Марьям 19:61–92

This world being a place of trial, everyone has been given freedom. Here, those who perform good deeds are free and those who indulge in bad deeds are free too. Consequently, a true and righteous person never knows tranquillity in the present world. However righteous he may personally be, the fact that the unrighteous people take undue advantage of their freedom, and taint the surrounding atmosphere with ungodliness, constantly disturbs his peace of mind. Paradise is a place from which all such wrongdoers will be excluded. There, only those noble persons will be lodged who have proved in this world that they do not live like thorns, but know how to live like flowers. A life shaped in the proximity of such people will undoubtedly be a haven of eternal peace—a paradise. In this world, the hardest task is to abstain from vain pursuits and to lead one’s life as an embodiment of peace. To this end, one has, of one’s own free will, to change a life of freedom into a life of limitations. This is the most difficult sacrifice, which can be offered only by one who is truly God-fearing. Only those who fear God in this world can feel themselves to be accountable to God. They are the only ones who will be admitted to the eternal paradise of the Hereafter.

When Dawah work is passing through a phase of being thwarted by opposition, it is a very difficult stage for the preacher (da‘i). Not a day passes without the preacher wanting to take some new step to alleviate the difficulties of the situation, whereas God’s will is that he should wait patiently. Once the Prophet Muhammad experienced just such situation. In view of the gravity of the case, he awaited further guidance from God. According to a tradition, forty days passed and still Gabriel did not come. When Gabriel appeared, the Prophet asked him, ‘Why did you take so long?’ He replied that he was bound by God’s will. When he received God’s command, he came down to earth, otherwise he did not. It was against this backdrop that the Prophet is given the advice about exercising patience. God is fully aware of the prevailing conditions and if, this being so, fresh guidance is not forthcoming from Him, it means that what is required is that the current conditions should be tolerated. Had the demands of wisdom been otherwise, then certainly fresh commandments would have been given. There is nobody who knows better than God, and there can be no guidance better than His. It is not correct to seek a commandment on the issue of taking a practical step when the situation warrants maintaining the status quo. Doing so would amount to an attempt to have a commandment revealed prematurely.

The Arabs, who were the primary addressees of the Quran, accepted the theory of life after death. All the words in the Quran relating to the life hereafter were already present in their vocabulary. But their acceptance was purely formal, as such it had no impact on their lives. In practice, they led their lives in a way that implied, ‘The life of this world is the only life. Who is going to resurrect us after our death and who is going to call us to account?’ This indifference or denial, persists because man does not give serious consideration to this matter. If he did so, he would find that his initial, first birth is in itself an argument in support of his re-birth. Here, the word ‘Satan’ stands for leaders who, with the help of deceitful words, mislead the common man. In this sense, they do the same work as Satan does. In the present world, these leaders are highly visible in their positions of greatness, and the people are therefore unable to ignore them. But, in the life hereafter, they will lose this ‘greatness’ and will be pushed into the pit of ignominy along with their followers.

Not to accept the Truth is a crime, but to instigate a movement for the rejection of Truth is an even bigger crime. Those who become leaders of any movement to oppose the Truth deserve the worst punishment that God can mete out to them. In the life hereafter, they will be given double the punishment given to ordinary people. From Quranic statements and certain traditions, it is learned that on the Day of Judgement Almighty God will let all people pass over hell. This will not be a passage through the interior of hell but merely across it from above. It will be just like a man passing across an open bridge over a deep river. He will see the dangerous waves of the river, but will not drown in them. The people’s passing over hell on the Day of Judgement will be similar to this. The pious and righteous will go ahead and enter Paradise, while the evil ones will not be able to move on any further. Hell will recognize them and draw them in. The purpose of putting men through this experience will be to make those who are sent to Paradise fully realize the magnitude of this great blessing of God, who has saved them from such a terrible place and sent them instead to an infinitely superior place.

