Synopsis
"A biologist has said that we are immersed in the habits of our era, like the glands in their fluids. We are creatures, to a great extent, of our environment. But there is one Being Who is not the product of His environment. This is the holy Personage Who appears among us as the Manifestation of God. He is outside of and free of custom, tradition, environment. It is only by following Him that we too are released from the ways of our ancestors and can start a new way. He is reality--truth--and the truth makes us free.
The materialist says man is the product of his times. Therefore the materialist cannot account for the Prophet of God. All of a sudden, in Arabia, there rises an Arab Who is not like the Arabs. He summons the people to go against custom. He smashes their idols. Think of the effect on them: something they had been taught to worship, toppling down, broken in pieces. Today, we too are told to smash idols--the idols of men's own imaginings. 'Abdu'l-Baha says that those other idols at least had a mineral existence, while mankind's present idols are but fancies, and not even mineral. (Some Answered Questions, 171)." [Six Lessons on Islam, p. 1]