Ep 19 — The Goals of Prophethood

Session 17: The Goals of Prophethood. delivered Saturday, 13 Mehr 1353 / 18 Ramadan al-Mubarak 1394 The verse of Surat al-Hadid is this: Surat al-Hadid (57:25). We have indeed sent Our messengers with clear proofs, and sent down with them the Book and the Balance, so that people may uphold justice; and We sent down iron, in which is great force and benefits for mankind, and so that God may know who helps Him and His messengers in the unseen. Indeed, God is Strong, Mighty. The second verse is in the blessed Surat al-A'raf, verses 156 and 157: …And ordain for us good in this world and in the Hereafter; indeed, we have turned to You. He said: My punishment — I strike with it whomever I will, and My mercy encompasses all things; I shall ordain it for those who are God-fearing and give the alms-due, and for those who believe in Our signs — those who follow the Messenger, the unlettered Prophet, whom they find written down with them in the Torah and the Gospel; he enjoins upon them the good and forbids them the evil, makes the wholesome things lawful for them and forbids them the foul things, and relieves them of their burden and the shackles that were upon them. So those who believe in him, honor him, support him, and follow the light that has been sent down with him — those are the ones who prosper. These two verses, and several others in the Noble Qur'an, set forth the goal of God's great prophets. Our discussion of prophethood had reached this point: the prophet — the one roused up by God — does for society what he first does within himself. Just as he brings about a kind of resurrection in his own inner self, he brings about a resurrection in society as well, a change and a transformation in the very fabric of the community. Today we want to understand that transformation — its purpose and aim, and the aim behind all the work of the divine prophets. Knowing this is useful to us in several respects; indeed, it is necessary. What goal does the prophet pursue? What is it he runs after? The prophet has one principal, primary goal. On the way toward it, other goals come up for him too, and one of these is more important than all the rest and more attractive to him. But that primary goal can be summed up in a few words: the prophets come into this world to bring the human being to the destination of his exaltation, to the perfection ordained for him. A being who possesses such talents and abundant energies can become something higher, loftier, more precious, and more noble than what he now is. At bottom, from the first moment of his birth, from the beginning of his formation, in his own little world, the human being is always in the process of becoming complete — always advancing, always attaining greater perfection. You can observe this plainly in the body, in the outward frame. The newborn infant lacks many of the marks of a complete human being. He lacks teeth, a strong hand, a powerful jaw, legs that can run, the inner apparatus of digestion that would let him carry his life forward as a grown person does, a powerful brain and nervous system. Then, after a while, all of it comes into being for him. And nothing is given to him from outside: it is that same little jaw that grows strong and powerful, that same weak hand that grows large and strong, those same little delicate feet that become firm, steady steps, those same weak nerves that later become powerful, that same feeble brain that later becomes the discoverer of life's most important and most complicated problems. Nothing comes from outside. It is he himself, it is his own talents, it is the latent, hidden capacities within him that gradually — with the passage of time, as he is placed in particular conditions — blossom, flower, and come into the stage of manifestation. Within him was the talent of speech, which later makes him a speaker. Within him was the talent of understanding things, of becoming a thinker, a scholar — and later all of it comes about. So the human being is always becoming complete. What he was not, he later becomes: he was not powerful, then he becomes powerful; he had no intellect, then he comes to have intellect; he had no experience, then he comes to possess it, and so on. In matters of the body — as you have all now noticed and can affirm — a person is always in the state of becoming complete: always acquiring things that were not prepared for him before, that he did not yet possess. In spiritual matters, in the realm of the soul and the human virtues, it is exactly the same. A whole world of talent lies latent within a person. Think of him as a very strong, deep, abundant mine: dig into it and you find many things within — but until you have dug, it is a mere existent, a dry and barren plot of land with no beautiful display of life. Let me give an example. In such cases I usually liken a person to those mosaic tiles they pour at the edge of a pool, on the threshold behind a door. Have you noticed? They pour the mosaic. When they first pour it, they set the mold and spread the material there and it dries; and when you look at it, you see no sign of beauty or delicacy in it. It is a dark, grimy, lustreless, charmless mass. Then comes the turn to grind it, under special machines or by hand; they begin to grind these tiles down. Once a certain amount of grinding has passed, you suddenly see that this dark mass has turned translucent through being ground — which is natural enough; many dark things turn translucent when you