s, and is a
devout and God-fearing person, must of necessity remain idle and spend his
days in sloth, so as to be considered in the sight of God as one who has
forsaken the world and its vanities, set his heart on the life to come,
and isolated himself from human beings in order to draw nearer to God.
Since this theme will be developed elsewhere in the present text, We shall
leave it for the moment.

Other attributes of perfection are to fear God, to love God by loving His
servants, to exercise mildness and forbearance and calm, to be sincere,
amenable, clement and compassionate; to have resolution and courage,
trustworthiness and energy, to strive and struggle, to be generous, loyal,
without malice, to have zeal and a sense of honor, to be high-minded and
magnanimous, and to have regard for the rights of others. Whoever is
lacking in these excellent human qualities is defective. If We were to
explain the inner meanings of each one of these attributes, "the poem
would take up seventy maunds(25) of paper."

[PAGES 41-60]

The second of these spiritual standards which apply to the possessor of
knowledge is that he should be the defender of his faith. It is obvious
that these holy words do not refer exclusively to searching out the
implications of the Law, observing the forms of worship, avoiding greater
and lesser sins, practicing the religious ordinances, and by all these
methods, protecting the Faith. They mean rather that the whole population
should be protected in every way; that every effort should be exerted to
adopt a combination of all possible measures to raise up the Word of God,
increase the number of believers, promote the Faith of God and exalt it
and make it victorious over other religions.

If, indeed, the Muslim religious authorities had persevered along these
lines as they ought to have done, by now every nation on earth would have
been gathered into the shelter of the unity of God and the bright fire of
"that He may make it victorious over every other religion"(26) would have
flamed out like the sun in the midmost heart of the world.

Fifteen centuries after Christ, Luther, who was originally one of the
twelve members of a Catholic religious body at the center of the Papal
government and later on initiated the Protestant religious belief, opposed
the Pope on certain points of doctrine such as the prohibition of monastic
marriage, the revering and bowing down before images of the Apostles an