Those who do not care about what is right or what is wrong, who prefer the considerations of this world to those of the life hereafter and who choose to please other people rather than God, are always successful from the worldly point of view. They are surrounded by glamour and glitter. As opposed to this, those who in all their dealings are worried about right and wrong, who ignore the considerations of this world and prefer those of the life hereafter, and who care for God rather than the attitude of the public, are often bereft of external pomp and glory. This difference gives rise to misunderstandings. It is thought that those who are better off from the worldly point of view are God’s favoured ones and those who do not enjoy this position in this world are low in God’s esteem. But this is a completely wrong assessment, and past history contradicts and disproves it. How many haughty heads of the past have rolled and are buried in the ground? And how many grand palaces are there still extant today that have not fallen into ruin?

A rebel is given scope for his rebellious activities on account of his being on trial here, and not because it is his birthright. But it often happens that the person concerned is unable to understand this difference. He takes this temporary leeway to be a permanent feature. His eyes do not open until the respite given to him is declared to be at an end and until the opportunity for him to indulge in wrongdoing is taken away. God in His wisdom sometimes has one man undergo this experience in this very world, whereas in the case of another, He allows him to remain in his ignorant condition until death overtakes him, and then He shows him what he was not prepared to see in this life.

To be rightly guided means the arousal of one’s consciousness and the turning of it in the right direction. Whatever the circumstances, and whatever events befall a rightly guided man, he interprets them correctly and his soul derives nourishment from them. In this way there is a constant increase in the guidance he receives in terms of faith and quality of life. The guidance received by him is not like a stagnant pool or a lifeless rock: it is like a living and ever-growing tree. Just as one who keeps worldly interests in view progresses in this world, similarly, one who acts with the Hereafter in view keeps on accumulating his good deeds. But as they are being amassed and stored in the Hereafter, their build-up is not visible in this world. However, when Doomsday tears apart the veil, everybody will see how the guidance of the guided one was being enhanced and how, along with this, his righteous deeds were also accruing.

When a man acquires a certain amount of wealth and power, he develops a misplaced self-confidence, says things he should not and behaves in a manner that ill befits his true position. An incident, which occurred in Makkah, illustrates behaviour of this kind. ‘As ibn Wa’il, a pagan chief of Makkah, owed some money to one Khabbab ibn al-Arat. When the latter demanded his money back, ‘As ibn Wa’il promised to repay the amount if Khabbab disowned allegiance to Muhammad. The latter answered: ‘I will never disown Muhammad, even if you were to die and be born again.’ Hearing this, ‘As ibn Wa’il, answered that when he was born again, and possessed wealth and progeny, then he would repay the amount. All this is false self-confidence and an empty boast, which are of no avail to anybody.

Man wants to be able to do whatever he likes in this world, but at the same time he does not want to be made to suffer the consequences of his wrongdoings. Naturally, such leniency is not to be expected from God. Therefore, man courts such beings as are supposedly near and dear to God and who could plead his case to Him. But such a course of action, based as it is on false conjectures, will be of no avail to him or to anybody else. So much so that even those beings whom he had supposed to be partners of God and whom he ritually worshipped, will themselves disown him on Judgement Day. They will show him nothing but hatred.

When Truth in its authentic form appears before a man and still he ignores it, this disregard of his paves the way for Satan’s entry into his very soul. As a result, his mind is given over to obduracy. Now he is not able to accept any argument in a right and positive manner. God’s signs may appear in front of him, but he offers self-devised explanations for them and even uses them to bolster his rebellious attitude and his arrogance. One who assumes false supports to be his real supports, which he can safely lean on, falls a prey to the same foolishness time and again. But those who fear God consider God alone to be their real support. The fear of God makes the believers give no importance to such people as mislead others into the belief that they are their true support. Thus it is the believers alone who will be God’s guests of honour in the life hereafter.

Belief in the existence of God’s children can be explained in either of two ways: that He is in need of assistants, or like ordinary people, He is desirous of having children. Both of these propositions are baseless. The construction of the earth and the heavens is so perfect that it is unimaginable that their Maker and Mover could be prone to such weaknesses as man evinces. The grand, majestic image of the Creator, projected by His creations themselves, is not at all compatible with the concept of God being in need of children.