God says
Q. 2:4. …and (the God-conscious) who believe in that which has been bestowed from on high upon thee [O Prophet,] as well as in that which was bestowed before thy time:**** for it is they who are in their innermost certain of the life to come!
**** This is reference to one of the fundamental doctrines of the Quran: the doctrine of the historical continuation of the revelation. Life – so the Quran teaches us – is not a series of unconnected jumps but a continuous, organic process: and this law applies also to the life of the mind, of which man’s religious experience (in cumulative sense) is a part. Thus, the religion of the Quran be properly understood only against the background of the great monotheistic faiths which preceded it, and which, according to Muslim belief, culminate and achieve their final formulation in the faith of Islam.
