Ep 23 — The Outcome of Prophethood (2)

Session 21: The Outcome of Prophethood (2). delivered Wednesday, 17 Mehr 1353 / 22 Ramadan al-Mubarak 1394 Surat Ghafir (40:51-54). Indeed, We will surely help Our messengers and those who believe, in the life of this world and on the Day when the witnesses arise — the Day when their excuses will be of no benefit to the wrongdoers; and theirs is the curse, and theirs is the evil abode. And We had certainly given Moses guidance, and We bequeathed to the Children of Israel the Book — a guidance and a remembrance for those endowed with understanding. Yesterday we said that God's promise to the prophets and messengers — His promise concerning their mission among the people — is a promise full of hope and glad tidings. God the Exalted has promised His prophets, and those who bear the trust of the prophetic mission, and everyone who calls toward religion, truth, and reality, that they will triumph over their enemies in this world, and in the next world receive their reward. And everything that can be said about the victory of the prophets, peace be upon them, I summarized into two points. The first point is this. When we examine the chain of the prophets across history, from first to last, we see that, taken as a whole, these teachers of mankind succeeded and triumphed. True, some of them met with failures, and with the people's ingratitude, in the course of their call, or even up to its very end. But reckon the matter as a whole, and we see that the dear prophets, from the first of them to the last, accomplished the very work they had set out to accomplish. I compared the prophets to teachers who wish to educate a student from beginning to end, one after another. Six teachers, ten teachers, fifteen teachers — from the lower grades up to the higher — they want to keep passing this child along, hand to hand, so that he may rise from the depths of ignorance to the summit of knowledge. Now, what is our judgment about the success or failure of that first-grade teacher? He lays before the child only a small stretch of the road and helps him cross it; he does not live to see this student reach the peak of his perfection, and passes away before that. Do we say he failed, because he could not carry this child all the way to the final stage, because he could not see him reach the final rank? No. He did his own work. He handed the trust to the next person only after he had fulfilled his own share of the responsibility. Another example we have always given here runs like this. A very heavy, exhausting load must be carried from one end of the mosque to the other. No single person can lift it onto his shoulders and carry it there alone, with no one else's help. Nor can all the people together lift this load at once and carry it to the end. One way remains. One of the several strong men gathered here, ready to lift the load, picks it up and carries it forward one meter; then a second takes the load from the one-meter mark and carries it to the two-meter mark; the third does the same, and the fourth, and the twenty-seventh, the twenty-eighth, the thirtieth — and so this load reaches the far end of the hall, across a distance of some thirty-three or thirty-four meters. That distance was crossed; that load was carried. But each of these men who lifted it could advance it only one meter — and for that single meter of advance, it may even be that he gave up his very life. So heavy is this load that to push it forward even a single meter, a person is compelled to sacrifice his own life on this path — and indeed he did sacrifice it. Yet the sum total here amounts to this: one precious life given as a ransom for one stage of the road crossed, for one stage of the load brought nearer to its destination. The prophets are those robust, powerful men, each of whom carried this load forward by one meter. Noah, peace be upon him, came and pushed this load — the load of guiding mankind and bringing the human race to the summit of culture and virtue — forward by one meter. Even though in that single meter he endured torments, even though he preached for nine hundred and fifty years and had only just advanced a little, even though in the end he gave his life over this work — did he, in the end, fulfill his duty or not? Did he bring this load one meter nearer to its destination, or not? You see that he did. After Noah, the next prophet takes this load from him and likewise advances it one meter. A third comes, and he too advances it one meter. Then the Seal of the Prophets, may God's blessings be upon him and his household, arrives and is commissioned to his mission. He takes this load — which had reached a certain appointed limit — and