14. Ibrahim

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.

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.

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 love 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.

Here, ‘Our Signs’ means those signs of the universe which prove the statements of God to be true. ‘God’s Days’ (ayyamullah) 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 subject 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.

The speech of Moses referred to in these verses is perhaps the one which he had made in the Sinai desert to the Children of Israel, a few days before his death. This speech is recorded in detail in the present Bible. The sum and substance of this speech of Moses is that if they remained in this world as the people of God and made the affairs of God the subject of their discussion, then all the things of the world would support them; all communities would bear the stamp of their domination; God would subdue their enemies; so much so that if a river obstructed their way, God would give the command and the waters of the river would separate and give way to them, while their enemies would be drowned in that very river. He added that if they did not do as he said, they would be laid low in the eyes of God, that is, they would be deprived of God’s grace; the product of their labour would go to benefit others; they would fail in all their tasks and they would become intellectually and physically subordinate to other communities. This law of God is not only for Jews but for every community who is given the Book of God. This has been the way of God with every community bearing the Book irrespective of whether they were people of ancient times or whether they are people of the present day.

The speech of Moses referred to in these verses is perhaps the one which he had made in the Sinai desert to the Children of Israel, a few days before his death. This speech is recorded in detail in the present Bible. The sum and substance of this speech of Moses is that if they remained in this world as the people of God and made the affairs of God the subject of their discussion, then all the things of the world would support them; all communities would bear the stamp of their domination; God would subdue their enemies; so much so that if a river obstructed their way, God would give the command and the waters of the river would separate and give way to them, while their enemies would be drowned in that very river. He added that if they did not do as he said, they would be laid low in the eyes of God, that is, they would be deprived of God’s grace; the product of their labour would go to benefit others; they would fail in all their tasks and they would become intellectually and physically subordinate to other communities. This law of God is not only for Jews but for every community who is given the Book of God. This has been the way of God with every community bearing the Book irrespective of whether they were people of ancient times or whether they are people of the present day.

The speech of Moses referred to in these verses is perhaps the one which he had made in the Sinai desert to the Children of Israel, a few days before his death. This speech is recorded in detail in the present Bible. The sum and substance of this speech of Moses is that if they remained in this world as the people of God and made the affairs of God the subject of their discussion, then all the things of the world would support them; all communities would bear the stamp of their domination; God would subdue their enemies; so much so that if a river obstructed their way, God would give the command and the waters of the river would separate and give way to them, while their enemies would be drowned in that very river. He added that if they did not do as he said, they would be laid low in the eyes of God, that is, they would be deprived of God’s grace; the product of their labour would go to benefit others; they would fail in all their tasks and they would become intellectually and physically subordinate to other communities. This law of God is not only for Jews but for every community who is given the Book of God. This has been the way of God with every community bearing the Book irrespective of whether they were people of ancient times or whether they are people of the present day.

All of the prophets who came to various communities, had the same experience: everywhere efforts were made to silence them, for every community opposed its prophet. What was the reason for this? The reason for this was the people’s ‘doubt’. This doubt existed because the religion of their forefathers held sway and was widely believed in. By contrast, here was the divine religion being introduced by an apparently ordinary man. The arguments appeared to favour the religion of the Prophet. But historical glory and public popularity seemed to be on the side of their forefathers’ religion. The addressees of the Prophet were themselves in a dilemma: they did not have the power to reject the arguments and at the same time they could not understand how they could consider their leaders and great men to be on the wrong path. This double-edged puzzle pushed them further into a dilemma. Attached as they were to their ancestral religion, they could not accept the truth inspite of being convinced of the strong arguments.

This verse is related to ancient communities. However, a special characteristic of the Quran is that it presents God’s eternal teachings in such a way as to relate them to both the immediate addressees and to the later generations. The word ‘Originator’ as used here to translate the Arabic word, fatir, does not reflect the original, literal sense of ‘one who tears’. Literally translated, the question would read, ‘Is there any doubt about God who is the tearer of heaven and earth?’ It is important to understand this aspect of the Creator, for this provides a proof of the existence of God in terms of today’s laws of physics. Modern research shows that the matter constituting heaven and earth was initially in the shape of the solid ball known as the super atom. According to the known laws of nature, all its parts were attracted towards its centre with extreme intensity. The present extensive universe came into existence due to the explosion of this super atom. In this verse the word fatir (the Tearer) refers to this universal event—an absolute proof of the existence of a Creator, because the parts of the super atom which were completely attracted inside could not move in an outward direction by themselves. An intervention was required for this. If one accepts that the explosion did take place (that is, the Big Bang) then one must also accept the theory of external intervention. The other name for this intervening power is God.