grind them. But that is not all. You find in it something you never suspected: now that you have ground it, you understand that beautiful stones, of many colors and various patterns, with interesting and pleasing hues, existed within the very belly and depths of that dark mass — stones you could not have seen, could not have prized for their beauty, could not have shaped into anything ornamental. Now that it is ground, all of them have come out. Set a fine, ground piece of mosaic before yourself and you see a beautiful design, lovely indeed — whereas before the grinding there was nothing. Liken the inner talents of a person to those very glittering, beautiful particles that lie deep within the belly of that dark mosaic. This person you see — this unhewn, unpolished creature in the market, in the street, this little child who cannot yet speak, who has not a particle of refinement for anyone except his father and mother — this very one you are looking at is a rich and abundant mine. In him are materials of grace, in him are displays of beauty, and these are the talents of a person. It is the very thing they meant when they said, in the old poetic tongue: "You have seen the flight of the bird — you, from the fetter of lust: / Come out, that you may see the flight of humanity." This is the very thing that poets and others, mystics and others, have told us from of old in every tongue — and it is right, and it is true. They said that these human displays raise a person higher than the angel and the celestial spirit; they make him a gushing wellspring of goodnesses, of talents brought to light, of interesting and attractive powers; that is, they make him the complete human being, the upright and perfected and exalted human being. The true goal of the prophets is to make human beings into this — the very thing that, in the Qur'anic expressions we have set down here, is named "purification" (tazkiyah) and "instruction" (ta'lim). They purify human beings of bad traits, draw them away from their caprices, and rescue them from the displays of a brutish, animal way of life. As Rumi said: "O you who have torn the cloak of the Josephs: / you shall rise from this heavy sleep a wolf." Those who wear a human exterior but do the work of a wolf, those who show a beautiful, adorned human face on the outside but do the work of beasts of prey, dogs, savages, and ogres — these cannot be called human. That human being for whom bloodshed is a pleasure, that human being for whom destroying the lives of others is a means of amusement, that human being for whom the spectacle of others' suffering brings no distress, that human being who sees the sorrow of others and feels no sorrow — this is not a human being, whatever his exterior may be. Is he very learned? Is he very wealthy? Is he very powerful? Is he very tidy and well-pressed in appearance? Even if he is all of these, none of them is humanity. It is tidiness, it is learning, it is power; being a human being is something else. The prophets come to purify human beings. In the environment of the prophets' call you see no trace of brutishness; in the environment of the prophetic life you observe no sign of the displays of an animal, savage way of life. There, whatever there is is the light of purity and humanity, and this is the art and the great miracle of prophethood. People look for the miracle of prophethood in extraordinary deeds — deeds that do not ordinarily occur in the natural order: the splitting of some wall, or some body, or the springing-forth of a tree. Very well, let those things be too — there is no objection. But the great miracle of the prophethoods lies in making good human beings, adorned with virtues. This is the greatest miracle of the prophethoods, and it is no joke. Look, and you see people brimming with every disposition to crime and corruption. When they come under the grindstone of the call of Islam, when that grinding apparatus the prophet sets in motion falls upon them, you suddenly see that the very savage of yesterday, the very criminal of yesterday, that same unhewn, unpolished man of yesterday on whom you would have staked nothing at all, becomes a human being of immense grandeur. Who was Abu Dharr? Was he anything more than a rough, desert-wandering man, indifferent to humanity, unaware of it? He was a man of whom, had you seen ten thousand of his like before you, it would not have troubled you if all ten thousand perished in a single earthquake. A man who neither understands nor wishes to understand, with not a particle of human grace in him, not a particle of interest in becoming good — barefoot, dirty, rough, grown up in the desert. Set such a man before you — not you, but any great reformer, any figure of grandeur — and how much would the heart burn for him? The so-called great reformers of the world, those who count themselves reformers and great ones, complain even of men more substantial than themselves that "they did not appreciate our worth, they did not recognize us, they did not understand us." What they want is for people to circle around them like moths around their heads, to sacrifice themselves for them — and to what end? Whether these reformers have even carried out a portion of their own commitment, their own human mission, is itself in doubt. And when men of Abu Dharr's kind are set before them, they assign them no value whatsoever. The prophet takes this very creature, this black stone, this unhewn, unpolished boulder whose name is Abu Dharr, brings it