Ep 3 — Faith (1)

Session 1: Faith (1). delivered Thursday, 28 Shahrivar 1353 / 2 Ramadan al-Mubarak 1394 Surat Al 'Imran (3:133-134). And hasten to a forgiveness from your Lord and to a Garden whose breadth is the heavens and the earth, prepared for the God-conscious — those who spend in prosperity and adversity, who restrain their anger and pardon people; and God loves those who do good. The monks of Christianity took up monasticism so that the hem of their garment should not be stained by sin; they fled to caves, to mountains, to desolate corners. The Qur'an says: And the monasticism which they invented — We did not prescribe it for them. That is: the monasticism they themselves brought forth, which they established as an innovation — We had not prescribed it for them. But the Muslim scholar has no monasticism, no seclusion, no flight. The Muslim scholar is precisely the one who strives to lay hold of the drowning man. An aware Muslim is exactly like this — and so is every Muslim, since being a Muslim and being responsible entail one another. He strives to save the drowning man, the cholera-stricken, the sick. Flight cannot do it. He makes himself God-conscious (muttaqi), possessed of taqwa — that is, he puts on the necessary equipment, the necessary armor, against the harm of sin, and then enters the zone of sin to take the sinners by the hand. This is what taqwa is. Once this is the meaning of taqwa, is it a prerequisite and a means for victory, or not? You see that it is a means of victory. Take the one who wishes to overcome this disease, to be victorious in this zone: if he were perpetually afraid that the microbe might take effect in his own body, how could he rescue those struck by it, those struck by cholera? He must first have made himself secure; he must be assured about himself, and only then enter the zone of the cholera-stricken and rescue the others. Then, too, he will attain victory. Then, too, he will accomplish this task with ease. And be conscious of God, that perhaps you may be the victorious. And be conscious of the Fire that has been prepared for the disbelievers. And obey God and the Messenger, that perhaps you may be shown mercy. Now, obedience to God is no different from obedience to the Prophet — so why does He say: obey God, and obey the Prophet? Is it not redundant to mention both together? No. Suppose He said only "Obey God," without naming the Prophet as a concrete instance and exemplar, without calling to mind obedience to the Prophet. Then even those who stand at the opposite pole from the Prophet could claim: we too are obeying God. The scope of claims is wide; anyone can openly profess the cause of religion and faith and taqwa. Anyone can claim to be a servant of God, obedient to Him. In the time of the Prophet, he claimed servitude to God and obedience to Him — but so did those on the opposing front who fought him and made trouble. The leaders and lords and monks of Christianity, and the rabbis of the Jews — they made the claim too: And the Jews and the Christians said, 'We are the sons of God.' They pitched it even a notch above the Prophet. He said, "I am the servant of God"; these said, "We are the children and the sons of God." They imagined that obedience to God was entirely at their disposal. Or, to put it another way: they do not even really believe it themselves. Some of those who disobey God merely pretend, in this manner, that they obey Him. Is that right or not? There are people who, when they sit alone with themselves, see what a black record they have; they understand that what they say is, from head to foot, a lie. Yet before the people they pretend, in this way, that they are the good servants of God, the obedient ones, the worshippers of the Lord. These must be set apart from the truly truth-worshipping people; they must be distinguished. This is why, here — in the station of explaining obedience and its necessity for the believers — God the Exalted speaks in this manner: And obey God and the Messenger. Had He not said "the Prophet," the enemies of the Prophet would have said, "We too are obedient to God." So it must be made clear what obedience to God means. Take those who consider themselves servants of God but are not servants of the command of God's law, who do not act upon the law, who are not bound to the requirements of this servitude — how can they say, "We are servants of God"? Obey God and the Messenger, that perhaps you may be shown mercy. What does the mercy of God mean? What does it mean to be placed within the mercy of God? Here, compare the expression of the Qur'an with our popular, vulgar notion. We say: if we are sinners, if we have disobeyed God, if we have not acted upon the obligatory duties, if we have not drawn our foot back from the forbidden zones of the Lord — we have only one hope. What is it? The mercy of God. That God should deal with us by His mercy, that God should have mercy upon us — this is our claim, this is our talk. It is the customary talk of our society and our people. And where do we place the mercy of God? Right there, where we did not act. When we have disobeyed, when we have trampled underfoot the forbidden zone of God, when we have not observed the divine responsibility — in just such cases we say: we have no deeds, unless God have mercy on us. We treat mercy — the mercy of God, the mercy of the Lord — as the rival of acting and the substitute for acting. The verse of the Qur'an is the reverse; it says: act, obey, that perhaps you may be placed within the mercy of the Lord. The mercy of God is for that time when a nation acts upon its responsibility — God has mercy upon a people when they obey Him, when they carry out their duties. Should seven hundred million Muslims sit awaiting the cloud of the Lord's mercy to rain down upon their heads, while they leave the roads open for the thieves of honor and the plunderers of religion to come and carry off everything they have? Sitting in hope of the mercy of God? Then tell them to keep sitting, for now! And obey God and the Messenger, that perhaps you may be shown mercy. What does it mean, "Obey God"? In what does obedience to God consist? It consists in this: we bear upon our shoulders all the duties and divine proofs, and