its successive phases throughout history, from the time of the Caliph ‘Uthmān until today, a people receptive to faith, responsive to the truth and eager to seek it. Faced with this fertile land and this wholesome soil, how fitting it is that we nurture the foundations of Islam already planted there, including in scattered parts of its remote interior now yearning ardently for Islam, and plant anew among those whom Islam reached only through traders and Sufis. They adopted its name alone, retaining their earlier superstitions and pagan beliefs, or adding to them the pagan practices of more urbanized societies that the Sufis brought them.

We should likewise plant this Islam—the Islam revealed in Allah’s Mighty Book, which one of Islam’s envoys presented to Rustam, the foremost Persian commander, saying: “We have come to deliver people from worshipping created beings to worshipping Allah, from the confines of this world to its spaciousness, and from the injustice of religions to the justice of Islam.”1 It was this same Islam that Abū Sufyān described to Heraclius, whereupon Heraclius, the Byzantine emperor, replied: “If what you have said is true, Muhammad—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—will rule the very ground beneath these two feet of mine. Were I in his presence, I would wash his feet; and if I knew I could reach him, I would endure the hardship of going to meet him.”2

This, then, is Islam; anything else is not Islam. Wherever it takes root, it brings life, as Allah Most High says:

“O you who believe, respond to Allah and to the Messenger when he calls you to that which gives you life.” 3

The esteemed author of this valuable treatise, which will, Allah willing, have a profound impact, sets out for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in its capacity as the foremost overseer of