QURAN VERSES An intelligent person with faith knows that Allah is the only Lord of everything in the universe. No matter how much his talents, beauty, intelligence and material possessions may seem to belong to him, he is always aware that their real Lord is Allah. He lives in humility, knowing that Allah can take back every blessing any time He wants to. He praises and exalts Allah as the Lord of all things. When he hears someone praising himself in a way that shows that he has no knowledge of these truths, he realizes the extent of the unawareness into which this superficial culture has thrust people. He wants to wake these others out of their unawareness, to tell them of the existence of Allah and that He is the absolute Lord of everything. In this regard, in the Qur’an, Allah gives the examples of two men. One of them is a Muslim who turns to Allah with all his heart; the other praises himself for the many possessions he thinks belong to him, and believes that they will remain his possessions forever: Make an example for them of two men. To one of them We gave two gardens of grape-vines and surrounded them with date-palms, putting between them some cultivated land. Both gardens yielded their crops and did not suffer any loss, and We made a river flow right through the middle of them. He was a man of wealth and property and he said to his companion, debating with him, “I have more wealth than you and more people under me.” He entered his garden and wronged himself by saying, “I do not think that this will ever end. I do not think the Hour will ever come. But if I should be sent back to my Lord, I will definitely get something better in return.” His companion, with whom he was debating, said to him, “Do you then disbelieve in Him Who created you from dust, then from a drop of sperm, and then formed you as a man? He is, however, Allah, my Lord, and I will not associate anyone with my Lord. Why, when you entered your garden, did you not say, ‘It is as Allah wills, there is no strength but in Allah?’ Though you see me with less wealth and children than you possess, it may well be that my Lord will give me something better than your garden and send down on it a fireball from the sky so that morning finds it a shifting heap of dust or morning finds its water drained into the earth so that you cannot get at it.” The fruits of his labor were completely destroyed and he woke up wringing his hands in grief, ruing everything that he had spent on it. It was a ruin with all its trellises fallen in. He said, “Oh, if only I had not associated anyone with my Lord!” There was no group to come to his aid, besides Allah, and he was not given any help. In that situation the only protection is from Allah, the Real. He gives the best reward and the best outcome. (Surat al-Kahf, 32-44) As revealed in the verses, this man made the great error of praising himself instead of Allah. He did not consider that he might lose his possessions by some adversity sent by Allah, nor that when he died he would leave everything behind in this world and appear before Allah all alone. But he understood the reality of his situation when all the things described in these verses happened to him. Until that moment, he had no understanding of the nature of the life of this world. And, because of his shallow thinking, he was unable to conceive of Allah’s power. When these things happened to him, he repented with the words, “Oh, if only I had…”
Posted on: Thu, 04 Jul 2013 11:48:07 +0000
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