we carry out what has been placed in our charge. As the noble verse of the Qur'an says: the believers are those who, when a dispute occurs among them, refer it to you, O Prophet — they have recourse to you — and when you have issued a ruling, then they find within themselves no discomfort from what you have judged. The command you have issued leaves not the least speck of resentment upon their spirits and their hearts, "and they submit in full submission." The true believer is like this. If a nation were like this, an ummah — if a body of people came under the command of God in this manner — then the mercy of the Lord and His infinite grace would encompass them; then an ummah attains lordship; then a nation reaches human maturity; then the captivities and chains are loosed from its hand and foot; then divine mercy encompasses it. And obey God and the Messenger, that perhaps you may be shown mercy. And hasten to a forgiveness from your Lord — here is the field of contest, the field of taking the lead and of racing. Outstrip one another, take the lead, toward a forgiveness and a Paradise "whose breadth is the heavens and the earth," from the side of your Lord, as wide as the heavens and the earth, made ready for the people of taqwa. There, one sign of taqwa and one result of taqwa was mentioned; here, the signs of taqwa will be mentioned one after another. O human being — for a handspan of earth, a measure of water and clay, in such-and-such a region of the world, you are ready to take the lead, ready to leave others behind, ready to put all your strength and powers to work. In the auction of such-and-such a piece of land, in acquiring such-and-such capital, in seizing such-and-such a shop, in taking such-and-such a corner of such-and-such a country, in setting up such-and-such a company in such-and-such a region of the world, in obtaining material privileges as much as possible — for these you are ready to compete, to gather speed, to leave others behind, even though you have trampled honors and virtues underfoot. O human being! They do not tell you: do not gather speed; they do not tell you: sleep at home, do not put your powers to work. Whoever says this to you in the name of religion lies and does not know. Religion does not say: leave your powers idle; religion says: gather speed, as much as possible; compete, as much as possible — but toward what? Toward that which is worthy of you, not toward a handspan of water and clay, not toward some trifling sum, not toward the material life of this world which, whatever it may be, is small and slight for you. O great human being! Toward something that befits your grandeur, that accords with your station — for the human being is the loftiest of the creatures of this world, the greatest of the grandeurs of existence after the Lord, lodged within this small and limited frame. O great human being, gather speed, compete, but toward what? To a forgiveness from your Lord and a Garden. Let your speed be toward the forgiveness of the Lord, toward that supernal divine Paradise before which all the heavens are small, and all the earth is but little against it. What does this mean? Pay close attention to the Qur'anic expressions so that you may understand well. The Qur'an says: if you wish to set your aspiration upon something, do not stop at the earth and the heaven — for you they are little and trifling. Set your aspiration on something higher than these. O great human being! Forgiveness is what matters for you. Higher than everything is forgiveness, and after forgiveness, that thing whose worth and grandeur is higher than the heavens and the earth. What does forgiveness (maghfirah) mean? We have seen it: we said to so-and-so, "Sir, I beg your pardon; I gave you an insult; forgive me." And he too — whether with airs and pride, or with good nature and graciousness, in whatever manner — said, "Very well, we have overlooked it." Somewhere an unintentional offense was committed; the person circles the one who holds the right, pleading, "Sir, forgive me, sir, be gracious," and he too says, "Very well, I have forgiven you." In some government or state office, a certain amount of tax was levied upon you — on what reckoning, rightly or wrongly, no one knows. You went, paid a courtesy, spoke a flattering word, said a couple of sentences, took someone along with you, a letter, a recommendation, a telephone call; and they said, "Very well, we have forgiven you a certain amount." Having seen these acts of pardon, we imagined that divine forgiveness, too, was of the same kind. Such-and-such a person has done wrong, has committed a crime, has sinned, has bred and stirred up corruption in the land, and deserves the chastisement of God; then, on the Day of Resurrection, on account of a single tear he shed or some show of attention he made, God is supposed to say, "Very well, now that it has come to this, We too have overlooked your faults; We have forgiven you." Is the forgiveness of God this? Hasten to a forgiveness — is this what it is saying? No. On the meaning of forgiveness (ghufran), too, I have spoken much. Ghufran means the healing and the filling of a void. Your body takes a wound; this thigh, this arm, takes a deep wound; here the flesh is torn open. They give you a salve, you apply a medicine, you take a vitamin, you have an injection — until it knits together, until it seeps and breeds, until at last it brings into being, beside itself, its own like, its own kind: that flesh of the body, that muscle of the body. The structures of your body go to work, this wound is filled, it finds healing. Keep before your eyes this healing of a wound, of an injury, so that I may draw it as a parable for ghufran; see how ghufran is. If your soul, in the station of parable, were like a body, then every sin you commit strikes a blow upon the soul and opens a wound. Why, sir? Why do we say that sin is a blow upon the soul? Because the soul must rise higher, and sin is anything that holds it back one step from its intended exaltation and perfection. In the station of likeness and parable, this is the wounding itself, the very gashing of the body of your soul. When that sin was committed, that deficiency took shape. You consumed people's property