The Mercy of Qur'an and the Advent of Zaman - Commentary On Four Suras

Supplement 2

45 Surely they were before that made to live in ease and plenty.

46 And they persisted in the great violation.

"Surely they were before that made to live in ease and plenty." Mutraf means living luxuriously and recklessly in this world. It implies going beyond one's needs. Being reckless with nature's generosity, one becomes covetous and abusive. Zakat (charity, purification by giving) acts as a natural cure against the greed that often besets man.

The Prophet, salla-llahu alayhi wa alihi wa sallam, was asked why zakat was two and a half percent. He said that in following Allah's justice and nature's intention, one finds that for every thousand people there are twenty-five truly destitute ones who are unable to provide for themselves and have to be carried by the rest.

If Allah loves someone He causes him trouble so as to awaken him. Out of love for one's land one causes it trouble by ploughing it, turning it upside down. The business of the heart (qalb) is to be maqlub (turned) so that it gives up and becomes free.

A mutraf loves the world and is content with it. Though the mutraf has invested wrongly, he is reinforced in his error by material success. The Qur'an advises the people of the right to leave him alone for his time will be short. He is far from Reality and unable to see that this life is going, to come to an end. He has not invested in the next abode. Allah says that when He wants to destroy a culture or a people that have transgressed, He unleashes the mutrafln (plural of mutraf).

They know-exactly how to manipulate the system. They are the ultimate parasites. By their transgression within the worldly system, justice is established. The ecology has a perfect mechanism of replen­ishing itself. The transgression of the mutrafin will cause a reaction and they will be destroyed along with the elements and products of their transgression.

It is a cybernetic, ecological cycle of destruction and self-rejuvenation, destroying an order that is not conducive to rejuve­nate and resuscitate the order of nature. People are not destroyed by winged creatures descending and blowing fire on them. They are destroyed by the creature within and amongst themselves. Those who have a measure of detachment and reflection can see it repeated con­tinuously in the history of man, because nothing changes. The sunny of Allah never changes. The law that governs existence is absolutely firm and is the foundation upon which everything else is built.

The permanency of the laws reflects an aspect of Allah's mercy, in that man is given something to rely upon. Man's laws have no such mercy or permanency. If the people who died a hundred years ago in America were to return, they would be imprisoned within a day, be­cause they would have no idea of how to approach and negotiate the cumbersome, complicated laws of today. The true laws are unchanging laws. They come from the one and only true foundation of this exis­tence and the next.

The mutrafun often meet to decide about the billions in the world who are barely surviving. The well-off and those who are at ease discuss the plight of the have-nots in this world in an academic and abstract way. When the high-tech cultures study the ways and means of helping the have-nots, it is out of self-interest rather than out of equity and justice.

They are concerned about poverty, because if it were left to become too widespread it could cause revolution and the loss of their potential markets. To stabilize the situation they make a token effort to help the poor in Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Africa. The Qur'an says: "They persisted in great violation." The mutrafun have persisted in violating the laws of Allah.

47 And they used to say: What! when we die and have become dust and bones, shall we then indeed be raised?

48 Or our fathers of yore?

The deniers of the akhira (next life) think that this life is all that there is; therefore they want to grab all of it here and now in sensual pleasures and indulgences. There are two attitudes towards the next world. The first trusts that this world is not an end, but rather, a prelude to a never-ending world.

Its people follow this trust until they know it directly. They are the believers. The man of trust regards this life as a training-ground for entry into the non-time zone. The second attitude towards the next world is held by the man without trust. He is greedy because there is nothing else for him but this life.

He becomes increasingly covetous. He does not seek to obtain the qualifications for entry into the garden of the next life by sharpening his awareness, and increasing his joyfulness, abandonment and freedom. He is programmed to seek freedom but seeks it within the physical world. This is a perversion. Man is a seeker by nature, but if he believes that this life is the end, his motivation for action takes on a dimension that brings on chaos. This is the difference between the believer and the non-believer.

Man's disbelief in the akhira manifests in greed and aggressiveness. Today it is considered desirable to be aggressive and ambitious, In the past, if a person were described with those qualities, he would have been denounced. Now `ambitious and aggressive' means he is the first candidate to be employed.

In every man there is a yearning to live forever. But he does not reflect that this yearning is from Allah beaming within him, telling him to come back to his source. It is a constant signal from the heart whose meaning is foreverness. Whatever good a man does, he will want to preserve forever. The call of Allah is from within, to come to know the meaning of foreverness, because He is the Forever. There is only He, la huwa illa hu ( literally: There is no he but He). The point is missed, however, and the beam of light is dulled.

The world is attractive. Once you have dipped one toe in it you are pulled into its current and become completely engulfed. Human beings today are engulfed by the situation they are in. All are caught in the high-tech factory of modern life which does nothing other than spew them out after a lifetime of slave-like service, rejected and dejected. The best of them, their leaders, metamorphose into names of streets, stadiums and squares. The slaves follow habits, but the seeker breaks habits and becomes free of the system of enslavement.

49 Say: The first and the last,

50 Shall most surely be gathered together for the appointed hour of a known day. 51 Then shall you, O you who err and call it a lie!

In the Qur'an, a day (yawm) does not mean twenty four hours. It is said that the day of your Lord is like a thousand years of what you count. Elsewhere it is described as fifty thousand years. With Allah there is no time. Time is relative, as is shown by the phenomenon of travelling near the speed of light. "The first and the last shall most surely be gathered together for the appointed hour of a known day." There is a specific destiny for the outer world and for the inner world.