under the grindstone of revelation and the call, and from it fashions a human being in whom there is a sign of every human virtue. This is the great miracle of the prophet. From him he fashions a human being whose whole self has been absorbed, dissolved, sacrificed on the way of the goal — that whole self, this "I," this "I" which for ordinary people is the axis of all activity, its every aspect. Can you find such a man? We want everything for ourselves, or for what is bound up with ourselves: for our shop, our title, our children, our good name — in the end it comes back to us. Abu Dharr sacrifices everything that comes back to himself for God, for the goal, for that direction in whose path he is moving. A human being of that kind is transformed into a human being of this kind. And what does this? The revelation of prophethood, the call of prophethood: out of black, dark stones it fashions clear, bright mirrors. This is the goal of prophethood — the making of an upright human being. It is true that the formation of a sound system is a very interesting thing — and I am coming to this point; before you accept a statement or reject it, do not be hasty until we finish it. It is true that the formation of a prosperous system, free and flourishing, is a very interesting thing. But here is what I want to see. Suppose such a system — flourishing, free, prosperous, with equality and social justice and no class divisions — has been formed, and the people in that new, lofty, interesting society have busied themselves with living. To what end? And after that? For the human being, for humanity, after the era of reaching the ideal society, what goal have the materialist schools envisaged? What is the goal of humanity? People make sacrifices, deny themselves, strive and struggle to build a flourishing home out of this world. Now we have built it — and after that, what? In this flourishing home, what do we wish to do? We toil and build this mosque; then, once it is finished, we must have a purpose. The purpose is that people should come here and pray, or listen to a lecture, or the like. It makes no sense to say we want to build a mosque — all the noise and clamor — we built it, we raised it up, and then, once it stands, now what do we want to do? Nothing — after that we have no goal at all. That is absurd; it is breaking one's leg halfway down the road. The materialist schools have all broken their leg halfway down the road — every one of them. The materialist schools say: let us make the world flourish, let us abolish poverty, let us abolish ignorance, let us build a lofty society, a human society, a society with no oppression, no classes, no exploitation, no discrimination. Very well — we have built it; now what does a person wish to do in this society? They have no answer. Where does humanity wish to arrive? They have no answer. Does it wish to eat and sleep? Does it wish to live comfortably — is that all? Does a person exist only for a comfortable life — that is, comfortably acquiring, comfortably consuming, and comfortably excreting? Is it for this that he must struggle, and is this to be his goal? Here is where the materialist schools' mount goes lame. The divine schools say: No, the goal lies beyond this. The lofty goal is the refining of the human being; the lofty goal is that the children of Adam should become human. The children of Adam are not the same as the human being. "Children of Adam" is this very creature that walks on two legs — with all its pretension, it is a child of Adam; but to become human means that all the virtues and wellsprings of talent within its being should come into flow. You ask: and after that, what? We answer: there is no "after that." A person is unlimited; because God's power is unlimited, there is no "after that." "Indeed, we belong to God, and indeed, to Him we return." Once a person has fallen into the course of perfection, there is no longer any end. This is the idea of those who worship God, the thought of the monotheists of the world and the religions of the world. It is always advancing, always progressing, always ascending, always perfecting and exalting — it has no end and no terminus, and the prophets come for this. The prophets come to purify human beings of evils, of basenesses, of ignorances, of moral vices, of the keeping-hidden of inner talents; to deliver them; to fashion them into the complete and exalted human being — this is the prophets' primary goal. The Qur'an states it in several places; I did not cite the verses here, because one of them had already come up earlier. God has indeed shown favor upon the believers when He raised up among them a messenger from among themselves, who recites to them His signs and purifies them, and teaches them. Refining a person, cleansing away the vices, adorning him with virtues — this is the goal of the prophets. So you see that our Prophet says: A saying is related: "I was raised up to perfect the noble traits of character". I was sent to complete the noble traits of character, the beautiful traits, the good traits. This is the first statement. But the more important statement is the second. The first is one that gets uttered a great deal, and some people are very fond of having it repeated. Here is why: if the whole matter were merely refining — only purification (tahdhib) and tazkiyah — then someone says, "Sir, we have found the way; we have understood where to go. Set aside the tumult of society, and 'excuse the war of the seventy-two nations, all