In the same way, in this present era, religious capacities have died away, and sin and impiety have taken their place. The mutual interaction of people on the one hand and their worship on the other – everything has become corrupted. If this aﬄiction was all that plagued the people, there was no harm or danger. But in addition to all these things, the greatest calamity, regarding which I am compelled to speak time and again, and which every heart possessing sympathy for Islam has already felt or can feel, is the poisonous effect of today’s natural medicine, astronomy and flawed philosophy, which is attacking Islam and Muslims. The scholars pay no attention to this because they can barely find time from their wars with one another, waging internal conflicts, and declaring one another disbelievers. If the ascetics sat in seclusion and did so much as to pray, even that could bring about positive effects, but they are engrossed in debates on the worship of saints and the permissibility of the Sufi practice of sama, etc. A few traditions, which are not to be found in the Quran and Sunnah, have taken the place of true Sufism. Therefore, from every direction Islam is victim to the arrows of the foolish and the ignorant. In this age, those necessary conditions, which undoubtedly call for the advent of a reformer, have reached their pinnacle. Everyone believes in their own individual religious tradition. Deducing from all these factors and circumstances, the age of Islam seemed to be at its end. When doctors and physicians find that the body of a patient struck by cholera is as cold as ice or is aﬄicted by a state of delirium, they slip away, declaring the person to be incurable. Upon witnessing a grim state of affairs, even the most skilled physician expresses disappointment and dismay. Th ere is no doubt that in the present age Islam had reached a hopeless state. However, if this faith had been the result of human thought or the fruit of mortal efforts, in these times of misfortune and tribulation, on being struck from all fronts and its internal state having fallen frail due to discord within the fold, at the very least, it could not have endured; especially when its adversaries were and are exerting their best efforts to destroy it. Not a year goes by that a new means to attack Islam is not contrived. If a new invention or machine is designed, the newly discovered principles to produce that respective invention are then used to fuel attacks against Islam.
(Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmadas, Malfuzat, Vol. 1, pp. 94-95)