3. Aal-i-Imraan

And when God took the compact of the prophets, “I have given you of the Book and wis- dom. Then a messenger will come to you confirming what is with you. You shall surely have faith in him and you shall surely help him.” In the whole Qur'an, there is no verse more complete in explaining the excellence of MuṣṬafā, to whom this verse is devoted without the association of anyone else. The Lord of the Worlds made two covenants with His creatures and took two compacts from them. One was the compact He took from the creatures concerning His Godhood and Enactorship, as He said: “When your Lord took from the children of Adam, from their loins, their offspring and made them bear witness concern- ing themselves. 'Am I not your Lord?' They said, 'Yes indeed'” [7:172]. The other is the compact He took with the angels and the prophets concerning MuḤammad's prophethood and helping him, as He says, “And when God took the compact of the prophets.” This is an utmost bestowal of eminence and a perfect acknowledgment of excellence, for He made his name great with His own name and lifted up his measure with His measure. Several thousand years before the existence of MuḤammad, a command came, “O Gabriel! I will have a friend whose name is MuḤammad. He will be praised and caressed by Me, his name will be placed next to My name, his measure will be lifted up by My bounty, his being obeyed will be obedience to Me, his words will be My revelation, and following him will be friendship with Me. O Gabriel! You make a covenant with Me to have faith in him and help him.” This was when He said, “You shall surely have faith in him and you shall surely help him.” Gabriel said, “O Lord, I make a covenant that my hand will be one with his hand, I will help, and I will have faith in him.” God said, “O Gabriel! Keep to this covenant and do not oppose it.” He said, “O Lord, who would have the gall to oppose You?!” Then He said, “O Michael! You be a witness to Gabriel's covenant.” Then in the same way He made a covenant with Michael, and He told Gabriel to be witness to Michael's covenant.

What! Do they desire other than God's religion, when all who are in the heavens and the earth abide by His religion, willingly, such as [all those] other than human beings and Satan, or unwillingly, such as human beings and Satan, since disbelief cannot embrace any other existent. All [these other existents] comply with what God has commanded them obediently. Man, on the other hand, veils himself of his own free will and because he has forgotten God's covenant and has accepted the call of Satan, corresponding to him by virtue of his [man's] ego-centric darkness: he does not believe, nor does he comply except unwillingly, God knows, except the one whom God has protected [from such sin] and chosen [for such protection]. Satan, on account of his veiling himself with his conceit and ego, when he said I am better than him [Q. 7:12], and because of his refusal and arrogance, disbelieved even as he knew that he was being disobedient, realising that his disbelief took place by God's will: that is the essence of faith, as God says: like Satan when he says to man, 'Disbelieve!'� he [then] says to him, 'Lo! I am absolved of you. Indeed I fear God, the Lord of the Worlds [Q. 59:16]. He also says: And that Satan adorned their deeds for them and said, 'Today no person shall overcome you, for I shall be your protector'. But when the two armies sighted each other, he turned his back in flight saying, 'I am quit of you, for I see what you do not see. I fear God and God is severe in retribution' [Q. 8:48]; and in another place: And Satan says, when the issue has been decided, 'Truly God promised you a promise of truth, whereas I promised you, then failed you, for over you I had no warrant, except that I called you and you responded to me. So do not blame me, but blame yourselves. I cannot heed your [distress] call, nor can you heed mine. Lo! I disbelieved in your making me an associate of God before [Q. 14:22]. All of these verses are proof that he [Satan] has faith, but when it shall not profit him; and to Him they shall be returned, in the final sequel, when there shall be no religion other than God's religion. Nay, all upon this return shall be upon His religion:'All are followers of the religion of the Truth if they [only] could discern, for a religion that is not for [sake of] the Truth, is not one that is lawful'.

Whosoever wants a religion other than the submission, it will not be accepted from him. Any religion that is not the submission is false. Any deed that is not following the Sunnah is the seed of remorse. The submission is the tree, the Sunnah is its water source, faith its fruit, and the Real the one who planted and nurtured it. When the wellspring of the Sunnah takes replenishment, it takes it from divine solicitude. If-refuge in God!-He should take back the solicitude, the wellspring would go dry. The tree would become ineffectual and barren, it would not give the fruit of faith, and it would be on the verge of disappearance and destruction. This is like the group who became apostates and turned away from the submission. Again, if the lordly solicitude should go forth and replenish the wellspring of the Sunnah, then the branches of the tree will be made from the goodly word [14:24] and its fruit from pure belief. The heaven of guidance will make the branch into a ladder, and in the state of life and death its fruit will become constant and never be cut off. This is why the Lord of the Worlds says by way of similitude, “God has struck a similitude: A goodly word is like a goodly tree, its roots fixed, and its branches in heaven. It gives its fruit every season by the leave of its Lord” [14:24-25]. It has also been said that if a similitude is struck for the submission, it is a lamp that has been lit by the Most Tremendous Light, its material and nurture made to appear from the light of the Sunnah. To this is the allusion in His words, “Is he whose breast God has expanded for the sub- mission, so he is upon a light from his Lord [...]?” [39:22]. He is saying, “Whenever the Exalted Lord lights the lamp of the submission in a breast, assistance from the light of the Sunnah makes it appear so that the breast may always be adorned and lit. Hence, whenever someone does not have a whiff of the Sunnah, he will have no portion of the submission. It is narrated from Shāfiʿī that he said, “I saw God in a dream and He said to me, 'Ask a wish from Me.

How shall God guide a people, to the end of the verse: He denies His guidance to a people whom He had guided initially by the light of preparedness to faith, then by the light of faith until they witnessed with their own eyes the truth of the Messenger and acquired certainty to the extent that they no longer had a single doubt; and this [certainty] was supplemented by [their] acquisition of rational proofs from clear signs. But then after all of these testimonies their souls manifested themselves in obstinacy and obduracy. The lights of their witnessing hearts, intellects and spirits, all three of them, were veiled by the Truth for the sake of the Truth, on account of the misfortune of this [act of] injustice of theirs and the mastery which their [evil-] commanding souls acquired over them, that which constitutes the utmost in evil deed. Thus God says: God guides not the evildoing folk, because of the harshness of their veil and the great extent to which they are distant from the Truth and from the reception of the light. And these [evildoing folk] are of two classes. For one class the configuration of the mastery of the commanding soul over their hearts has taken deep root and become fixed in them. They have engrossed themselves excessively in error and the pursuit of evil and have reached extreme distance [from the Truth] and obstinacy until such [behaviour] became an inherent trait that does not abandon them. In the case of the other class, that configuration has not taken deep root in them yet and their hearts have not become rusted over; [for these] there remains behind the veil of the soul a ray of the light of their preparedness that perhaps a mercy and a gift of success from God should reach them that they might then become remorseful and feel shame by virtue of the innate disposition of the intellect. He thus alludes to the first class in His statement surely those who disbelieve after they have believed to the end of that verse [Q. 3:90], and to the second [class] with His statement:

But those who repent thereafter, and make amends, for what they had rendered corrupt, by pursuing devotedly [good] deeds and acts of spiritual discipline.