(This kind of persecution has been mentioned in the Quran as ‘fitna’). (8:39)

The process began with the end of idolatry and was completed during the lifetime of the Prophet. The other, the advent of religious freedom, came about later, during the pious caliphate; with the disintegration of the two great empires—the Sassanid and Byzantine—the two greatest pillars of religious persecution were uprooted, and religious freedom became the order of the day. However, no great revolution materialises all of a sudden. It reaches fruition only by a long historical process, and the Islamic revolution was no exception to this rule. The process of human liberation, initiated by Islam, continued over a long period to make advances through individual and collective efforts, taking various forms. The second Caliph, Umar Faruq (d.644) addressing one of his governors and his son in a well known case asked: “Since when have you enslaved people while their mothers had given birth to them in freedom?” (Al-Abqariat Al-Islamia).

This voice was echoed eleven hundred years later by the well-known French reformer Rousseau (d. 1778). His book, titled The Social Contract, began with this famous sentence: ‘Man was born free, but I find him in chains’. This concept of intellectual and religious freedom had fully matured by the end of the 20th century. With the establishment of the United Nations, all the nations of the world signed its charter of Human Rights, proclaiming that intellectual and religious freedom is the irrevocable right of every human being and that on no pretext can it be abrogated.