It is of the nature of history that each period necessarily differs from what went on before. So does Islam but with a difference. The criterion employed throughout the ages was always compared to the standards of humanism, morality, virtue and piety. Whereas modern history pretends to live in isolation of its past, history in Islam is intrinsically attached to the present. Comparing attitudes to the religious significance in history, Contwell Smith aptly draws a marked distinction between Islam and the other revealed religions in the following words, 'In the old testament attitude, history itself is continuingly revelatory.
History is to revelation as subject is to predicate rather than vice-versa.
As in the history of any people's, theirs too was bound to follow the natural pattern peculiar to the human nature. Hence, the dichotomy between 'Idealism and Pragmatism'. Moreover, their differences were not as serious as made to believe by expedient groups and scholars of later periods in order to promote sentimates that lent support to their partiality. On the contrary, they were spontaneous actions made initially as a response to the first which eventually resulted into a chain reaction. By this time perhaps strategically, it was too late.