Those who have denied continue in their state of loss, into the zone of the beyond-time where the time dimension is erased and a state of perpetual turmoil lasts forever. The denier, having denied that his breath was given to him in order to glorify the One Who gave him breath, finds it to be timeless restlessness. In the state of everlasting loss, in the fire, nothing takes root. The more one attempts to contain the fire, the more it devours what is in and around it.

52 Most surely eat of a tree of Zaqqum,

53 And fill (your) bellies with it;

The individual is nourished from an everlasting bitterness, a tree of zaqqum that comes up from the bottomless pit of jahannam (hell). He experiences being lost in timelessness as if he was filling up his stomach with un-nourishing bitterness. He drinks without satisfaction.

54 Then drink over it of boiling water;

55 And drink as drinks the thirsty camel.

56 This is their gift on the day of requital.

Water is used to extinguish and reduce heat and is one of the ele­ments that seeks to establish equilibrium. These elements or character­istics are: wet, dry, hot, and cold. If one is too hot, one is likely to go towards what is cool. Being too dry attracts one towards the wet. Man seeks to be in balance. Everything is kept in balance by the One. But at the appointed hour, the characteristics of the elements which served as equalizers in the physical creation are no longer applicable. Him are thirsty camels. This word is related to the word ha'im, meaning perplexed, mystified. In this life, man fills himself up with that which he considers necessary and without which he imagines he could not be happy. He abuses himself and nature by excessive consumption.

The description of the wretchedness of the "companions of the left" is that of jahannam, the fire. One of the derivatives of jahannam is jahnim, a bottomless pit, the state of zero gravity, the state of receiving the. very bad news that something you have cherished is no longer with you. Imagine someone suddenly being given news of multiple catastrophies, that everything which he had invested in, loved, or considered important for his tranquility, is gone - that is jahnim.

Man wants istiqrar, which is constancy, stability, and security. One finds in Arabic that a word is linked to many other words through its root. These words echo variations, make clear, and give greater depth of meaning to the initial word. Istaqarra ( verbal form of istiqrar) is to seek security or permanent residence. Iqrar is a foundation or settlement, and qarrara means to decide, report or relate. All these words belong to the same root as qarra, which means to establish, determine or resolve.

If a man is a man of truthfulness, he must admit that he is, ulti­mately, secure; for how could he seek the foundation of the origin of something that was not already in him?

The fact that man is seeking security is the proof that his origin or essence is secure, but he is looking elsewhere in ghafla, (heedlessness, stupidity). He thinks that his security lies with this fellow or with that job - that is ghafla. The fact that he is looking for security means that security is naturally attainable.

There is a story about a man, who one night lost his ring and went looking for it under a street lamp. After some hours, while people had collected around him to help, no trace of the ring had been found. Someone finally asked where he had lost the ring and he replied, "I lost it in there," pointing to his house. "Why, then, are we not looking for it there?" asked the inquirer, shocked. The owner of the ring replied, "Because there is no light in there." Man often looks where it is convenient for him to search. He does not look where the truth lies. It is human nature.

57 We have created you, why do you not then assent?

58 Have you considered the seed?

59 Is it you that create it or are We the creators?

Man's coming forth into the world is not an accident, it is purpose­ful. Accident is a description used to indicate an inability to understand a situation. Man has been created, why can he not confirm that? Why can he not accept this as true? Tusaddiqun is from saddaqa, to consider to be true.

Can man not see how procreation occurs? Did he create his off­spring or is he simply a vehicle? He has not a clue concerning the amazing transformation that takes place in the womb. It is by the act of Allah. His act is simply an animalistic act.

60 We have ordained death among you and We are not to be overcome,

61 In order that We may bring in your place the likes of you and make you grow into what you know not.

62 And certainly you know the first growth, why do you not then mind?

"We have ordained death among you and We are not to be over­come." Mawt, death, is the experience of an apparent discon­tinuity, a separation in the path. But man cannot experience separation unless he inherently contains the experience of gatheredness. The subtle entity within him separates from the gross entity and this separa­tion is experienced as death. In the separation there is also unification. The body unifies with what it belongs to, its element. It goes back to the earth. The ruh (soul, spirit) goes back to where it belongs by the order of the one and only, all-permeating Creator. Qadr from qadara is what is ordained, decreed or measured. Everything is according to a measure.

When a culture is open, genuinely and spontaneously allowing for exposure, then it can grow, adapt and become fully fit. Then it is worthy of fulfilling its trust as the pinnacle of creation. When it is not, it is replaced. Cultures will come and go. There is an element of the survival of the fittest in every aspect of life, there is no denying it.

Man has been brought here in a state which appears to be tarnished and which has the possiblity of sinking low because of the necessary equilibrium between body and soul. He will be constructed again where the construction material is not physical. The next cycle in the rise of consciousness is based on material which is difficult for a human -being constructed out of earth-bound, mud-made materials - to fully comprehend, except by a stretch of the imagination.

Man is like a prisoner whose view is as wide as the bars on the windows of his cell allow. If he uses his faculties of reason and heart, he can imagine that what he sees in front of him must occur in likeness somewhere else. Through this use of perception man can reach an understanding of the akhira.

Understanding the first growth, man knows that biologically, he has come from a mucousy, base beginning. He knows in his heart, if the heart is qalib (turning), that the root of life is not affected by his experiential life, but is a permanent, uncontaminated source. Allah appeals to man to look and understand that within him dwells the knowledge of his evolution, and that evolution, though manifesting now in time, must have had its roots in the zone of pre­creation. Man, from before creation, was planned. He was a potential manifestation. Allah reminds man in the Qur'an of the time when he was in the non-manifest, simply as potential energies.