sets it upon a road where it rolls along on its rails and moves forward: humanity has reached maturity. So the prophets, from the first to the last, succeeded. And at the conclusion of the work stands the last divine emissary, of whom we also wrote in these papers. The appearance of the Awaited One (the Wali of the Age), may God's blessings be upon him, is itself a glad tiding to all the godly and to all the "national-minded" of the world. This last appointee of God — whom we hold to be our own Imam of the Age, and whom all the "national-minded" of the world await — will come and bring this load all the way to its final point. And whose work is the Imam of the Age continuing? He is continuing the work of Noah, the work of Abraham, the work of Moses, the work of Jesus, the work of our own Prophet, and the work of the pure Imams from the household of the Prophet. Had this load not reached its end, Noah would have failed. But because it will reach its end — because he too had a share in bringing it there — Noah is not a failure; Abraham is not a failure; Zachariah, whose body was sawn in two, is not a failure; that prophet whom they threw into the well is not a failure. It is true that he fell into the well; it is true that in this world he did not see what he longed to see; it is true that Yahya (John), peace be upon him, had his head severed for the tyrant of his age and was sent as a gift. All of this is true — but none of these men were defeated. Why? Because they bore these calamities and afflictions at the price of pushing the load of the trust forward and bringing it nearer to its destination. There is another point I touched on yesterday. Looking at the final outcome of the work, we saw that defeat never awaits the prophets: in the end they all triumphed and succeeded, in the sense I have explained. But some of the prophets, beyond that final triumph of bringing the load one meter nearer to its destination, attained certain successes in this world as well. Those successes lay in their being able to bring into existence a society built upon monotheistic thought and upon the school they proposed. The clearest instance is our own Prophet, who — upon the foundation of Islamic thought, the Qur'anic mode of thought, and the inspiration of God — brought into being a society, a polity (madinah), a community, an order. And many of the past prophets were of the same type, as I also mentioned yesterday. The conversion of the Roman Empire came after the departure of Jesus; the virtuous society of the Children of Israel took shape after the passing of Moses. Abraham established the divine society during his own lifetime — of this the Qur'an speaks. Solomon spread divine rule throughout the entire world. This Israelite prophet, Solomon, son of David, gathered the whole world into a single monotheistic, divine society, around one another and around a single axis. So some of the prophets did attain successes and triumphs even during their own lifetimes, and these triumphs came down to what? To the establishment of a divine, monotheistic order and society. Some of the prophets had no such opportunity. Like whom? Like Zachariah and Yahya, whom I gave as examples — they failed in their lifetimes and were killed in the end; and like certain others among the prophets before them. What is this? How is it to be analyzed and explained? Why do some of the prophets succeed and others fail? Why can they not all establish the divine, monotheistic society? Why do only some attain this possibility and this success? The answer lies in a single short sentence. Everywhere the divine men, leaders, and great ones won their successes, those successes hung upon faith and patience. And everywhere the great divine leaders and callers to truth were defeated, it was because they did not have a sufficient measure of faith or of patience — without exception. It has been just so everywhere. Wherever the companions of the prophet and the believers in him held to patience in the struggle against the enemies of the prophet's call, they pushed forward. What victory and progress require is already present in the call of the prophets, because the prophets speak in accordance with truth, they act in accordance with truth, and truth is victorious. Truth accords with the nature and disposition of the world, and so it succeeds and prevails. The prophets too speak in accordance with the disposition of the world; therefore the substance of success in the movement of the prophets, in the revolution of the prophets, is fully present. If you see that some prophet in history was defeated, do not take this as proof that the word of truth must be defeated — no, the word of truth must be victorious, the