"Of those We have created are people who direct
(others) with Truth, and dispense justice therewith."
[Surah Al A'raf verse 181].
Wa Ba'd:
Almighty Allah Subhanahu Wata'ala - Most Exalted and Merciful informs us with
words of Divine Wisdom and with the Absolute Truth in verse 24 of Surah Al-Anfal:
"O you who believe! Give your response to Allah and
His Messenger, when he called you to that which will
give you life, And know that Allah cometh in between
a man and His heart, and that it is He to Whom you
shall (all) Be gathered."
This verse informs us very clearly that there are two points to note:
(1) Note that after Almighty Allah and His Messenger Sallallahoo Alayhi
Wasallam are mentioned, the pronoun and verb in the next clause are singular:
everything that Almighty Allah's Messenger put forward as an injunction came
by inspiration from Allah: the Messenger made his will coincide completely
with Allah's Will.
(2) We are asked to actively respond in deed and life to the call of duty and
conscience, for that call leads to real life, the life eternal, even though it
may apparently mean in this world the loss of things that make life dear or
the loss of life itself. If we refer this to Jihad, i.e., fighting in
and for the Cause, both literally and metaphorically, the meaning becomes very
clear.
If the human heart is refractory and refuses to obey the Call of Almighty
Allah Jallah Wa'ala, that is not the end of the matter. Almighty Allah Rabbul
Ala'meen has to be reckoned with. Man proposes but Almighty Allah exposes. The
heart is the innermost seat of a human being's affections and desires: but
Almighty Allah Azza Wajjal intervenes between a human being and his or her
heart. The human soul exists at a level of potentiality from the beginning of
their origin, their attachment to the bodies, and their descent to the realm
of corporeal existence (Mulk), in respect of things, including
knowledge, good and evil traits, and all kinds of perceptive and behavioural
faculties. If the base kind of faculties come to dominate the soul, it becomes
disposed to ugliness and evil, for its inner powers, such as Shahwah
[lust], ghadab [anger], etc., impel it towards sin, licentiousness,
aggression and tyranny. After following them for some time it grows into a
strange and highly grotesque monster.
It has been said that of all mankind, the Ambiya Alayhim Salaam undergoes the
severest of trials and after them a true Muh'min to the extent of his
or her faith. Indeed, a Muh'min undergoes trials in proportion to his
or her good deeds. The one whose Imaan is sound and whose deeds are
good will experience a greater severity of trials and tribulations. That is
because Almighty Allah Subhanahu Wata'ala in His Infinite Mercy and Bounty did
not create this world for rewarding a true believer and punishing the
unbeliever. One whose faith is feeble and whose [good] deeds are few faces
fewer tribulations for verily, tribulations hasten towards a Muh'min
with greater speed than rainwater towards the depths of the Doonya.
The Muhabbat, the Grace and Mercy of Almighty Allah Subhanahu Wata'ala
have been accompanying the Chidren of Bani Adam since eternity. He has blessed
them and has bestowed upon them two educators and teachers. These Divine
Blessings are like two wings with which they can soar from the depths of
ignorance, ugliness, defectiveness, ego and wretchedness to the heights of
knowledge, perfection, beauty and felicity. They can deliver themselves from
the narrow valley of nature to reach the expansive and open horizons of the
realms of the spirit [Malakut]. Hence Almighty Allah Rabbul Ala'meen
declares in verse 27 of Surah Al-Anfal:
"O you who believe! Betray not the Trust of
Allah and His Messenger, nor misappropriate
knowingly Things entrusted to you."
The first of these two wings is the faculty of intellect and discernment,
which is the inner teacher, and the second, the outward teacher, is
represented by the Ambiya Alayhim Salaam who show the path of Tawhid,
and Taqwa and felicity as distinct from the ways of Kufr and
wretchedness. None of these two can singly achieve this end without the other.
For the human intellect by itself can neither identify the paths of felicity
and wretchedness nor find the way to the hidden world and the realm of the
existence of the Aghirah [Hereafter]. Similarly, the guidance of the
Ambiya Alayhim Salaam cannot be effective without the exercise of the
discerning faculties of the intellect.
Thus Almighty Allah Subhanahu Wata'ala, the Most Exalted, the Beneficent and
the Sublime, blessed humanity with these two educators so that through them,
all the potentialities and hidden faculties and capacities, latent in the
human soul, should be realized and actualized. The blessings of these two
great bounties was granted in order to try and test human beings, for it is
through these bounties that individual human beings can be separated into the
felicitous and the wretched, the obedient and the rebellious, the perfect and
the defective. And so the Great Wali of Almighty Allah Jallah wa'ala said:
"And by Him Who sent me with the Truth, you shall indeed be mixed and
intermingled and then separated in the sieve (of Divine trial and
tribulation)".
Thus we come to know that the sending of the Ambiya Alayhim Salaam and the
revelation of heavenly scriptures is all for the separation of humanity, of
the separation of the wretched from the happy and the felicitous, of the
obedient from the sinful. And the meaning of Divine testing and examination is
this very separation of men from one another, not the knowledge of
their separateness, because the knowledge of Almighty Allah Subhanahu Wata'ala
is pre-eternal; it encompasses all things prior to their creation. The result
of this trial and examination is the separation of the felicitous from the
wretched. In the course of it the proof [Hujjah] of Almighty Allah
Rabbul Ala'meen is established against the creatures. Thereafter, their life,
felicity and salvation, or their destruction and damnation occurs after the
establishment of the proof and testimony [Bayyinah], and there remains
no room for objection for anyone. A Muh'min who attains felicity and
eternal life does so through Divine succour and guidance, for Almighty Allah
Jallah Wa'ala Most Exalted has bestowed all the means of attaining them.
