Юнус 10:91–109

With this thought, Pharaoh and his army entered the sea. The water of the sea had split in two only for the sake of Moses and his companions and not for Pharaoh and his followers. So, when Pharaoh and his army reached the middle of the sea, both sides of the water joined, in compliance with God’s command, and Pharaoh along with his army was drowned. While drowning, he declared his acceptance of faith, but it was useless, because in the eyes of Almighty God, only a voluntary embracing of the Faith is reliable and acceptable and not a compulsory profession of Faith. The result of disobedience to God arising from arrogance is destruction. Examples of such incidents used to occur from time to time during the period of the Prophet. However, some examples of this type have been given historical shape by God, so that they might continue to give lessons to man in later ages after the time of the prophets had ended. One of these historical examples from the period of Moses is that of Pharaoh (Rameses II) whose mummified body was found by archaeologists in the ancient Egyptian town of Thebes. It is now kept on display in the museum at Cairo.

The Israelites were the bearers of God’s religion in ancient times. God granted them the favour of saving them from their enemy, Pharaoh. Then He caused them to be led to the open atmosphere of Sinai. There, by His instrumentality, water and provisions were made available to them. Through this training in the desert, a new powerful generation came into being. This generation, after Moses, constituted a great nation, and in the fertile areas of Syria, Jordan and Palestine, established the Israelite empire, which remained in existence for several centuries. The result of this favour should have been that the Children of Israel should have remained obedient to God and grateful to Him and should have made the service of religion the purpose of their lives. But in spite of clear guidance, they had gone astray. What was it that is called here ‘going astray’? It was having differences among themselves. They possessed the knowledge revealed by God which was the only Truth. But they had differences in the correct construction to be put on this knowledge and became divided (at-Tafsir an-Nasafi). As long as a community is one, religion remains united. But, later on, differences develop among them in the explanation of the knowledge of God’s revelation (al-‘ilm). Some insist on one opinion and others on another. In order to establish the truth of its way of thinking, every faction resorts to unnecessary discussions, speeches and public debates, so much so that a stage is reached when the real knowledge of God’s revelation (al-‘ilm) remains bound in books and all its strength becomes dissipated in interpretations and explanations. In this way, in spite of being from the same mould, people become divisively opinionated by becoming involved in the subsidiary aspects of religious teachings. ‘Your Lord will judge between them on the Day of Resurrection’ is apparently in the transitive form, but actually it is in the intransitive form. The idea is that on Judgement Day, when God makes His appearance, all men and women will forget their differences and accept the one and only Truth. Had they been God-fearing, they would have converged on one opinion. Fearlessness leads to a multiplicity of opinions, while fear results in a convergence of opinion.

Prophets have always come to the world with the divine Truth without any kind of human addition, but obedience to such a call has always been the most difficult task for man. Bowing to the call for pure Truth has to be at the cost of negating one’s own self; in order to accept the Truth, one has to lower one’s own status in comparison with that of the preacher, and doing so is undoubtedly a most difficult proposition. That is why it never happens that as soon as the call to accept the Truth is issued, people start flocking towards it. Truth in this world has always been received with opposition and distaste. Considering this disrespect for Truth, the preacher of Truth sometimes entertains doubts about whether he himself has erred in some way. In this verse, the preacher has been instructed to guard himself against such thinking. A very clear proof of these doubts being unfounded is that previous prophets and dayees also had to face very similar situations in the past. Those who are aware of their history know full well that, in this world, it has never happened that when a prophet comes forward, he immediately gains public popularity. Then, if similar situations arise in the case of dayees of later ages, why should that cause anxiety or worry? If a man’s mind testifies to the truth of something, and if even then he gives it up, simply because of the opposition of others, then this amounts to a refusal to accept the signs of God. God appears before man through His signs, so that the acceptance of whatever is established by means of reasoning, is God’s right over man. So, what will be the fate of one who denies God’s right—if not loss and destruction?

When the Truth appears before a man, his mind testifies to its correctness. But, in order to achieve what is right, man has to give something, and on this score man is not ready to give. In order to do so, man has to belittle himself in comparison with the other person; he has to acknowledge the other’s interests; he has to sacrifice his own prestige to be able to accept the Truth. Whatever proposition should have been readily accepted by him is the very thing which he denies and rejects. Man’s psychology is so formed that once he takes a direction, his whole mind takes the same direction. That is why, after a man’s deviation from the Truth, every passing day, he becomes more and more conditioned in his way of thinking, so much so that he does not remain capable of turning towards the Truth. Such people, with a view to justifying their stand, make efforts to give the impression that theirs is the correct way of thinking but, in fact, it is the result of obstinacy and prejudice, arising from worldly considerations. However, at the moment of God’s retribution, this bubble will burst. The intensity of fear man feels will force him to bow down before that very thing which previously he had not been ready to accept so long as he felt fearless. In past ages, the prophets had been faced the same situation, i.e. their addressee communities did not embrace the Faith till the last moment. However, the moment they were seized by God’s retribution, they cried out that they were embracing the Faith. As long as God was calling to them in the language of reasoning, they did not accept, but when God caused them to be struck down by His powers, they declared their acceptance there and then. But such acceptance is not effective in the eyes of God. God requires acceptance when a man bows down on the strength of reasoning and not when he feels coerced. Jonah (Yunus) was sent to Nineveh, an old city in Iraq. He started preaching there, but its denizens did not embrace the Faith. Finally, according to the tradition of the prophets, he migrated. While leaving Nineveh, he told people that they would face God’s retribution. After the departure of Jonah, the preliminary signs of retribution appeared. At that time they did not behave as the community of Hud had done. On seeing the clouds of retribution gather, the latter had said, ‘This cloud is coming to bring rain for us.’ Unlike this, the community of Jonah immediately experienced an awakening. All its members, along with their cattle, women and children, assembled on a stretch of open ground and started praying to God in all humility. Thereafter the punishment was averted. The acceptance of Faith just prior to the meting out of punishment is also acceptable provided it is as perfect as that of the community of Jonah.