order of truth must prevail, the hand of truth must strike falsehood upon the head and shatter it to pieces. So why does a prophet sometimes meet defeat? Because the followers of the prophet do not have sufficient faith or sufficient patience; they do not exert patience. Otherwise, as the verse of the Qur'an — that very verse we recited yesterday — says: And Our word has already gone forth to Our servants, the messengers: that it is they who will be helped, and that it is Our host that will surely be the victors. Our host, Our army, Our people are the ones who prevail — this word of God admits no exception. If you ever saw those who spoke the word of truth go down in defeat, know that they were not the host of God: the conditions for being the host of God were not present in them. And those others who engineered that victory, who engineered that defeat and prepared its ground — they too were not the host of God. On the day the Islamic society is the host of God, it pushes forward; on the day it falls behind, it is not the host of God, it is not the army of God, it is not the troops of God. It all comes down to two things: the cause of defeats on the one hand, the cause of victories on the other. Wherever the followers of the prophet built complete faith and complete certainty within themselves and stood firm upon the word of truth, they succeeded and pushed forward, and defeat had no place in their affair. Yesterday I related something on the authority of one of the great figures of our own near-contemporary history, who used to tell his friends: "When you are able, struggle. When you see that you are being defeated, struggle still — until you reach that moment when you become certain that, yes, you will surely be defeated — even then, struggle on. When, at the very moment that you are certain you will be defeated, you still continue your effort, your striving, and your struggle, then victory and triumph will be granted to you." A verse of the Qur'an says almost this same thing — indeed, says it outright. It says: …until, when the messengers despaired and thought that they had been denied, Our help came to them… It reached a point where the opposing front's blows against the prophets grew so severe that the prophets themselves lost hope. It reached a point where the prophets and the people with them had their hearts shaken — not in their faith, for their faith did not vanish and they did not lose their belief in God, but in their certainty of victory. Because they had believed they would win, that certainty faltered, and they imagined they had misunderstood. They had been certain that God had told them, "You will surely be victorious." Yet they began to think that perhaps they had misunderstood, that God had made them no such promise. Wa zannu annahum qad kudhibu — "and they thought that they had been denied" — ja'ahum nasruna — "Our help came to them." In that very moment — when, from the intensity of the pressure and the severity of the enemy's blows, the front of truth and religion felt that it was now surely being destroyed, that it was perishing, that the enemy was gaining the upper hand and the roads were closing in — in that very moment, because it still persevered and still strove, the help and succor of God arrived. That is what this verse of the Qur'an tells us. We imagine that throughout history some of the movements calling toward truth were defeated. Zayd ibn 'Ali was struck in the forehead by an arrow in the mosque of Kufa and fell. Muhammad ibn 'Abdullah, the one called "the Pure Soul" (al-Nafs al-Zakiyyah), was defeated in his struggle against Mansur. Husayn ibn 'Ali al-Hasani, the martyr of Fakhkh, was killed near Medina together with all his companions. Ibrahim ibn 'Abdullah was slain in Kufa or Basra. From all of this, we imagine, we are meant to draw one general lesson: that wherever a movement of truth rose up against falsehood, it is condemned to defeat. A group of ignorant people, who know nothing of the logic of the Qur'an, hold exactly this notion. As I said, this notion settles, like sweet water, into the hearts of the powerful and the tyrants of history. They pray to the Lord of both worlds that the people should go on thinking this way. And of course they promote this way of thinking themselves. But it runs contrary to reality. If Zayd ibn 'Ali is martyred there, in that defeated state, this is no proof that truth is condemned to extinction and defeat. Rather, it is proof that truth, even though it is truth, still needs work and striving. Let us not suppose that, because our word is truth, it is therefore unnecessary to strive on its behalf. Let us not think that, because our cause is the Qur'an, God Himself