Also, one who earns wretchedness and falls into destruction, following
Shaytaan - his or her wretchedness and damnation are also earned by him or her
out of his or her own free will, because he or she does so despite the
availability of all the means of guidance and felicity. The conclusive proof
of Almighty Allah Tabaraka Wata'ala is established against him or her and
there is no room for any pretext. Hence we learn from the Most Holy and
Glorious Qur'an - [part of] verse 286 of Surah Al-Baqara:
"It gets every good that it earns,
and it suffers every evil that it earns."
Every act of a human being, or rather every event that occurs in the realm
of the body and is related to the soul's perceptions, leaves a kind of
impression in the self. This is true of both good and evil deeds [whose
impression upon the soul is mentioned in traditions as the appearance of a
"white dot" or a "black dot" respectively] as well as of
pleasures and pains. For instance, every experience of pleasure, derived
either from food, drink, sex or something else, leaves an impression upon the
soul and creates or increases the love and attachment for that kind of
pleasure in the soul. The more that one plunges into such lusts and pleasures,
the greater becomes the self's love and attachment for this world and its
reliance upon it.
Thus the self is nourished with the love of this world of delirium and trained
in accordance with it. The greater the sensual pleasures that it derives, the
stronger becomes the roots of this love; and the more available means of
comfort and luxury, the sturdier becomes the tree of attachment to the world.
And the more the soul's attachment is directed towards the world, the greater
is proportionately its negligence towards Almighty Allah Jallah Wa'ala and the
world of the Aghirah [Hereafter]. Alas! When this reliance of the world
becomes complete, the soul assumes a worldly and materialistic form, and the
absence of attention towards Almighty Allah Subhanahu Wata'ala Most Exalted
and the realm of His munificence and bounty becomes total and complete. It is
about such a soul that the Most Holy and Glorious Qur'an says in part of verse
176 of Surah Al A'raf:
"..He inclined to the earth and followed his own desires."
The inevitable result of this inner immersion in the sea of pleasure and
lust is the love, the glitter and the glamour and the stench of the Doonya.
The love of the world creates antipathy towards that which is unlike it;
attention towards the corporeal realm [Mulk] brings negligence towards
the spiritual world [Malakut]. Almighty Allah tells us of such people
in verse 9 of Surah Al Tawbah:
"The Signs of Allah have they sold for a miserable
price, And (many) have they hindered from His
Way: Evil indeed are the deeds they have done."
On the contrary, if one has a bad and painful experience of something, the
impression of that experience creates an antipathy in the soul. The stronger
that impression is, the greater is that inward antipathy. For instance, if
after moving to a new city one has to face there numerous torments and
ailments and undergo outer and inner adversities, he or she will inevitably
abhor that place. The greater the number of adversities that he or she faces
therein, the more will be his or her abhorrence for that place. Thus if a Muh'min
faces adversities, pain and torments in this world and is overtaken therein by
waves of calamities and tribulations, he or she will inevitably come to resent
it. His or her attachment to it will diminish and he or she will come to
distrust it. If a Muh'min believed in another world - a vast world free
of every kind of pain and grief, he or she will inevitably want to migrate to
it, and if it was not possible to make the journey physically, he or she will
send his or her heart out to it.
With every step that a faithful servant of Almighty Allah Subhanahu Wata'ala
takes towards Him, Almighty Allah's Grace turns towards him or her and the
Glorious Creator and Sustainer moves closer to him or her. The similitude of
the degrees of faith and the availability of the means of Divine Succour is
that of a person moving with a lamp in total darkness. With every step
that the Muh'min takes forward on the path of the Aghirah
[Hereafter], that path appears clearer to him or her. Almighty Allah's Grace
upon him or her increases, preparing the means of attention towards the world
of Divine proximity and of antipathy towards the world of separation and
distance.
Let it be known that this Doonya, due to its defective, feeble and weak
nature, is neither the abode of the reward of Almighty Allah Rabbul Ala'meen
nor the place of His chastisement. This is so because the abode of Divine
munificence is a realm whose bounties are pure, unadulterated with torment,
and its comforts are not mixed with pain and grief. That is the reason that
the Muh'min is afflicted in this world with tribulation is that
Almighty Allah Jallah Wa'ala has made it neither the place of His reward for
the believer nor the place of chastisement for the infidel.
This Doonya is the abode of duty and the farm of the Aghirah [Hereafer].
It is a place of trade and earning whereas the Aghirah is the abode of
reward and punishment, of bounty and damnation. If occasionally Almighty Allah
takes hold of an oppressor, it may be said that it is due to His Infinite
Mercy for that oppressor (for it stops him or her from sinning further. When
Almighty Allah Most Exalted leaves the sinful and the tyrants to themselves,
His wrath takes the form of istidraj, the gradual seizing. Hence He
makes it crystal clear to us in verses 182 and 183 of Surah Al-A'raf:
"Those who reject Our Signs, We shall gradually
visit with punishment, in ways they perceive not".
"Respite will I grant unto them; for My scheme
is strong and unfailing."
And Almighty Allah Rabbul Ala'meen Most Exalted
knows best and to Him alone belongs all praise and all Glory.
Baarak Allaahu Feekum wa-sal Allaahu wa-Sallam 'alaa
Nabiyyinaa Muhammad Sallallahoo Alayhi Wasallam.
Was Salamualaykum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuhu.