The Eleventh Hour

From the back cover: ?The most recent of Providence?s solutions to the problem of government was realized some 1400 years ago with the founding of the first Islamic state in Medina. At its outset it was miraculously successful. The initial perfection was short-lived, although thanks to detailed records it remains to this day as an ideal, an example, and a criterion. Every effort has been made to keep it clear in the minds of men and Islam has in a sense lived on it throughout the centuries. Embodying as it does the practices and recommendations of the God-sent Messenger, this ideal constitutes the second spiritual authority of the religion, the first being the Revelation itself. The third authority, incomparably less than the other two, with no power to make any fundamental changes whatsoever, lies in a certain consensus of reliable opinion among Muslims themselves. But if the spiritual authority among men is limited in Islam, it is by compensation exceedingly widespread. It is sometimes affirmed that every man is a priest; at any rate, there is no laity, and it cannot be denied that a sharp and implacable awareness of what God has ordained and what the Prophet (pbuh) has recommended is to be found in a multitude of individuals through the Islamic world.?