will therefore push the Qur'an forward — no! The word of truth is indeed truth, and the world is destined and certain to accept it in the future — but it requires effort, it requires activity. A group must exercise patience for its sake; a group must eat the blood of their own hearts to enthrone it. This is the lesson the episode of Zayd ibn 'Ali gives us; it does not teach us that truth is condemned to extinction. So why do they err? Zayd ibn 'Ali's word was true, and Imam al-Sadiq, peace be upon him, had endorsed his struggle against the apparatus of Hisham ibn 'Abd al-Malik. They had permitted him that wondrous struggle, and history speaks to this meaning. This noble man set out, and he arranged matters well too. Only, a group of people — ignorant and unaware, or fault-seeking, or under the influence of the evil propaganda of a vigilant enemy — forsook him at the necessary moment and left him alone. This is the lesson we learn from that episode: even if a word is true, even with the rightfulness of Zayd ibn 'Ali's word, his followers and supporters are defeated if they leave him alone and exert no effort on his path and at his side — and if they do struggle, they push forward. All the affairs of the world are just so. How many people in the world do you know of — how many ideas, how many schools of thought — whose followers and friends, through their effort and struggle, enthroned that school of thought? How is it that false words, untrue words, words contrary to the way of the world and the nature of man, are enthroned through effort and struggle, yet the word of truth is not enthroned through struggle? What kind of talk is this? Yet some people do indeed say this very absurd, false thing. The Commander of the Faithful (Amir al-Mu'minin), may God's blessings be upon him, makes this matter entirely clear in one short sermon of the Nahj al-Balaghah. I did not intend today to go into great detail, and I will not; I would rather explain these verses. But for now I will recount this sermon for you as well. The Commander of the Faithful describes the advances of the soldiers of Islam in the time of the Prophet. He says: A saying is related: Wa laqad kunna ma'a rasuli'llahi naqtulu aba'ana wa abna'ana wa ikhwanana wa a'mamana — "We were with the Messenger of God, slaying our fathers, our sons, our brothers, and our uncles…" He says: when we stood beside the Prophet and in the Prophet's ranks, this is how we acted. When we went onto the battlefield, we slew our own fathers, our own sons, our own brothers, our own uncles who stood in the front ranks of unbelief and polytheism. If our uncle, our father, our son, our brother came under the banner of unbelief to make war on the Prophet, we — who had gone forth with the Prophet — did not say, "This is my brother, let me spare him; this is my son, let me spare him." Without hesitation we mowed them all down in the way of God. And afterward, when we had killed them and were returning, our hearts were not shaken within us so as to cry out, "Alas, woe! Look what we have done! For the sake of this new religion, this new thought, we have killed our own beloved child!" — no. Our faith did not lessen as a result of this sharp and decisive deed; it increased. Ma yaziduna dhalika illa imanan wa tasliman — "that only increased us in faith and submission" — this struggle of ours only added to our faith and our submission. Wa mudiyyan 'ala al-haqqi wa sabran 'ala madadi al-alam — this struggle of ours drove us to press on more decisively upon the truth in difficult matters, and to bear more patiently the pains and torments of the struggle. Then the Commander of the Faithful goes on to describe the battlefields there in brief. He said: Wa jiddan fi jihadi al-'aduwwi. Wa laqad kana al-rajulu minna wa al-akharu min 'aduwwina yatasawalani tasawula al-fahlayni yatakhalasani anfusahuma: ayyuhuma yasqi sahibahu ka'sa al-manun — which I do not wish to expound — namely, how our soldier in battle would leap upon the enemy, how he would lock with him, how our soldiers and the champions of Islam would race one another toward death. These I will leave aside. Then, at the very end of this same short sermon, he says: A saying is related: Fa-lamma ra'a'llahu sidqana anzala bi-'aduwwina al-kabta wa anzala 'alayna al-nasr — "So when God saw our truthfulness, He sent down humiliation upon our enemy and sent down victory upon us." We struggled to such an extent that God saw that we were speaking truthfully, saw that we were truly Muslims, saw that we were truly believers — that we proved our deep faith by our deeds. And when we acted in this way, then the crushing of our enemies and victory for us descended upon us from God. He