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 AD. 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
O men! It is you who stand in need of God—God is self-sufficient, and praise worthy—if He so wished, He could take you away and replace you with a new creation; that is not difficult for God. No burden-bearer shall bear another’s burden, and if some over-laden soul should call out for someone else to carry his load, not the least portion of it will be borne for him, even though he were a near relative. You can only warn those who fear their Lord in the unseen, and pray regularly. Anyone who purifies himself will benefit greatly from doing so. To God all shall return. (35: 15-18)
Man is an extremely vulnerable creation. His whole existence depends on a particular balance of natural factors. If this balance were to be disturbed, the very existence of man would be threatened.
If, for instance, the sun reduced its distance from the earth and came near it, then all human beings would be burnt and reduced to ashes. Also, a large part of the inside of the earth consists of an extremely hot, semi-liquid material. If this hot matter moved upwards, the surface of the earth would experience terrible earthquakes which would reduce all human settlements to ruins. Moreover, meteors constantly fall upon Earth from outer space, but the atmosphere shields us against their effects. If the present balanced arrangement of this phenomenon were to be disrupted, the shower of meteors might turn into such a terrible barrage of stones that it would be impossible to save humanity from it. Man is surrounded by innumerable deadly possibilities of this kind; being totally dependent explains why man needs God and not vice versa.
The burden of Doomsday will be that of one’s sins. Were it only a question of a physical burden, any individual could share another’s burden. But, the denigration and pain one suffers due to one’s bad deeds are of an extremely personal nature and there is no question of anybody else sharing them.
The Truth is very clear, but it is understood only by one who wants to understand. One who is not serious about knowing what Truth is and what is untruth, cannot be made to understand anything.
The blind and the sighted are not equal, nor are the darkness and the light; shade and heat are not alike, nor are the living and the dead. God causes whom He will to hear Him, but you cannot make those who are in their graves hear you. You are but a warner—We have sent you with the truth as a bearer of good news and a warner—there is no community to which a warner has not come. If they reject you, so did their predecessors. Messengers came to them with clear signs, with scriptures, and with the enlightening Book, but in the end I seized those who were bent on denying the truth and how terrible was My punishment. (35: 19-26)
It is a fact that the expectations one has of light are not applicable to darkness. What one gets from the shade cannot be derived from sunlight. The same is the case with man. Among human beings, some have vision and some are blind. A man with eyes immediately sees his way and recognizes it. But one who is blind will simply go on groping in the dark.
Similarly, with regard to insight there are two types of people,—one consisting of the living and the other consisting of the dead. The living man is one who sees things in depth—who tears apart the deceptive veil of words and grasps hidden meanings—who goes beyond superficial matters and tries to understand the inner reality—who assesses intrinsic values and not outward appearances—whose eyes are concentrated on real facts and not on irrelevant hair-splitting theories—who, after knowing the Truth, submits to it—he is the one who is alive. He is one who has been fortunate enough in this world to accept the Truth. Those whose behaviour is the very reverse of this are dead. They never come anywhere near accepting the Truth in this world of trial. They remain deaf to the call for Truth, until after death, when they go to God to face the result of their blindness.