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 A.D. 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
In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
Alif Lam Mim. The Romans have been defeated in a nearby land. They will reverse their defeat with a victory within a few years: [for] with God rests all power of decision, first and last. On that day the believers too will have cause to rejoice, with the help of God. He helps whom He pleases: He is the Mighty, and the Merciful. (30: 1-5)
Two great empires—the Christian Roman Empire and the Zoroastrian Persian Empire thrived when Islam emerged. There were constant clashes between these two. Iran (Persia) attacked the Roman Empire in 603 AD, taking advantage of certain weaknesses in the latter. The Romans suffered severe defeat and by 616 AD, a large part of the Roman Empire, including Jerusalem, had been captured by the Iranians. The Prophet received the prophethood in the year 610 AD, and b e g a n h i s task of explaining the oneness of God in Makkah. This l e d t o the struggle between monotheism and polytheism. The Quran predicted that within ten years, the Romans would regain supremacy over the Iranians. Roman historians say that immediately thereafter the vanquished R o m a n King, Heraclius, underwent a mysterious change, that in 623 AD, he led a retaliatory attack on Iran. By 627 AD, he recovered all his occupied territories from the Iranians. This proved that the Quran was a revelation from God. None except God could have made such accurate predictions about the future . These events indicate that victory or defeat are in the hands of God. The downfall of a nation and the rise of another, to all appearances, seem to be ordinary events, but appearances have a deeper significance.
Every event is caused by the angels of God, invisible to ordinary human eyes. There is a similar invisible aspect of the present, outward world and it is the world of the Hereafter.
[This is] God’s promise. Never does God fail to fulfil His promise—but most people do not know this; they go by the outward appearance of life in this world, and are neglectful of the Hereafter.
Do they not ponder about their own selves? God has created the heavens and the earth and all that is between for a purpose and for an appointed time? Yet many deny they will ever meet with their Lord. Have they not travelled through the land and seen what end their predecessors met? They were mightier: they cultivated the earth more and built more upon it than these have ever built. Their own messengers also came to them with clear signs: God did not wrong them; they wronged themselves.
Then the end of those who committed evil was evil, for they belied the signs of God, and they derided them. (30: 6-10)
Constant remembrance (through prayer, etc.) and deep contemplation lead a man towards finding God. It is by profound thought that a man finds God. In the present world, God has scattered His signs all across the human environment, in the surrounding universe and also in the teachings of the Prophet. Those who give serious consideration to these signs of God will find God.
When a rightful argument is presented and is ignored it is equivalent to ignoring God Himself. For such people there is only eternal deprivation.
God originates the creation, and shall repeat it, then to Him you shall be returned. On the Day the Hour arrives, the guilty will be struck dumb with despair, and have no intercessors among those partners they ascribed to God. They will deny these partners. When the Last Hour dawns—on that Day they will be sorted out: those who believed and did good deeds will rejoice in a Garden, and as for those who denied the truth and belied Our signs and the meeting in the Hereafter—they shall be brought to the torment. So glorify God in the evening and in the morning—and praise be to Him in the heavens and on the earth— and glorify Him in the late afternoon, and at midday. (30: 11-18)
The existence of a perfect and complete world is definite proof of the First Creation. If the first creation was possible, why should the second not be possible? If one accepts the present world, but does not accept the Hereafter, it amounts to denying a natural corollary of a fact which one has accepted .
44 Spirit of Islam Issue 39 March 2016 ‘The guilty’ refers to the influential people who led the campaign against Truth, and who provided arguments in support of the denial of Truth. When Doomsday dislocates the system of the world, the guilty will suddenly realise that the supports, of which they had been proud, were without foundation. The words which supplied uncontradictable arguments in favour of their stand, will prove false. Witnessing contrary conditions to their expectations will shatter their illusions, leaving them dumbfounded.
On the Day of Judgement, human beings will be divided into two groups—those who glorify God and offer praises to Him and those who do quite the reverse. The people of the first group realise God to the extent that He becomes the sole topic of their conversation. A definite manifestation of this glorification of God is the prayers offered five times a day. In this verse, the offering of praises ‘in the morning’ means the fajr prayer. The prayers of maghrib and isha are included in the words 'in the evening'. Prayer at midday is called zuhr, while the late afternoon prayer is called asr.