utters a few further sentences, and then he says: A saying is related: Wa la-'amri law kunna na'ti ma ataytum ma qama li-l-dini 'amudun wa la-khdarra li-l-imani 'udun — "And by my life, had we done what you are doing, not a single pillar of the religion would have stood, and not a single branch of faith would have grown green." The Commander of the Faithful says this during his caliphate, when he was confronting a handful of lazy, comfort-seeking men. When he said, "Come, let us go to the war against Mu'awiyah," they made excuses; when it was time to go to the war against Talhah and Zubayr, they fabricated a thousand kinds of religious justification for staying behind. In short, they were comfort-seeking, life-seeking, ease-seeking people, far from divine knowledge — such were the men he was dealing with. Weak, base, slack, abject, surrendered to humiliation, accustomed to comfort: with such men the Commander of the Faithful was contending. He says to them, Wa la-'amri — "by my own life I swear" — law kunna na'ti ma ataytum — "had we, in that day with the Prophet, done the very thing you are doing today," O Muslims, ma qama li-l-dini 'amudun wa la-khdarra li-l-imani 'udun — not one pillar among the pillars of the religion would have stood erect, not one branch among the branches of faith would have grown green. What do you understand from this sermon? The word of the Commander of the Faithful is nothing other than the word of the Prophet, for the path that 'Ali trod is the very path his brother the Prophet trod. So why, in that earlier day, did the Prophet of God advance so far, while in the time of the Commander of the Faithful affairs came to such a standstill? The Commander of the Faithful states the secret. Because in that day, he says, we were patient on the battlefields; in that day we were patient under the burning of pain; in that day we were ready to rise from our beds onto the battlefield; in that day we were ready to give up our material interests and our livelihoods for the sake of God — but today you are not ready. In that day we advanced; today we fall behind. A very simple, clear matter — two times two is four. This is the social analysis of the Commander of the Faithful. Here, then, is the summary of the matter. Across the chain of prophethoods, their work is accompanied by victory, and at its conclusion the eternal and final triumph belongs to them. But there is more: even in this very world the prophets are certain to attain victory and to achieve their own aims and the aims of their school. There is one condition — that their followers and companions bring real faith, render aid, and stay patient on the fields of struggle and jihad. Faith and patience: that is the upshot of the discourse. Now let us return to the verses of the Qur'an. Today I have chosen verses from several places in the Noble Qur'an, and I found that it holds even more verses of glad tiding than these. One is in Surat al-Mu'min (Ghafir), where He says: Indeed, We will surely help Our messengers and those who believe, in the life of this world and on the Day when the witnesses arise. I would regret not explaining these verses, so let me read them now. Inna la-nansuru rusulana wa alladhina amanu — "Indeed, We will surely help Our messengers and those who believe." The lam in la-nansuru is for certainty and emphasis, and inna too carries this same sense of verification and emphasis. That is to say: We, definitively and without any doubt, help — rusulana, "Our messengers." Only the messengers? No — wa alladhina amanu, "and those who believe," the believers as well. The believer who moves along the path of the prophet: this promise is for him too. The pure-natured people who set out following the call of the prophets: this promise is for them too — wa alladhina amanu. And where do We help them? Fi al-hayati al-dunya — "in the life of this world": right here, in this very worldly life, We help them; We do not leave it for later. Wa yawma yaqumu al-ashhad — "and on the Day when the witnesses arise." That the witnesses arise is, in some commentaries, interpreted as the Day of Resurrection. There is a tradition concerning this noble verse in which the Imam, peace be upon him, told Jamil ibn Darraj — according to that tradition — that God's help to the prophets means their being helped in the world of the Return (raj'ah). That is to say: the Wali of the Age, may God's blessings be upon him, comes. That all-encompassing divine government takes hold in this world. The banner of the Qur'an and Islam is planted across the entire world; all the people turn toward religion, God, and monotheism; the single divine government comes into being. After that, God the Exalted