of secularism. Even traditional Turkish dress was forcibly replaced with European attire. Every form of opposition was suppressed with force.
After Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s death in 1938, his associate Mustafa Ismet Inonu (d. 1973) was appointed President of Turkey. He continued Atatürk’s aggressive secular policies with full commitment. Yet, despite nearly fifty years of an anti-Islam government campaign, Islam survived in Turkey. Atatürk’s policy to eliminate Islam completely failed. Even İsmet İnönü had to admit this near the end of his life. While suffering from his final illness, he reportedly expressed the following impression (as cited in Al-Waʿy Al-Islāmi, Dhū al-Qaʿdah 1408 AH):
“It is hard for me to believe what I am seeing. We tried everything we could to uproot Islam from the hearts of the Turks and to implant the principles of Western civilization in its place. But to our amazement, the result turned out to be completely the opposite of what we expected. We sowed the seed of secularism, but the fruit that emerged was Islam.”
Another failed example in this regard is the Soviet Union. There, an effort was made first intellectually and then, from 1917 onward, through a powerful government, to eliminate Islam. This campaign continued for nearly a hundred years. But in 1991, the Communist Empire itself collapsed—and astonishingly, from its ruins, Islam reemerged in a living form.
The American magazine Time (March 12, 1990) published a report about the Soviet region. The primary aim of this report was to assess the status of religion in the new Russia. It included a review of the 55 million Soviet Muslims and revealed that Islam had been revived there with new strength. The headline of this illustrated report was meaningfully titled:
“Karl Marx Makes Room for Muhammad.”
Every challenge that history has presented against God’s religion has only served to affirm that it is an eternally established faith—one that cannot be overcome.
Final Word
Here, we have briefly discussed only a few modern revolutions. Similar adverse events have occurred repeatedly over the past 1,400 years. Each of these events initially appeared to be a challenge to Islam, yet in the end, they became a source of strength for it. A well-known example is the Mongol domination in the 13th century CE and their eventual submission to the intellectual force of Islam.
This recurring historical experience offers immense encouragement. It confirms that intellectual ascendancy in favour of Islam is divinely destined. Believers should never lose hope when faced with turmoil. Instead, they should advance with the message of Islam, strengthened by firm conviction. The Quran states that if you overlook the excesses of your opponents and respond with goodness, even those who once appeared as enemies may become close friends. (Quran, 41:34)
Now, as we face new challenges and difficulties, if we establish the Quran, history will once again bear witness. Just as the sword of the Mongols in the seventh century AH ultimately became a servant and protector of God’s religion, the same outcome will unfold once more.
