Lecture No. 1
topic
: faith
Basic principles of faith
1.
Faith in Allah (Tauheed /
oneness of Allah )
2.
Faith in prophets
(Nubuwwat and Risalat )
3.
The life in the
Hereafter (Day of judgment )
Belief
in the special terminology of Islam, means to believe in the Prophets of God as
such, that is to acknowledge that for our guidance God had vouchsafed to them
knowledge that was beyond the range of our intelligence and understanding, and,
on the basis of it, to affirm what was communicated to us by them as from God,
and to accept religion brought by them as Divine religion.
Basic
principles of faith
﴿قل هو
الله احد
0الله الصمد0
لم يلد
0 ولم يولد
0 ولم يكن
له كفوا
احد0 ﴾
“faith
in Allah is based on four premises”
The
Qur’an has clearly told us that the proof of the existence of Allah lies within
our selves. How can we, then deny something which is writ large on our very
foreheads as the proof of its veracity Allah says.
وفي
انفسكم افلا
تبصرون
“ who have sure faith, and within your own
selves, so do you not see? ”
in the
very depths of our hearts, it is etched that Allah exists. When struck with
hardships and misfortune, we seek his shelter because of our faithful nature
and religious instinct. There are, within us and all around us numerous proofs
of His existence. Our sub conscious that is our heart, unconsciously in Him,
but our conscious self, that is our reason, accepts His existence.
The second dogma of faith is that
Allah is the Sustainer of the whole Universe. It means that You have to believe
from the depth of Your heart that Allah alone is the Creator of all the world.
He alone created, out of nothing, the living organisms, the heavenly bodies and
all the visible as well as invisible world. He devised such marvelous canons
for all these worlds that the Scholars of medicine, chemistry, physics and
astronomy, have been able to discover only a few of them. He alone has the Full
knowledge about every big or small thing of all These worlds. It is written
with Him that how many leaves a tree has, what shape does a leaf carry, or how
many germs float in this world and what is their size and volume and what are
their constituents. He only knows how many rotating electrons an atom has, what
transitory changes occur in them, what is the nature of their statics and
dynamics, what forms they take and what are the characteristic of their
transformation.
Thus, He is the sustainer of the
world. He gave from to everything and he looks after them. He makes alteration
and changes in their conditions and character. He has predetermined every
detail and has placed such proofs in each atom of this universe that every
person with sufficient reason can trace Him and seek guidance from him. This is
the second dogma of faith and it is obligatory to accept it and believe it.
But, does one become a believer by
just accepting this as an article of faith? someone declares before You that
Allah alone is the creator of this universe and He alone is the sustainer of
everything. Would you accept him as a believer just because of his declaration?
Nay, this declaration alone is not enough to be a believer, because many
nations of the antiquity made this declaration. The idolators of the Quresh,
whose fetishism the prophet Muhammad repudiated and those against whom he waged
Jihad, also declared Allah the God of Gods and never denied his existence.
when you admit that Allah exists, is
the Sustainer of the worlds, is the lord of the incomparable Kingdom, then it
follows out of necessity that there should be no associate with Him in worship
nor should anyone besides him be worshipped in any form or shape to be
construed as his adversary. By the Grace of Allah, I had the good fortune to
arrive at a point in the interpretation of the Surah An-Nas(114), which
no other exegesis carries for the guidance of those who admit that Allah exists
is the master of all and is the lord of the worlds yet do not display that
unadulterated belief in the unity of Allah which indeed is a requirement of the
divinity of Allah this Surah says:
قل
اعوذ برب
الناس 0 ملك
الناس0 اله
الناس0
Thou
say: “I came under the shelter of the Lord of men, The King of men, The God of
men(114,1-3)
2. “
Faith in PROPHETS ”
Definition of Prophet:
The Prophets too are
human beings; they are not endowed with divinity because Divinity merits only
Allah the Peerless; The Prophets, however, have one distinctive feature that
the Revelation descends upon them; Allah Almighty says:
وما
ارسلناقبلك من
المرسلين الا
انهم لياكلون
الطعام ويمشون
في الاسواق
“And
we sent not before thee Messengers but that they ate food and walked in the
markets(bazaars).”
“faith
in the Prophets is based on three premises”
There
are people among the followers of other prophets who talk disparagingly about
prophets other then the ones they follows, but Islam has made it incumbent that
all prophets should be equally respected. If a person talks insolently of any
prophet or reproaches him, he violates the dictates of Islam. Allah says:
"امن
الرسول بما
انزل اليه
من ربه
والمؤمنون كل
امن با
لله وملئكته
وكتبه
ورسله لانفرق
بين احد
من رسله
وقالوا سمعنا
واطعنا غفرانك
ربنا واليك
المصير"
The
Messenger accepted what was sent down on him from his Lord and the Muslims too.
All of them believed in God and in His Angels and in His Books and His
Messengers they say, “We make no division between any one of His Messengers”
and they spoke out “We heard and accepted we want thy pardon, Our Lord and unto
Thee is our return”
In other
words, a Muslim loves and respects Moses and Jesus just as he loves and respect
the prophet SAW. He reveres them all, like his own prophet SAW, without
discrimination. This means that it a Jew becomes a Christian he does not
undergo any loss of not believing in
Moses; he rather, benefits by believing in both Moses and Jesus. If after this,
this Christian becomes a Muslim, he is not at a loss of not believing in the
prophet SAW as well as believing in all the prophets and messengers.