brings back to life the prophets, the messengers, the executors of the prophets (awsiya'), the martyrs, and the righteous among the believers — in accordance with verses of the Qur'an interpreted to this meaning, and traditions that are explicit on it. I will not now go into the discussion of the Return. In this narration the Imam says that this verse is connected to the Return, and that the help is for the Return. But I myself imagine that the Imam, peace be upon him, does not wish to interpret this phrase — fi al-hayati al-dunya — as referring to the Return. He does not wish to say that when God states We help them in the life of this world, He means "in the Return within the life of this world." I think it is yawma yaqumu al-ashhad that is being interpreted as the Return, and not as the Resurrection — for what helping is there in the Resurrection? In the era of the Return, God the Exalted helps the prophets. This I offer only as a probability, and I draw the inference from this narration only as a probability. At any rate, even if we set aside this benefit altogether, the phrase fi al-hayati al-dunya itself — on its apparent meaning, and by the indication of the verses that come afterward as well — shows that God the Exalted gives an explicit promise to the prophets and to the believers: in this very worldly life, We will help you. The verse goes on: The Day when their excuse will not benefit the wrongdoers; and theirs is the curse, and theirs is the evil abode. Yawma yaqumu al-ashhad — who is it that arises? When do the witnesses arise? At that time when the apology of the wrongdoers will be of no benefit to them. There is another verse in the Qur'an: …the Day when a sign of your Lord comes, no soul will benefit from its faith if it did not believe before… This too is interpreted as the era of the coming of the Wali of the Age — it may well be the same era. Wa lahumu al-la'nah — the curse is upon the wrongdoers. Wa lahum su'u al-dar — theirs is a most ill-omened, evil abode. Then, to bring a witness to the fact that We help the prophets, He cites the episode of Moses. Before this verse, from the early part of Surat al-Mu'min, the discourse is mostly about Moses and his struggles against Pharaoh. So here too — where He gives the promise of help to all the prophets — He offers one instance, one example: And We had certainly given Moses guidance, and We bequeathed to the Children of Israel the Book — a guidance and a remembrance for those endowed with understanding. Wa laqad atayna Musa al-huda — "We gave Moses guidance and right-guidedness." Wa awrathna Bani Isra'ila al-kitab — "and We bequeathed the Book to the Children of Israel as an inheritance." The Children of Israel remained possessors of the Book, possessors of the whole collection of divine knowledge and ordinances. This shows that they succeeded. Had the unbelievers and tyrants of the age prevailed over them, they would never have allowed them to live by their own heavenly Book; they would have destroyed the Book from among them. Hudan wa dhikra li-uli al-albab — this Book is guidance, right-guidance, and awareness for those endowed with intellect and reason. Fa-sbir — then, this matter concluded, He addresses the Seal of the Prophets: Fa-sbir — "so be patient, persevere, resist the impulses that bring about decline." Inna wa'da'llahi haqq — without doubt, God's promise is true. This is the promise God has given, that you will be victorious — the promise in Surat al-Saffat: Wa laqad sabaqat kalimatuna li-'ibadina al-mursalin, innahum lahumu al-mansurun — and the other promises throughout the Qur'an. They are true, they are correct. You will surely be victorious, O Prophet, in accordance with the divine promise — but the condition for it is patience. Fa-sbir — you must be patient, you must resist and persevere, you must not turn back from the sacred contest you have undertaken. So be patient — indeed, the promise of God is true — and seek forgiveness for your sin, and glorify your Lord with praise in the evening and the morning. Fa-sbir inna wa'da'llahi haqq, wa-staghfir li-dhanbik — "and seek forgiveness for your sin." The Prophet's sin, the sin in the Prophet's category, is not of the type of our sins. The Prophet is infallible — this is certain. By the explicit text of the Qur'anic verses and by the judgment of reason, the Prophet does not sin. This "sin" is the kind of lapse that, for a human being of that station, counts as a lapse — even though, if you and I were to do the very same thing, it would be no lapse at all. Those are the sins He speaks of, those are the lapses. Wa-staghfir li-dhanbik — ask pardon, seek forgiveness, and make amends for your small lapses of the