‘Had your Lord pleased, all the people on earth would have believed in Him,’ means that it was possible for God to have made the system of the world of human beings one in which everything is completely regulated by the commands of God. But, with regard to human beings this is not at all the scheme of God, which is to keep man in a free atmosphere, give him the opportunity to obey God of his own free will and voluntarily perform the tasks which the rest of the world does under compulsion. The eternal bounties of Paradise are to be obtained at the cost of this voluntary obedience. ‘No soul can believe except by the will of God,’ means that, in the present world, man will be granted the blessing of Faith only on his adopting the method laid down by God for this purpose. In the present world, the way for man to be blessed with Faith is by his using his mind to understand the call to the Faith. The mind of an individual which is swamped by worldly considerations is as if immersed in mud. There is no question of such a person being blessed with the bounty of Faith.

In the universe surrounding us, there are innumerable signs which prove God’s existence. Moreover, in the world, events (such as cyclones and tornadoes) occur as warnings and this should make a man serious in his state of trial, that is, in a world where man has the discretion to accept or disown the Truth. So, what man does is this: he concocts some explanations of his own for these events so as to divert attention from their true significance and thus remains deprived of guidance. When man does not understand the language of reasoning, it is as if he is waiting for the veil of testing to be removed and for God to appear to give His final verdict. But when that day comes, it will be entirely different from the present day. Today, those who accept and those who reject are apparently in the same condition. But when the Day of Judgement arrives, only those who had proved themselves to be Truth-worshippers will be at peace, while all of the others will be overwhelmed by their punishment and they will find no escape route which could give them some respite.

The preacher first of all gives his sermon in the language of reason. But if his hearers, even after hearing his arguments remain in doubt, what he must do finally is to express the veracity of his message in sterner language. When a preacher of the Oneness of God tells the polytheists (those who ascribe partners to God): ‘I do not worship that which you worship’ this is not simply a declaration, but an argument in itself. It means: ‘I am also a man like you. I have a mind as you have. Then, why is it that the veracity of something which is understandable to me is not understandable to you?’ If Truth is understandable at the level of one man, it proves that it should be understandable to others also. In spite of this, if others reject it, then it must surely be due to some shortcoming on their part and not to any deficiency in the call to the Truth. If a thing seen by one who has eyes, is not seen by another who likewise has eyes, it simply proves that the latter is not the true possessor of eyes, because it is not possible in this world that a thing which is seen by one person having eyes cannot be seen by another person in spite of his also having eyes.

Death testifies to the fact that man is completely powerless in this world. Death proves all those things false, on the strength of which man opts for the way of arrogance and denial of God. Death introduces man, on the one hand, to his helplessness and on the other to God’s majestic power. It shows that in this world there is nobody who has the power to grant benefits or inflict harm. If a man has a mind capable of learning lessons from events, then the event of death is enough to reform him. It makes a man a perfect worshipper of God. A time comes for every man when, helpless, he surrenders himself to death. Similarly, it is not within the power of any man, whether it concerns benefit or harm, to cause things to happen as he wants. He receives the desired benefit in any case; and remains safe from undesirable harm in any case. This state of affair shows that man is a powerless creature: he lives in a world where there is some Being who rules over him.

The real task of the call of Truth—conveying the message of God to a specific group—is fulfilled when the preacher proves that he is quite serious about his goals and finally makes the Truth known, with the help of sound reasoning. If the preacher rationalises the question of Truth according to the standard of the time, he bears full testimony to the Truth, and unmindful of gain or loss, he continues his preaching, tolerating all kinds of trouble and unpleasantness. Thereafter, the process of conclusive argument in relation to the addressee- community is completed; after which nobody will have the excuse of ignorance before God. The real work of a preacher lies in his adherence to divine revelations, that is, in conducting himself personally at the behest of our Lord and also repeatedly calling upon others to strive to bow to the will of the Lord in order to earn His pleasure. The preacher must keep this up continuously with patience, wisdom and well-wishing. After this, all the stages that remain are directly under the purview of God. Any further step on the part of the preachers will be proper only when God Himself has taken some decision upon it and has made His will quite clear. God’s decision always appears in the shape of circumstances. When, according to God’s assessment, a preacher’s missionary work has reached the required stage, God causes such changes in the situation as enable the preacher to enter the next phase of his preaching.