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 610 and 632 CE. It is a book
that brings glad tidings to mankind, 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
The Rocky Tract
In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful
Alif Lam Ra.
These are the verses of a clear Book, the Quran. A time will surely
come when those who are bent on denying the truth will wish that
they had surrendered themselves to God, so leave them to eat and
enjoy themselves and let them be beguiled by vain hopes; for soon
they will realize [the truth]. We have never destroyed a township
without a definite decree having been issued; no people can forestall
their doom, nor can they delay it. (15: 1-5)
The freedom enjoyed by man will last only for the duration of the period of testing. This is a very critical issue. If a man seriously thinks this problem over, he will feel that the period which is going to end tomorrow has, as it were, ended today itself. This thought will shake him terribly. But man lives his life in ‘today’. He does not pay attention to ‘tomorrow’. Reality lies exposed before him, but he remains engrossed in wishful thinking. He seeks out some imaginary supports of his own devising and thinks that they will help him on the Day of Judgement. But such wishful thinking will not come to his rescue when the period of testing is over and God’s angels come to take him away from the world of trial to the world of retribution.
At a time like this, he starts remembering the occasions when he had tried to reject a genuine argument by mouthing false words; when he had ignored the voice of his conscience and followed the desires of the self; when purely out of self-interest he had ignored the divine preacher of truth, in spite of seeing glimpses of God in him. When he sees that no device of his has been of any avail, he will say, ‘Alas! I should not have done what I have done! I should have adopted the way of one who surrenders to the Truth instead of the way of one who rejects the Truth.’
They say, ‘You to whom the Reminder [the Quran] has been sent down, you are surely possessed. Why do you not bring down the angels upon us, if you are truthful?’ But We send down the angels only to bring justice and then they will not be reprieved. (15: 6-8)
The addressees of the Prophet Muhammad suspected him of being mad. What was the reason for this? The reason for this was his declaration that he was a representative of God; that one who accepted his word would be successful, while one who did not would remain a failure.
But the addressees themselves actually perceived things to be just the opposite. They were of the view that the prevalent system had bestowed the position of leadership on them. On the contrary, the Prophet, due to his being a preacher of an unconventional religion, was a stranger and a man without a status in the prevalent system. Because of these apparent shortcomings, the addressees were emboldened to say that he (the Prophet) appeared to them to be a madman. They said, ‘God has given us all kinds of worldly glories, yet still you say that success lies with you and your supporters.’
But such thinking was caused by a difference in perception. The addressees regarded whatever was material in their possession as ‘rewards’, though all of these things were simply a means of trial, given to all and sundry on a temporary basis.
They also used to say, ‘You claim that the angels of God come to you. Then why are these angels not visible to us?’ This comment too was due to a difference of point of view. An angel who comes to a prophet is the angel of revelation. He brings God’s words to the prophet. Besides this angel there are other angels of God who come to the people in order to uncover the reality to them. But they come after the process of conveying the truth to the people is over. And when they come, it is the time for judgement and not the time for calling people to the faith.
It is We who have sent down the Reminder [the Quran] and We will, most surely, safeguard it. (15: 9)
The Quran, revealed by God in an age steeped in tradition—many centuries before the modern, scientific age—was a controversial book which presented a challenge to the whole of humanity. It set a definite standard for mankind to observe until Doomsday. If it was to survive, it needed a strong group to protect and preserve it. But there was no such group. The early Muslims were extremely weak as compared to their many enemies. Moreover, in the seventh century A.D., paper and the printing press had not yet come into existence. Yet the Quran has remained intact, in the original Arabic, till the present day. There are several reasons for its survival. One is that the absolute veracity of its statements have stood the test of time. Another is that strenuous efforts were immediately made to write down the divine revelations and commit them to memory. But the most compelling reason was that God Himself had ensured its safekeeping, ‘We will, most surely, safeguard it.’
We sent messengers before you to the previous peoples, but there was never a messenger who came to them but they mocked him: thus We cause this [habit of mocking] to enter into the hearts of the sinful. They will not believe in it, though they have before them the example of former peoples, and even if We opened to them a door from heaven, and they began ascending through it, they would still say, ‘Our eyes have been dazzled. We are bewitched.’ (15: 10-15)
God’s prophets were scoffed at in every age. The reason for this was that people judged their worth as representatives of God by selfdevised, imaginary standards. The contemporary prophets did not appear to match up to the said standards, and so were dismissed as objects of ridicule.
In order to discover a new reality, it is necessary for a man to think with an open mind and be prepared to form an opinion purely on the basis of facts. Those who reject the truth do so mostly because the truth appears to them strange in relation to their own familiar standards. Over a long period of time those familiar standards permeate their hearts to such an extent that it becomes impossible for them to think of accepting alternatives. Till the last moment they are unable to emerge from the sphere familiar to them and recognize the truth.
The result of this attitude in communities was that the people belonging to them, in spite of being shown miracles, did not embrace the faith. Once they judged a prophet to be an ordinary man, basing their opinion on purely material factors, the person so judged could never be anything more than ordinary in their eyes. Even if he performed supernatural feats in front of them, their ideas were so rooted in the earlier traditions that he went on seeming unimportant, and so they would hold that his feats were just magic or some optical illusion and not a proof of his being a representative of God.