past. Wa sabbih bi-hamdi rabbika bi-l-'ashiyyi wa-l-ibkar — "and glorify, and praise your Lord, in every evening and every morning." This verse teaches us very clearly that the outcome of the prophets' work is the help of God. Now, the verses of Surat al-Anbiya' work in the same way. Surat al-Anbiya' is in the seventeenth juz', after Surat Ta Ha, and its verses are excellent; I recommend to those friends who have intimacy with the Qur'an that they read it carefully. From the beginning of the sura, God the Exalted says again and again that the prophets will be victorious, the enemies of the prophets will be crushed, and — in this world too, before the next — they will be punished. Then, after repeating these matters somewhat, He turns to history. He recounts the story of Moses, the victory of Moses and the defeat of the power opposing him; the story of Abraham, the victory of Abraham and the defeat of the powers opposing him; the stories of Noah, of Solomon, and others. Every episode in the sura takes this form: the prophet advances, succeeds, is victorious; and the anti-prophet — the counter-revolution against the prophet, the reaction that opposes prophethood and its new word — is overcome, is subdued, is defeated. And this is the way (sunnah) of history. He says: And We did not send before you any but men to whom We revealed… — these are the verses at the beginning of the sura — before you, We sent prophets and gave them revelation. Wa ma ja'alnahum jasadan la ya'kuluna al-ta'am (21:8) — "We did not make them bodies that did not eat food": We did not make them into angels who have no body and need no food. Wa ma kanu khalidin — nor were they immortal. They too died in the end. But — thumma sadaqnahumu al-wa'd (21:9) — "then We fulfilled for them the promise": We made Our promise of victory come true for them. Fa-anjaynahum wa man nasha' — "We saved them and whomever We willed": We saved the prophets, and whomever else We willed We saved along with them. Wa ahlakna al-musrifin — "and We destroyed the transgressors": We destroyed the transgressors. Laqad anzalna ilaykum kitaban fihi dhikrukum, a-fa-la ta'qilun (21:10) — "We have sent down to you a Book in which is your remembrance": now to you too, O believers, We have sent down a Book, a Qur'an, in which is your remembrance and your reminder. A-fa-la ta'qilun — "do you not, then, use reason? Do you not reflect?" Then He arrives at verse eleven, and He says: And how many a town that was wrongdoing have We shattered… Wa kam qasamna min qaryatin — this is truly a hymn to the victory of the prophets, a stirring anthem of how greatly the Lord of the world made them succeed through His unseen aids. And these are not the kind of unseen aid the common people wish for and love, where a hand reaches out from the unseen to strike the enemy in the chest. No — they are unseen aids concealed within the very womb of this world, working through the world's own disposition and the nature of man and the cosmos. Through these aids, how greatly did the Lord of the world make the prophets succeed. Wa kam qasamna min qaryatin — how many, and how often, did We shatter the settlement and society that kanat zalimah, that was wrongdoing. The wrongdoing society, the wrongdoing order, the wrongdoing civilization — the society in whose very construction injustice was employed, in which class divisions arose and exploitation was established, the exploitation of man by man: this is "the wrongdoing town," this is "the wrongdoing society," the one founded on tyranny — how many of these did We shatter! Wa kam qasamna — that is, "how many did We shatter, We crushed." Wa qasamna means "We shattered, We pulverized." Min qaryatin kanat zalimatan wa ansh'ana ba'daha qawman akharin — "and after them We raised up another people": after them We brought into being another people, another group, another class, and set them to the work. He goes on: Then, when they perceived Our might, at once they fled from it. [It was said:\ Do not flee, but return to the luxury you were given and to your dwellings, that you might be questioned. They said: Woe to us, indeed we were wrongdoers! And that did not cease to be their cry until We made them stubble, extinguished.,nofn] Fa-lamma ahassu ba'sana — this describes the wrongdoers' misery at the moment they behold the punishment of God. The very moment those wrongdoers sensed Our wrath — whether a heavenly punishment descended, say, or whether they saw the believers charge upon them alongside their prophet, about to bring down the sword of God's wrath upon their heads — the moment they sensed Our wrath, idha hum minha yarkudun — suddenly, from those settlements, from that civilization, from that