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

Supplement 2

24 And His are the ships reared aloft in the sea like mountains.

25 Which then of the bounties of your Lord will you deny?

Both alama, meaning sign, and `alam, meaning flag, are from the same root as 'ilm (knowledge); they imply something being known. The munsha'at , the root of which is nasha'a (to create, to loom up) announce themselves; they are highly evident. Whatever is afloat belongs to Allah. The phenomenon of floating, as well as the entire interactional balancing scene that brings about desirable situations, such as ships on the sea, belongs to Allah.

Reflect upon how certain situations are the opposite of what some­one might expect; for instance, how steel ships float upon water. The ships float because of verifiable laws easily demonstrated by scientists, but still, it is very odd. All that one sees, all of these projections of Reality, all that flickers of knowledge or experience, will ultimately disappear because they are in time.

26 Everyone on it must pass away.

27 And there endures forever the face of your Lord, the Lord of glory and honor.

28 Which then of the bounties of your Lord will you deny?

Whatever is on this ard, whatever is physicalized, solidified, or appears to have an identity, has no identity other than Allah - La ilaha illa-llah, there is no God but Allah. Everything announces its perishability. If it is solid -a plant or a creature - it proves its destiny. What remains is the fount of creation, wajhu rabbika ( the face of your Lord).

Wajh is a direction or face, the outer visible front. In his formal worship the Muslim must have tawajjuh (attention), and point his wajh towards the formal, ancient abode of safety that came about through the inspiration of Sayyidna Ibrahim, alayhi-s-salam, in Mecca. Whoever does salat (prayer) positions himself towards that.

All of creation honors its covenant; every creational entity honors the Most Honorable - "the Lord of glory and honor" is an attribute of Allah, the Glorious, the Most Honorable, the One Who bestows honor. Man is an honorable creature, if only he would realize it; if only he could unify his physical reality with his innate reality. Man honors his contract by physiologically perishing. Everyone honors his destiny, knowingly or not.

Man sees, contained in the facade of creation, the af'al, the manifestation of actions. In the case of humans, they are a result of the interactions of his heart and his lower nafs. The less involved is his nafs, the more involved is his heart. Looking further inward, there is the ruh. If one's nafs has been burnt away, then his heart is active and pulsating; it is then fed by the spring of comfort - the ruh, the spirit.

Those who are not in submission rebel against the fact that they are perishing. If you tell someone that he is aging and that his teeth are falling out, he will say that he is not yet old or ready to die. Everyone considers his age as the average. When you were twelve years old, you thought fifty was ancient. You could not communicate with fifty ­year-olds, they were funny people. But when you became fifty, you thought fifty was quite young. This is because there is in man an echo of the Everlasting.

But there is also in man an echo of the nafs of rebellion. He assumes that the nafs lasts forever, and does not remember death. The seeker is repeatedly given the advice by his masters that the most potent medi­cine for ailments of the spirit is the remembrance of death. It is not used to paralyze man or to make him inactive and negative but, on the contrary, it is used to make him successful in his actions by making him more efficient. If he constantly remembers death, his actions will be pure, untarnished by his personal greed, arrogance, vanity, revenge and whatever other attributes are characteristic of the lower self.

The face of the Lord is, at first, an existential connection between man and Reality. Man wants to be healthy, he wants to be in the com­pany of fine men, he wants to be in an environment that will help him get deeper into the knowledge of Reality, of which there is no end. The more one knows Allah, the greater is the desire to know more of Allah. One should not assume that once somebody knows Allah that is the end of it. There is no beginning or end to Reality. An arif bi-llah is one who has had a window open onto Reality. The more he is able to look out from that window, the more he will see of Reality.

Just as each human has a physical birth, so too does each one have a spiritual awakening, which takes place parallel in time. Just as man was physically once a child, so too was he a child in knowledge of Allah.. There is no end to Reality, because It encompasses before and after creation.

"And there endures forever the face of your Lord." The Qur'an says that the Lord's day is like a thousand years of man's time; and this reckoning is only made in relationship to the time-frame of this world. As far as its relationship to beyond this world, it is fifty thousand years. So each day is the equivalent of fifty thousand years. Time is obviously relative. A day is a period of time, and not necessarily the twenty-four hour span that is measured by the odd machine called a clock.

29 All those who are in the heavens and the earth ask of Him; every moment He is upon some affair.

30 Which then of the bounties of your Lord will you deny?

Allah is man's Lord. Lordship is the source of the emanation of action. It is sustainership. The lord of a house has to attend to every aspect of the house, every sha'n, every business and affair. The lord of a house looks after its hardware - its maintenance and so on - as well as all the aspects of its software: the people, children and food, in the same way as the Lord of lords looks after creation. In every instant, every affair comes to Him. Lordship is attending to every affair; otherwise, there would be no tawhid. Tawhid is the one core from which all networks emanate, superimpose on each other and connect.

