Худ 11:52

The Prophet Hud, successor of Noah, was chosen to guide the ‘Ad community, of which he himself was a member. This has always been God’s way in the matter of prophets. The wisdom of this is that, being of their own brethen, these prophets are thoroughly conversant with the psychology, conditions and language of the community, and can, therefore, very effectively discharge their function as missionaries of Truth. Hud gave to his community the message that they should worship the one and only God. Furthermore, he pointed out that their ‘religion’ was simply a lie of their own fabrication. This shows that a prophet’s way of preaching was not simply to present his message in a ‘positive manner,’ but also at the same time to resort to open criticism because, unless untruth is exposed as such by means of criticism and analysis, the Truth being Truth cannot be properly understood. In the case of the prophets in all ages, if they were to be accepted by their opponents, it was necessary for them to be highly placed officials with great wealth at their disposal and for them to reside in dwellings of great grandeur. But this standard of judging a preacher of Truth is not correct. The right standard by which to test the veracity of the preacher is to see whether he is serious and sincere in his mission; whether his message is rational in every detail; whether he is above every worldly interest; whether whatever he says is fully based on reality; and whether his message is perfectly consistent with the universal system; so that accepting it amounts to stepping on to the highway to success. ‘He will add strength to your strength.’ This statement does not mean an increase in material power, because in those days the ‘Ad community was already very powerful. The Quran states that when the Prophet warned them about God’s punishment, they said, ‘Who is stronger than us?’ ( 41:15 ). So, from the point of view of the call to truth, the promise of an increase in material power could not have been very attractive to them. In this verse, an increase in power means the addition of the power of Faith to material power. The Prophet meant to say that if they adopted the life of Faith, they would attain moral and spiritual power; with their present material strength, if they attained moral and spiritual power, their total power would not decrease but rather increase many times over.