society, they took to flight. La tarkudu — "do not flee"; wa-rji'u ila ma utriftum fihi — "and return to the luxury you were given": return to those palaces where you lived in ease, back to the city where you lorded over others and boasted — where are you fleeing to? Wa-rji'u ila ma utriftum fihi wa masakinikum — "and to your dwellings." La'allakum tus'alun — "that you might be questioned": perhaps they wish to interrogate you — where are you going? Qalu ya waylana inna kunna zalimin — they said, "Woe to us! Woe to us, for we were oppressors and wrongdoers." Fa-ma zalat tilka da'wahum — this remained their cry; hatta ja'alnahum hasidan khamidin — "and they kept on speaking in this way until We made them all prey to death and annihilation." These next verses state the intellectual foundation of this historical reality. Why did things become this way? Why must the wrongdoers be destroyed and the oppressed take their place? Why must the prophet's call surely advance and his opponents be crushed? The cause is this: And We did not create the heaven and the earth and what is between them in play. Had We wished to take a diversion, We would have taken it from within Ourselves — if We were to do so. Wa ma khalaqna al-sama'a wa-l-arda wa ma baynahuma la'ibin — We did not create the heaven and the earth and what is between them in vain. Law aradna an nattakhidha lahwan la-attakhadhnahu min ladunna in kunna fa'ilin — had We wished to do a frivolous thing, We would certainly have done it; We would have done it of Our own self — if We were the doers of such a thing — but We never do. The Lord of the world does nothing vain, nothing false, nothing futile. What does this mean? It means that this heaven and earth, and all that lies between them, We created according to a purpose — for the attainment of an aim and a goal. Truth (haqq) is the line of progression of this heaven and earth, and of whatever is in them, toward that goal. The path that brings the heaven and the earth and their creatures to that destination, that aim and goal for which they were created — that line of progression is truth. And any means that brings human beings to that destination is itself truth. None of this is stated outright in the verse; rather, this is its import — reflect upon the verse, and it is quite clear. This is the foundation of the Qur'an: much of what is already understood and clear, that the human intellect arrives at on its own, it does not bother to make explicit. Then He continues: Rather, We hurl the truth against falsehood, and it crushes it, and at once it vanishes. And woe to you for what you describe. Bal naqdhifu bi-l-haqqi 'ala al-batili — rather, We strike falsehood with the means of truth. This path of truth, this correct way, this innate and natural way of man and the world, will in the end triumph over falsehood; We make the truth prevail over it. Fa-yadmaghuhu — so this truth utterly effaces and annihilates falsehood. Fa-idha huwa zahiq — then you see falsehood as it perishes, heading toward annihilation. Wa lakumu al-waylu mimma tasifun — then for you, O wrongdoers, O oppressors, O followers of falsehood and deniers of truth, is woe; for you is wretchedness and ruin. Wa lakumu al-waylu mimma tasifun — woe to you for what you have described and asserted. Then He continues in a most interesting and beautiful Qur'anic style — and to grasp these subtleties correctly, a person must become intimate with the Qur'an. Those who miss these fine points and refinements of the Qur'an usually have no intimacy with it. Once a person grows intimate with the Qur'an, its tone of speech becomes familiar to his ear, and he understands how it is speaking. He discusses this matter: the coming of truth and the going of falsehood, the victory of truth and the defeat of falsehood. Then, regarding the creation of the heaven and the earth, He once again takes hold of the point that the Lord of the world owns the heaven and the earth and rules over every region of the world of existence. Therefore, in the life of human beings too He must hold sway; in the system of human life He must give the law, administer, and govern. And so those who laid claim to government, power, and dominion in opposition to the prophets were upon falsehood and are condemned to annihilation. O Lord! By Muhammad and the household of Muhammad, make us true followers of Muhammad and the household of Muhammad. O Lord! By Muhammad and the household of Muhammad, do not separate us from them in this world, in life, and in the Hereafter. By Muhammad and the household of Muhammad, draw their kindness and their love toward us. O Lord! Make us followers and adherents of the Qur'an, and those who act upon the Qur'an.