of them'; we will go off to the corner of a hermitage, busy ourselves with monasticism, and there purify and refine the soul, and save our own selves. And if someone comes who has the capacity for it, we will say a word in his ear too, draw him out of himself, and make him too into a real human being." This statement gets repeated so often precisely because it can serve as a pretext — a pretext for laziness, for shortcomings, for self-preservation, for comfort-seeking, for the love of ease. The people are fond of it, and so are the leaders. Those upon whose shoulders rest the responsibilities of guidance and instruction are fond of this saying. Refining people is a trouble-free task, a flawless task, a task that does nothing to harm or injure the cattle and sheep of a person. You gather a group together, croon a lover's lullaby in their ears, draw them out of themselves, refine them, purify them. And for the people too it seems easy — though of course it is not actually easy. So up to this point in the statement, it is well-known; from this point onward, it is not well-known, it is not said. And what lies beyond this point? Here is the question: by what means did the prophets refine and adorn the people? What did they do? Did they come to the people and, one by one, take each person by the ear, take each person by the hand, and lead them off alone into the seclusion of a house, a chamber, a school, a maktab, to instruct and educate them? Did the prophets sit in their own monasteries, like the ascetics and mystics of the world, so that the people might come, observe their spiritual state, and fall into step with them as fellow-believers and fellow-travelers? Did the prophets, like the philosophers of the world, open a school, hang up a sign, and issue an invitation — "Whoever wishes to learn doctrine from us, let him come here and learn" — were they like this? No: the prophets do not believe in individual education, the prophets do not believe in fashioning human beings one by one, the prophets do not believe in tidy, neat tasks. Do not imagine that, like Socrates and Plato, Abraham the Friend of the Merciful, or Moses, or Jesus, or our Prophet would sit in a school and the people would go and benefit from him. They are not like this. And the saints (awliya') are like the prophets — for in the matter of the Imamate I say that our Imam al-Sadiq too is of that kind. It is an error to imagine, as some heedless people do, that Imam al-Sadiq sat upon a pulpit with four thousand students at the foot of it. Here is how it actually came about. Ibn 'Uqdah, a renowned scholar of the old biographical traditions, counted four thousand persons among the students and transmitters of the hadith of Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq, peace be upon him. From this, a group imagined those four thousand persons used to come and sit together — four thousand men filling a great enclosure while Imam al-Sadiq, the blessings of God be upon him, recited hadith from the pulpit, expounded rulings, and delivered admonitions. That is how they imagine it. No — neither Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq, nor his grandfather the Prophet of Islam, nor any of the prophets of the world had this as their method. School-playing, admonition-mongering, and educating one person at a time are not the work of the prophets. The prophets have only one answer to this question: how can human beings be fashioned? How can they be educated according to the correct divine models? Their one answer is this: to fashion a human being, you must build a suitable environment, a sound environment, one that can nurture him within itself — that, and nothing else. The prophets say you cannot cast people in molds one by one; you must build a factory. They say that if they set out to fashion human beings one at a time, night would fall and a whole lifetime would pass before the work was done. A society is needed, a system is needed; human beings must be pressed into the desired shape by that system — that, and nothing else. The prophets say a human being is like a tree, like a sapling. Consider a sapling — a date palm, or an orange. It has certain conditions, certain characteristics, and those characteristics require warm air, suitable air. Plant a date palm in southern Iran, in the southern regions of the country, or in Tabas, or in some of the Arab countries, and see what delicious, excellent dates it gives — an interesting thing, isn't it? Why? Because this sapling needs air of a certain temperature, humidity at a certain percentage, soil of a certain kind, and dozens of other conditions besides. Those conditions come together in Tabas, they come together in Khuzestan, but they do not come together in Mashhad. What can be done about it? Go, take thousands of date-palm saplings, dig them up, bring them here, plant them in the ground, water them, give them air — is that possible? You can do only one thing, and it is this: bring a single date-palm tree here into the garden of your house, or take an orange into a room, and toil over it, care for it, give it fertilizer, give it water, work on it so long that after a while — "O 'Ali, help!" — it gives you one or two dates. You say, "Yes, we too brought a date-palm sapling to Mashhad and got two, three dates." Well, why should we do this? Why should we do this? If instead we could establish and build a date-ripening, date-nurturing environment, there would be no need for all this care, no need for all this