All Prophets are human beings; they
are born like other human beings and die like them. They fall ill like other
human beings and recover also like them. They are not any whit different from
other human beings so far as the structure of their bodies, the outward
appearance of their limbs and organs, the circulation of blood and the function
of the heart is concerned. They eat and drink like other human beings. It is
only to indicate that they have no features of Divinity which behaves only Allah and is reserved for Him. However
,in spite of being human beings, they have one distinction that the
Revelation descends on them from Allah .
And ,this is not an
ordinary things. the earlier communities were flabbergasted when the Revelation
descended upon man from Allah , on which Allah called their perplexity improper
and said.
اكان
للناس عجبا
ان اوحينا
الي رجل
منهم ان
انذر الناس
وبشرالذ ين
امنواان لهم
قدم صدق
عند ربهم
Was
it a wonder to the people that we revealed to a man from among them : ‘Warn the
people and give good tidings to the Believers that they have a true footing
with their Lord?’
قل
انما
انا
بشر
مثلكم
يوحي
الي
انما
الهكم
اله
واحد
Thou say : I am
also a man as you are, the order comes to me that upon you the worship is of
One Single Sovereign.
قالوا
ابعث الله
بشرا رسولا
They
said : “Has God sent forth a mortal as Messenger?”
When the
incidence of Ascension {Mi’raj} took place and the prophet SAW was transported
from Makkah to Quds .and he SAW returned
the same night the Quresh did not believe it. In their opinion is was
impossible because it was inconceivable ,with the then available means of
transport {camels, horses, etc.}to travel such a long distance and return in
the same night but this very impossible thing has not only became possible in
our times but has become common…and nobody is amazed at that nor any body
denies it.
A
century or two ago .if the greatest physicist was told that soon people will
fly in “ metallic machines” and that they will fly faster than sound ,or that
it will be possible to record somebody’s speech ,etc, which may be later
reproduced at any time ,even after his death ,even that scholar would have
shaken his head in disbelief, whereas, it has become a common thing today which
all know .
How did all these
impossible things become possible after all? it may be said that
impossible are of two types: One is the
Common impossible .{muhal’adi} occurrences which we are not used to see while
happening and we consider them impossible only because of hat .Its example is
the incident of Ascension or other miracles. the second type of “impossible.”
is that the occurrence of which is rationally impossible, such as the
co-existence of opposites {ijtima-i-diddain} for example ,existence and non
–existence are opposites of each other, and is impossible for any one to be
present at one place and absent from it at the same time. Similarly, things
cannot assume different forms at the same time : a book, while” it is a book,
cannot become a morsel of bread at he same time.
The
rationally impossible “occurrences” are inconceivable but the so-called
impossible occurrences in ordinary circumstances have become possible through
our scientific knowledge and progress and have become commonplace Is it not
possible for Allah ,the All-Powerful, who originated these laws Himself ,to
make impossible, possible? certainly, the Omnipotent Allah is competent to make
a thing , impossible in the ordinary circumstances, happen .therefore. If we
hear through a true report that a thing impossible under the ordinary
circumstances has occurred, we will take it as a real happening and will accept
it.
The life
in the Hereafter is the true life .The short- sighted are unable to see it and
the feeble –minded do not believe what they are told about it .But one endowed
with vision and possessed of wisdom and comprehension know that the human life
passes through stages.
There
was a time when this very man was lying in the womb of his mother in a
contracted and shrunken position and as breathing in this limited world of his
.if he could think at that time ,he would have considered this state as his
real life and would have never agreed to leave it and emerge from the womb of
his mother, unless forcibly removed from
it .if he were able to speak, he would have considered his emergence as his
death and would have construed it as being buried in a dark dungeon, although
is was his birth ,which meant that be was to inhabit this vast and wide world
after leaving the womb of his mother.
In the
same way we consider death banishment from his world ,although that too is a
kind of our re –birth and progress to a very comfortable life, that is
,transfer to purgatory or limbo {Barzakh}which is a temporary halting place
between this material and transitory world and the eternal world of the
Hereafter.
It is
related that a Companion once enquired from the Prophet , “O Messenger of God,
who will God raise up his creatures from the dead ? Is there anything like it
here in this world which may be cited as example ?,The Prophet replied, Has it
never accrued to your that your may have passed by a stretch of land in your country and found it dry and
bereft of all vegetation ,and then ,on coming upon it again ,after sometime ,discovered that it was
covered lavishly with fresh ,green grass?. The Companion replied, “yes” ,may
master. It has .The Prophet remarked ,This typifies resurrection. God will
raise from the dead in the same manner.
The fruit of faith
is that mental attitude which the prophet {SWS} epitomized in one of his famous
remarks, which is so comprehensive, positive and eloquent that no other
remark can match it .In fact ,these all_
comprehensive remarks are a testimony to his prophet hood. Defining
kindness,{ihsan} he said
{worship Allah as
if your are seeing Him because if your do not see Him He surely sees you}
One of the fruits
of faith is to remember Allah at all times .I once read about a pious man{whose
mane I do not remember } How his mystic initiation began. He had a devoted and
virtuous uncle He asked his uncle ,one day ,that he too wanted to be as devoted
to Allah as he {the uncle } was and requested his uncle to guide him to such
deeds as would make him virtuous.
His uncle told him
“ Repeat thrice a day that Allah is watching me and is aware of every thing ‘
He continued this practice fro a week. after which his uncle ordered him to
repeat the same words thrice after every prayer .He started that practice as well
and spent another week in it .Then his uncle ordered him to repeat these words
mentally, instead of orally. The man continued this practice and as a result of
this he always remembered Allah and never
became oblivious of Him.
Allah , in the
Qur’an ,has not emphasized anything more than his remembrance and He has
appreciated those who invoke Him more than anyone else .
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