THE WORD OF GOD
From The Scriptures
The Quran is the book of God. It has been preserved in its entirety since its revelation to the Prophet of Islam between CE 610 and 632. It is a book that brings glad tidings to humankind, along with divine admonition, and stresses the importance of man’s discovery of the Truth on a spiritual and intellectual level.
Translated from Arabic and commentary by
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
Chapter ABRAHAM
In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful
Alif Lam Ra
We have revealed to you this Book so that, by their Lord’s command, you may lead men from darkness to the light: to the path of the Mighty, the Praiseworthy One, to God, who possesses whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on Earth. Woe to those who deny the truth, for they shall be sternly punished! (14: 1-2)
Faith enables man to discover God as a Being who is all powerful and possessed of all the good attributes. Such a mental state is not merely a formal belief. It, in fact, signals the emergence of a man from the darkness of ignorance and his entering into the light of knowledge.
It amounts to the observation and realization of the Hereafter, while actually remaining in this world. Faith in reality is a conscious attainment and not the spiritless repetition of certain combinations of words. The Book of God aims to lead man to this higher stage of consciousness.
Receiving guidance at the command of God would appear to attribute the matter of guidance to God. But these words are, in fact, aimed at man himself. There is an immutable law of God, which He has established for the guidance or misguidance of man. According to this law, a man’s serious desire for guidance is the only condition which will take him towards it. When a man receives guidance in this world, it is not simply because of the efforts of the missionary, but because it is available to him by the law of God which lays down that only that person will receive the bounty of guidance who himself is desirous of receiving it. Nobody can receive guidance without his own personal desire to have it.
Woe to those who love this life more than the Hereafter; who turn others away from the path of God and seek to make it crooked. They have gone far astray. Each messenger We have sent has spoken in the language of his own people, so that he might make the message clear to them. But God lets go astray whom He will and guides whom He pleases. He is the Almighty, the All Wise. (14: 3-4)
God has made the path of guidance extremely clear and well illumined; signs are spread all around on the Earth and in the sky; the Book of God provides undeniable arguments in its favour; human nature bears testimony to its veracity; in other words, all the evidence in nature are in its favour. This being so, those who do not seek out guidance certainly refrain from doing so in consideration of their worldly interests and not for any real reason, though such people advance a number of ‘arguments’ in order to justify their behaviour. But the actual purpose of these ‘arguments’ is to find something wrong with a straightforward statement. They are intended purely to justify their rejection of divine guidance in the eyes of the people.
In view of this, only that person will be deprived of guidance whose desires of self-interest and worldly inducements have made him completely blind and deaf.
It was the way of God to raise prophets from among the addressees’ own community, fully taking into account their mentality, so that they might be able to call upon the people in their own understandable language to accept the truth. But it was very strange that the way adopted for the betterment of the people led to the very opposite effect. When they saw that the prophet was a man like themselves and talked in their own familiar language, they rejected him, considering him to be an ordinary man. The way adopted to make the process of guidance easier was turned by them into a source of misguidance.
It is not the way of God to display magical feats in order to attract people towards Himself, for example, by sending to a community a prophet who speaks a strange language or making the people wonderstruck by discoursing in a magical style. God does not cater to the wonder-loving nature of human beings. God’s way is that of simplicity and realism. He has established His world on the basis of realities; therefore, He also carries into effect His scheme for the guidance of man on the basis of realities, not of magic.
We sent Moses with Our signs, saying, ‘Lead your people out of the darkness into the light, and remind them of God’s Days. In that there are signs for every patient, grateful person.' (14: 5)
Here, ‘Our Signs’ means those signs of the universe which prove the statements of God to be true. ‘God’s Days’ (ayyam-ullah) means those events of history when the decision of God was made manifest and, with the special help of God, truth was victorious over falsehood.
But it is very strange that these things remain almost untraceable in our world. The signs of God have been masked by wrong interpretation and wrong explanation, and the Days of God were not considered worth mentioning, the utmost attention was given to writing instead about ‘the Days of the Human Being’ (ayyamul-insan).
In view of this, the only way for a servant of God to emerge from the darkness of falsehood is to exercise patience and remain grateful.
Modesty is necessary to find the truth. In order to find the truth, one has to lose oneself and this cannot be attained by anybody without the exercise of patience. Then the realization of truth shows a man that the division of resources in this universe is a matter between the giver and the receiver. God is the Giver and man is the receiver. The proper feeling which develops in man after the discovery of this reality is known as gratefulness. That is to say that, in order to reach reality, man has to exercise patience and, in order to assimilate this reality within himself, he has to be grateful.