heartache, no need for all this fastidiousness — and moreover it would not give just two dates, it would give hundredweights, tons of dates. Is it not more reasonable, if a person is able, to build a suitable environment that nurtures dates itself, rather than tending to a single date-palm tree one by one in an unsuitable place? The toil a person must bear to build a suitable environment is far greater than the toil he bears for a single date-palm, a single date-palm sapling. Far greater — but reckon its benefit, reckon its yield. Here you toil over one individual, you fashion one single human being; there you fashion a whole society, you build a whole system, you make millions of human beings, generations of humanity. This was the work of the prophets. This is a point we have taken our stand on, one we insist on, and we believe the followers of the prophethoods must understand it. Reflect on it deeply; do not pass over it easily. Refer to the verses of the Qur'an, refer to the history of the prophets, refer to the narrations that exist concerning the prophethoods; scrutinize, reflect; neither accept it quickly nor reject it quickly. The matter is very important, because all the difficulties arise from precisely this point. A certain group cannot understand that the prophets wished to build a suitable, favorable environment; they imagine that the prophets wished to fashion human beings one by one — whereas fashioning human beings one by one is far beneath the station of the prophets. What we understand from the Qur'an is the prophets' answer to this question — "How can human beings be fashioned?" that is, refined and adorned. The answer is that one must build a divine society, a monotheistic (tawhidi) society, a suitable environment, so that the human being may be fashioned within it — not one of him, not ten of him, not a thousand of him, but in groups upon groups — fashioned of themselves, by the natural warmth of the radiant light of the teachings of Islam. When the help of God and the victory come, and you see the people entering into the religion of God in throngs. In the pagan environment of Mecca, when the prophet wishes to fashion a human being, he is compelled to fashion them one by one. To bring about such a system he needs a number of select persons, a number of cornerstones and a foundation, and these are first fashioned one by one. This does not contradict the prophets' overall plan. To fashion and hew the cornerstones of the civic society, the prophet in Mecca is compelled to engage in individual person-making: one Abu Dharr; one 'Abdullah ibn Mas'ud; another, and another, and so on — at most he fashions a hundred persons, two hundred persons. These become the building stones for the future civic society — that is, the monotheistic and Islamic society. There, in that way, the prophet fashions human beings one by one — with what toil, with what hardship, with what heartache! Fathers prevent their sons from understanding anything; the sons set their hearts on the world, they do not come to follow the prophet to learn doctrine; and for everyone who develops a little inclination, there is toil and hardship and heartache. All these tasks are carried out. But when the turn comes for Medina — when that divine and Islamic society is formed in Medina, and the prophet stands at its head, ruling by the ordinances and commands of God — then God Almighty speaks in this way: When the help of God comes, and the conquest, and you see the people entering into the religion of God in throngs. This is the upshot of the matter concerning the goals of the prophets. Let me summarize. The prophets have two goals, two important goals. One is the fundamental goal: to fashion the human being — to purify him of evils, to adorn him with virtues, in short to make him human. This is the higher goal. The other lies halfway along the road to it: to form a monotheistic society, a divine system, the government of God, an order administered by divine laws and ordinances. This is the goal of all the prophets. Anyone who imagines that the great divine prophets did not have this goal should study the Qur'an, the hadith, and history more closely. There are many verses in the mighty Book of the Lord from which this matter may be derived, but we have cited only two. These two repay reflection; they need to be scrutinized and pondered a little. The first, as we mentioned, is from Surat al-Hadid. We have indeed sent Our messengers with the clear proofs. The statement of the prophets consists of clear arguments — nothing that an intelligent, thinking person fails to grasp. Everyone understands what the prophets say. And We sent down with them the Book. What is the Book? We have said it repeatedly: "the Book" means the collection of teachings and ordinances that constitutes the very essence of religion — the religious instructions and teachings, the comprehensive ideology of the religion. In brief, with a slight looseness of expression, we can equate the Book with what the modern schools today call "ideology" — that is, the constructive principles and teachings, the intellectual principles that have a tangible, constructive effect in practical domains. The Book is one thing; then, along with it, We also sent down the Balance. The Balance means a scale. But what does this mean? That every prophet who came carried a scale under his arm, large or small? No. "The Balance" means the apparatus for creating social equilibrium — the instrument by which balance can be