The Prophet (Sal.) came into this world to raise consciousness. He came here to take men to a new understanding of things. He came to take men to a higher level than they were at. In a pagan understanding of things, the morality-based lifestyle that is brought about by the laws that were brought doesn’t exist in the same way. Things are allowed to go on that the Prophet (Sal.) when he came forbid and stopped from going on.
In this changing of consciousness, man is changed. You can take man from one place to another and if you don’t change his consciousness, he’s going to be the same. If a man grows up in Africa or if a man grows up in Asia, if they have the same consciousness, they are essentially the same. Unless their consciousness changes, there is no active change in man. Circumstances do not necessarily change people. What changes them is the way they understand things.
And with the coming of the Quran came an entirely new understanding of things, and a new paradigm or framework of the responsibility of the relationship from man to man and from man to Allah.