31 Soon will We apply Ourselves to you, O you two armies.

32 Which then of the bounties of your Lord will you deny?

Thaqula means to be weighty. Thaqalan means two entities or realities, seen or unseen. It can also mean two armies. Faragha means to be empty, to finish off, and here means to apply or occupy. Every jinn and ins, whether mu'min (be­liever) or kafir (denier), having either attained knowledge or remained in ignorance, will come to know the day of reckoning. Every­ one knows that whatever affair he is handling will come to an end. If it does not come to an end in this world while he is still alive, it will come to an end at his personal qiyama, at the hour of his death. Man is completely and totally cornered. He has no way to escape from the prison of time. If man dies into his situation, he is enlivened by the non-time Reality which encompasses the yard of this prison. If you die into the clock, you will not hear it anymore - it will be as if gone. As far as you are concerned, there will no longer be a clock; you will have transcended it.

33 O assembly of jinn and men! If you are able to pass through the regions of the heavens and the earth, then pass through; you cannot pass through but with authority.

34 Which then of the bounties of your Lord will you deny?

Qutr (plural is aqtar) is a diameter, region, zone, or something which is encompassed - a dominion. If one uses a compass one creates a circle that encompasses a space. "If you are able to pas through the regions of the heavens and the earth, then pass through." Allah encourages man to explore, but he cannot unless he attains the power, unless he obtains the sultan (authority). It is a posi­tive challenge to man.

Every sphere or zone has an energy. If man wants to go beyond a zone he must be able to pierce its limit. To escape the gravitational pull of earth a missile needs to obtain the speed of 17,000 miles per hour. Man needs sultan to overcome gravity. All of the powers are part of the one and only all-encompassing Power, which is an inter­zonal power.

35 The flames of fire and smoke will be sent on you two, then you will not be able to defend yourselves.

36 Which then of the bounties of your Lord will you deny?

Within the boundaries of the heavens and earth a point comes when the penetrations cease. There is a limit to every system and every creational situation. Jinn and ins can penetrate into the heavens, as man has done in the last few decades. But there will be zones in the heavens through which man will not be able to pass because of the great activity of meteorites or because of the presence of radiation or some other factors.

As there are limits established in man's outward travel, so are there limits to which he may travel inwardly. The Prophet, salla-llahu `alayhi wa alihi wa sallam, said: "I was not given of inner knowledge but little." These are the laws of Reality. How can man deny the mercies of Allah? Even the limitations and their meanings -the fact that man is imprisoned in time and space - are great bounties.

37 So when the heaven is rent asunder, and then becomes red like hide,

38 Which then of the bounties of your Lord will you deny?

The time will come when the heavens-which are impenetrable, lim­ited, and built as though firm - will break apart. Shaqqa means to split. As creation is fragmented, another state will take hold of it, one in which heat dominates. At present, the heat of the planets and stars is in equilibrium. In our planetary system, an example of dis-equi­librium is found in the form of sunspots.

Whenever they occur on the sun there are disturbances in the planetary system, though none are great enough to throw it out of balance. The system of counter­balanced forces will break when this journey in the cosmos reaches its point of maturity.

The same shattering occurs to man. While he lives, his spiritual and physical bodies hold together. Man contains an echo or an image of the entire cosmos. All of the functions in man's body are in equilibrium - his faculties, all of the electrical charges that run through his brain, the miles of nerves. This amazing entity will fall apart when the soul leaves. It then immediately will start to decay. That is what will happen to the heavens: the laws that hold them together will break and they will just disintegrate.

39 So on that day neither man nor jinn shall be asked about his sin.

40 Which then of the bounties of your Lord will you deny?

While the previous group of ayat spoke of the outer heavens, this group speaks of the inner space of the individual. Every ruh will spon­taneously transmit what it has gathered in the tuning period of life in this world. There will be nothing to ask, because the question will already have been answered.

Man in this life may be in nifaq (hypocrisy). He may hide his fears, anxieties and suspicions. Nafaq related to nifaq, means a tunnel. Man enters one hole .to come out from another. He is forever tunneling, trying to escape. The end to his efforts to escape comes when questioning ceases and he becomes an `answer'. Then he will beam and transmit the state in which he had left this world.

If he has been transmitting the Qur'an, then he will be close to the main transmitter, Allah; he will be one of the ashabu-l-yami'n (the companions of the right). If he has been trans­mitting his own song which has his desires, expectations and self­-righteousness mixed into it, then his transmission will be as good as that mixture.

41 The guilty will be recognized by their marks, so they will be seized by the forelocks and the feet.

42 Which then of the bounties of your Lord will you deny?

Everyone is caught by what he has put forth in his movements and his actions. Those who have not let their hearts be gulub (plural of qalb), have committed crimes against themselves. They will not have seen the husn ( perfection) in this world nor will they have known tawhid. Those who have been deprived of tawhid and the knowledge of the One are known bisimahum, by their face, their marks, their scars.

Those who have allowed their hearts to be turned have set their hearts free. Only then can man see the truth of every situation. In the next life, however, there is an immediate recognition. Here one recognizes the outer folds of the face, the wrinkles, or the coloration, but there one sees Oneness because there is no longer any duality: there is only One.

Nawasi are foreheads. The forehead of the upright hu­man projects out. It is as though man wants to connect to something in front of him. Allah says that man is caught by his highest point, which is his forehead, and his lowest, which is his feet. There is no escape for him now, so how can he still deny the Truth? He is the outcome of what he has put forth, of where his feet have taken him and to what his forehead has made sajda.