brought about in a society. Notice what this reveals: the regard is to society. If the prophet were not meant to stand at the head of a society and to form one, what would he need the Balance for — what would he need the very thing by which social equilibrium is established? An instrument has been sent with the prophet by which balance can be created in society. And what is that instrument? The divine judicial apparatuses; the judicial ordinances; the executor of the law, the guarantor of enforcement — the Balance can be applied to this as well. There exist ordinances, a guarantor of enforcement, and an overseer of that enforcement. It is exactly what the democratic countries today call the "executive power," which amounts to the government. In a country that has a government, a parliament, legislation, and an executor, the executive power is what supervises and oversees the enforcement of ordinances in society; the executive power may be this "Balance." And in studying the narrations that comment on this verse, I found one of their interpretations of the Balance: it says, "The Balance is the Imam." And I found it entirely correct — it applies, and we take inspiration from this hadith. The Balance is the Imam. The Imam is the one who must separate truth from falsehood in society; he must distinguish the ranks; he must establish social equilibrium. Why? Because he is the ruler of society. Now, some may hold crude, mistaken readings of this phrase and of that hadith — but we have nothing to do with those; we believe just as we ourselves say. The Imam is the Balance, the measure: evils and goodnesses are weighed by him, paths are gauged against him. Beyond that, he is the overseer in society, watching that people do not depart from equilibrium, and he supervises the ordinances. The narration confirms this too. So the Balance means the instrument by which social equilibrium is established — and this too We sent with the prophet. Why did We do all this? What was the Book to accomplish for the prophet? What was the prophet himself needed for? What was the Balance to accomplish? The reason is this: so that people may uphold justice. "Li-yaquma 'l-nasu bi-'l-qist" can be rendered into Persian two ways — both, of course, carrying one meaning. We have chosen one of them and rendered it here, and I will mention the other as well. "Li-yaquma 'l-nasu bi-'l-qist": so that people may establish a just life — in parentheses we wrote, and an environment of justice and equality. People should establish a just life; that is one meaning. The other is this: so that people may stand upright upon the basis of justice (qist), may live upon the basis of equality. The two meanings differ, if you scrutinize them, in Arabic parsing and construction — but their import is one. I wanted to explain this so no one finds any difficulty in some of its "kana-yakun" (grammatical niceties). "Li-yaquma 'l-nasu bi-'l-qist" — the upshot of its meaning is that people should live in a just environment, in a just society and system. This is what the prophet came for, first of all. So what did the prophet come for? To bring a just system into being. He came to make the world just, to bring a just society into being — it is precisely for this that the prophet came. And of course it is in a just system that people find the opportunity to attain perfection and exaltation. "Li-yaquma 'l-nasu bi-'l-qist." Then, following it, He says: And We sent down iron. Yes! We brought iron too. Is mere talking enough — mere preaching, "People, come, build a just system"? Suppose they did build one: would the devils and wolves and thieves and beasts of prey ever let such a just system stand? So We sent iron too. Why did We send it? So that the authentic values might be defended by force of iron. Here again we turn to the books of hadith, and we find that when the Imam, peace be upon him, interprets the verse and reaches this point — "And We sent down iron" — he says: "Weaponry (al-silah)"; the sword, the spear, the weapon, all made of iron. Alongside the call of prophethood, God Almighty mentions weaponry. Alongside the preaching laid upon the prophets, alongside the very idea of forming a monotheistic and divine system, the Lord of the worlds mentions weaponry and coercive force. "And We sent down iron" — and, as the Imam, peace be upon him, says, weaponry and the weapon. In which is great force and benefits for mankind, and so that God may know who helps Him and His messengers in the unseen. The expression "so that God may know" — though God already knows — means that it may be made distinct, made manifest, determined in the external world. "Who helps Him and His messengers in the unseen" means those who help God and His prophets with faith in the unseen: they did not see God, and some did not even see the prophet, yet they believe in him and help him. Indeed, God is Strong, Mighty. Notice, too, how meaningful these closing phrases of the verses are. The ones you see at the end of every verse — "Indeed God is Strong, Mighty," "Indeed God is Hearing, Knowing," "Indeed God is Forgiving, Merciful" — are not there by chance, the way a poet finds some rhyme to stick at the end of a line. It is not like that. Each of these phrases at the close of a verse carries, in keeping with the content of the verse, a particular meaning and a particular point — did you notice? So in this noble verse too, the matter is just the same. "Indeed, God is Strong": do not imagine that the prophets came yet cannot