Question 310 - The Enlightening Answer Across the Ether, Vol 4

Ahmed al-Hasan Response:

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds, and may Allah send prayers upon Muhammad and the family of Muhammad, the Imams and the Mahdis, and grant them abundant peace. The Exalted said: ‘And the day We raise in every nation a witness against them from among themselves, and We bring you as a witness against these; and We sent down to you the Book as an explanation of all things, guidance, mercy, and glad tidings for the Muslims’ (^[38]). The Exalted also said: ‘Had there been a Quran by which mountains were moved, or the earth was cut apart, or the dead were made to speak-rather, the command belongs entirely to Allah. Have those who believe not yet despaired of the fact that, had Allah willed, He would have guided all people? Calamity will continue to strike those who disbelieve because of what they have done, or it will descend near their homes, until the promise of Allah comes. Indeed, Allah does not break the promise’ (^[39]). Before we investigate the Quran and how it is an explanation of every worldly and religious thing, you must take note that explaining a universal law under which many particulars-or even particular laws-fall is equivalent to explaining those particulars or particular laws. As an example of this matter, I say: If you were to say, ‘Every thing is pure for you until it becomes clear to you that it is itself impure,’ this is a general religious law under which many laws are contained. Among them are that water of unknown condition found on the road is pure; a vessel of unknown condition cast upon the ground is pure; a mat of unknown condition placed along the roadway or in the courtyard of a house is pure; and so on. You can derive many laws from this universal law. Likewise, in the field of known physical science, if you were to say, ‘For every action there is a reaction,’ this is a general physical law from which exceedingly many laws branch: from the reaction arising from the collision of atoms and their parts, to the laws of friction, to the laws of flight, to very many laws, all of which fall under this general law, ‘For every action there is a reaction.’ Now we return to the Quran and ask: how did the Quran explain every thing, and where did the Quran explain every thing? Our investigation will concern at least two aspects: religion and the world. Regarding religion, the Quran gave the doctrine by which there is salvation: the sovereignty of Allah and the existence of His vicegerent, Glorious is He, through whom He tests His creation upon this earth in every age. Religion is contained under the wing of the vicegerent of Allah in every age, so salvation is in following him and acting according to what he commands: ‘And when your Lord said to the angels, “Indeed, I am placing a vicegerent upon the earth”’ (^[40]). The Quran also explained the universal laws of worship. It explained that prayer consists of reciting Quran, bowing, and prostrating; it explained that fasting consists of abstaining from desires in the month of Ramadan. Thus the Quran explained universal laws, while the rest regarding the mentioned acts of worship is taken from what the vicegerent of Allah upon His earth institutes. Regarding the world, the Quran explained, for example, a general law: the entire world of bodies returns to the first force from which it was created and by which it continually exists and subsists. ‘He is the One who created the heavens and the earth in truth. The day He says, “Be,” and it is-His word is the truth. Dominion is His on the day the trumpet is blown. Knower of the unseen and the witnessed, and He is the Wise, the All-Aware’ (^[41]). Thus the Quran explained that physical matter returns to force, or energy as they call it, for matter is nothing but condensed energy. This matter has now become clear after more than a thousand years through the application of Einstein’s special theory of relativity, laboratory experiments, and the conversion of matter into energy and likewise the reverse. This is a general law that governs this physical world and under which other laws fall. Thus the explanation of every thing is present in the Quran, whether the explanation of this physical world and what is in it or the explanation of religion. As for the physical examples you included in your question, they fall as particulars within the Quran’s universal and general explanation of this physical world. Explaining the universal law that governs their existence, persistence, and composition is an explanation of them. I hope there will be no confusion between detailed mention and the explanation under discussion. A mention of the specific physical things you named is not found in the Quran, because the Quran is not a book that mentions and enumerates the existents in the worlds of dominion and the kingdom of heaven. There is a book of enumeration other than the Quran. The Exalted said: ‘Indeed, We give life to the dead, record what they have sent ahead and their traces, and We have enumerated every thing in a clear Imam’ (^[42]). Note the difference between this verse and the verse under discussion: ‘And We sent down to you the Book as an explanation of all things.’ There is a great difference between enumerating every thing and explaining every thing. The explanation of existents in the Quran is present within the general explanation of the worlds of creation and their reality. As for people’s failure to grasp this universal explanation, it is not because the explanation is absent, but because they are incapable of grasping it. They themselves are also the cause of this incapacity; otherwise, in their innate nature they possess the capacity to grasp this explanation. In reality, their faith is mixed with doubt and uncertainty, which at the very least causes them to avoid contemplating what issues from the source even though they claim to believe in the source. For example, for more than a thousand years the Quran has cried out to them in the words of the Exalted: ‘This worldly life is nothing but diversion and play, while the abode of the Hereafter is indeed the true life, if only they knew’ (^[43]). When the prophets and successors tell them that in this world they live in illusion and that the reality is the other life, they laugh at them. Yes, those who live in their time insolently laugh at them because they fundamentally deny them, and those who come after them deny their narrations under the pretext that they are unreasonable and the intellect does not accept them. Thus people do not accept anything from the unseen because they do not believe in the unseen; rather, they believe only in these bodies. Therefore, you find that they do not affirm what has been transmitted and what is transmitted from the prophets, successors, and the Quran: that the world is an abode of passage, that physical matter is merely an illusion, and that the Hereafter is the fixed reality. Yet when an experimental laboratory-for example, the European laboratory-tells them that matter is an illusion with no existence, that only a single force exists, and that matter is a condensation of forces that originally return to one force, they receive this report gladly and believe it, even if they cannot intellectually comprehend or grasp it. They trust physicists and their statements, for example, because they have previously touched an application of their words in this physical world. In contrast, the words of the prophets and successors concern the unseen and are, most of the time, far from this physical world; people must trust the unseen and the true unseen force in order to touch its effects. In other words, trust here precedes the effect, whereas they first touched the physical effects of the physical material thing and then trusted it. Since all people’s focus is upon this world and they scarcely see anything else, the result is that they believe in the physical material thing and do not believe in the unseen, or they believe with a weak, shaken faith that they attempt to bring about within themselves or strengthen through tangible physical effects as well. In other words, it is half faith, a quarter faith, or a tenth of faith, but it will never be complete faith in the unseen while it is mixed with a tangible physical effect, a miracle, or a wonder, as they call it. Regrettably, the choice of most people-a choice that scarcely ever changes-is this physical world and what is in it. Even if they want to choose faith in the unseen, they proceed to make this faith come through this physical world. They fall into a great contradiction when they insist that what makes the unseen known must be a miraculous physical event; indeed, they often insist that it be coercive and not open to interpretation or doubt. They want the unseen to turn into something purely physical, so faith in the unseen becomes zero in the field of their claimed faith. Nevertheless, they consider their request sound and legitimate in order that they may believe in the unseen. Do you see how starkly what they request contradicts what Allah requests of them, namely faith in the unseen? If we know that Allah, Glorious and Exalted, is the true Unseen and contemplate the condition of these people, we find that they are wholly idol-worshippers, one hundred percent. They have subjected themselves in worship to this greatest idol: the physical world. Yes, there is an exception: a small group who supported the unseen and the truth, and so saw its effects within themselves and on the horizons, until it is as though I hear them all saying, ‘If only my people knew.’ Thus the bitter truth that the person who claims faith must first admit and confront within himself in order to know the truth is that he does not possess pure, unadulterated faith. Rather, his faith-if he possesses any measure of faith in the unseen-is mixed with doubt and uncertainty. So long as there is doubt concerning the source, it is impossible to benefit and profit from what issues from it. Yes, this is the truth concealed within the souls of many people who claim faith. It does not matter to me whether they admit it or deny it publicly. They believe in the existence of food and drink, the existence of America, the existence of the nuclear bomb, and the existence of this physical world a thousand times more than they believe in the existence of Allah, Glorious and Exalted. This is the truth, and this is the illness. If they do not confront themselves with it, discover it, and disclose it to themselves, they will never find the remedy and never recover from their incurable illness. Ahmed Alhasan Dhu al-Qidah, 1430 AH