bring into being the society we have sketched and establish the people upon justice. No — God, the very One who sends them, is Strong. Do not fear that they will struggle and contend against the prophets of God — let them. "Mighty ('aziz)" — God is invincible. I render 'aziz as "invincible." What the lexicon gives for 'aziz is "the Overcomer who is not overcome" (al-ghalibu 'lladhi la yughlab): the one who prevails, over whom no one prevails. The Persian expression we found for this is the word "invincible" (shekast-napazir), both beautiful and concise. God is Strong and invincible. This is one verse. And now the verse of Surat al-A'raf. The preceding verses speak of Moses, peace be upon him. The preliminaries of that episode do not concern us; it is this verse we wished to interpret, and we have brought one verse from before it only so the matter may be clear. The speaker is a believer, or believers, addressing God. What do they say? Pay attention, so that we reach the points in question. They say: And ordain for us good in this world and in the Hereafter; indeed, we have turned to You. He said: My punishment — I strike with it whomever I will — I bring My punishment upon whomever I will and intend. God's will, though, is not haphazard and arbitrary — as if He should wish to punish one and not another. No; the Lord's will too follows criteria and standards that He Himself has laid down. It is the bad, evil-doing person whom God Almighty wishes to punish. "I strike with it whomever I will" — I bring harm; not quite "harm," for the word is "usibu," which means "I make to be struck," except that in the Persian we have rendered it with the word "harm." I bring harm by this punishment of Mine upon whomever I will. And My mercy encompasses all things. I shall ordain it for those who are God-fearing and give the alms-due, and for those who believe in Our signs. Which ones? "Those who follow the Messenger, the unlettered Prophet (alladhina yattabi'una 'l-rasula 'l-nabiyya 'l-ummi)" — those who follow the Messenger, the unlettered (ummi) Prophet. We have kept ummi in its very form, because its meaning is disputed. Some say ummi means illiterate; some say "of the common folk," of the masses — belonging to the ordinary mass of people, tied only to the mother, untouched by the surrounding cultures; some say "of the Mother of Cities (Umm al-Qura)," that is, Mecca. Because the meaning is contested, and I did not wish to present research on the question, we rendered ummi by the very word "ummi." "The unlettered (al-ummi)" — that unlettered Prophet — "whom they find (alladhi yajidunahu)" — "written down with them (maktuban 'indahum)" — in their own possession — "in the Torah and the Gospel (fi 'l-tawrati wa-'l-injil)" — in the book of the Torah and the book of the Gospel; for these two books gave glad tidings that the Prophet would come. What is the mark of this Prophet? From here on, pay attention. "He enjoins upon them the good (ya'muruhum bi-'l-ma'ruf)" — he commands them to do good, the virtues recognized by the intellect and by the human primordial nature (fitrah). "And forbids them the evil (wa yanhahum 'ani 'l-munkar)" — he forbids them the wrongdoings, the things the human intellect and nature do not recognize. "And makes the wholesome things lawful for them (wa yuhillu lahumu 'l-tayyibat)" — he makes lawful and permissible for them the wholesome, good things — every good thing there is in the religion. "And forbids them the foul things (wa yuharrimu 'alayhimu 'l-khaba'ith)" — he makes the foul things forbidden to them; that is, he keeps them away from them, holds their hand back from bad things. And this is what the Islamic society is like. In the Islamic society, everything good for a person — for his mind, his heart, his soul, his body — is within the reach of all. Knowledge, literacy, godfearing-ness, money — whatever is good and beneficial is available to everyone. And whatever is bad for a person is available to no one. "And forbids them the foul things" — either it is kept out of easy reach, or binding laws have removed it from their reach altogether. And relieves them of their burden. Among the characteristics of the prophet is this: he lifts the heavy load — the heavy load of ignorance, the heavy load of false traditions, the heavy load of foul, inhuman systems, the heavy load of dictatorships and despotisms and tyrannies and exploitations. Every heavy load he lifts from their shoulders. And the shackles that were upon them. What fetters and chains were these, then? When the prophet was raised up, had a chain been bound to the feet of every one of the people of Mecca? Had a shackle been placed on their necks? Were they all imprisoned? Clearly the shackles and chains were not of iron. They were shackles and chains — but of what kind? Think for yourself and find out. What kind of shackles and chains lay upon the hands and feet and necks of these people? The shackles and chains of bondage, the shackles and chains of submission to coercion, the shackles and chains of human-made traditions, ordinances, and impositions — and the prophet comes and undoes them. What is this but the forming of a human, monotheistic system? So those who believe in him, honor him, support him, and follow the light that has been sent down with him — those are the ones who prosper. The light and radiance sent down with him is this Qur'an, and they follow after it. They are the victorious, the ones who partake of felicity (falah) and who have reached the goal.