unlawfully, God forbid; the one who drank wine, the one who took usury, the one who committed fornication, the one who lied, the one who slandered — by each of these acts a gash entered his soul, the body of his soul; this soul was wounded, was rendered deficient, fell far from the perfection that is the utmost of aspirations. Now this sin must find forgiveness. What does ghufran mean? It means that this void, this deficiency of the soul, this wound of the soul, this defect that has come into being within him, should be removed — that is what they call ghufran. How is it removed? How do you remove the defect that sin has brought into being in your soul? By making amends. The one who by some sin has debased himself, who has cast his life down from the summit of human ascent — his falling-behind is made good the moment he rises again a measure. Let me give another example. You boarded a car; you are heading for the fifty-farsakh mark. If this car halted along the road, what became of you? You fell behind. And how is that falling-behind made good? By going a little faster, by pressing on without interruption, by giving up a little more of your rest, so that you reach the intended point at the appointed time. It gets nothing done to sit there and say, "O God, I did wrong; an hour ago I lounged here in the coffeehouse and set off late; O God, I erred; O God, I did wrong." After all, the wrong is already done; set off sooner, go faster, so that you may make good this one-hour halt and delay. Divine forgiveness is like this. God the Exalted does not say: because you sinned, now no matter what good work you do, We will never wipe out that sin — God does not act out of spite. And indeed I am Most Forgiving — We are not spiteful, We are the Forgiver. Those sins that were committed, those errors that came into being — We are ready to overlook them, provided that amends are made. We do not say: because you erred one day, now, though you have striven a hundredfold, your striving counts for nothing because of that one error. No. And indeed I am Most Forgiving — We are the Forgiver, We fill up the voids, We heal the wounds — but for whom? For whoever repents and believes and does righteous deeds and then is guided — I am the Forgiver for the one who repents. And what does "repents" mean? It means he turns back. The path of your perfection ran from here; this is the way you ought to have gone. We are ready to forgive you — when? When you turn once more toward perfection, back to the right path. Tawbah means turning back. Let him strengthen his faith, let him do righteous deeds. Deeds! One must not be heedless of deeds and content oneself with mere speech and self-satisfaction. Forgiveness, then, means filling those voids that are the wounds of the human soul; by filling them, a person reaches perfection. This is something worth striving for on its path — worth competing for, worth racing toward. Forgiveness is very important. It does not mean that God the Exalted, without reckoning, out of arbitrary whim, singles out some person for an unmerited grace — a person who has made no effort of his own on the path of that divine grace. And hasten to a forgiveness from your Lord, and a Garden whose breadth is the heavens and the earth, prepared for the God-conscious. That well-known thing people say — "Sir, you are of the people of Paradise and will go to Paradise, God willing, if they let you in" — is a very apt remark. We are all longing for Paradise; we all ask for Paradise in our supplications. Sometimes asking for Paradise alone does not even satisfy us: we bring its particular features into our supplication too, one by one — its houris and its good food and its bird-meat and so on, all lined up in our supplications. But God Himself says: We have prepared this Paradise for the people of taqwa; We have spread this table for a certain special people; they must come and sit at this table and enter this zone. Who are they? The people of taqwa. Who is the person of taqwa? Prepared for the God-conscious. Made ready for the people of taqwa — and who are the people of taqwa? Those who spend in prosperity and adversity — this is one condition of being a person of taqwa: spending (infaq). Infaq, too, I have explained several times by now. There is no harm in repeating these things, since for the most part they reach your ears fresh — the more they are repeated, the more they remain in the heart, and so much the better. Infaq is not the same as spending. Spending means simply that a person lays out some money. Infaq is spending, but not every kind of spending: it is spending that fills a void, that meets a true need. Consider those who spend millions — apparently on good works, too — and yet, in the language of the Qur'an, we must tell them they are the most wretched of people, because their work is not infaq. Shall We inform you of the greatest losers in deeds? Those whose effort in the life of this world has gone astray, while they reckon that they are doing good. These monies that are spent, this gold and these ornaments hung upon the starving body of a group of people, these superfluous and false adornments — these are not infaq. Why? Because they fill no void. Sir! Say you give these five rials to someone who already has a hundred such five-rial coins and a one-tuman coin in his pocket, and can get a hundred more besides — that is not infaq. But give it to the person who is waiting on a single five-rial coin to buy a loaf of sangak bread and fill his stomach — that is infaq. Of course, I don't mean by this that the gentlemen should now go and keep handing out five-rial coins to the hungry and the beggars so they can fill their stomachs — no. Sometimes filling the stomach of a hungry person isn't even infaq; only under certain conditions is it so. When poverty and hunger sprout up over the land like a weed, without limit, filling the stomach of one hungry person is like snipping the top off a single blade of that weed. In the wilderness, how much value does a weed have? Yes, one weed disappears from view — but how fundamental is this work? How worthwhile is this work? Very little and slight. So infaq is what fills a void, what meets a need. Say a nation today needs a certain thing — air and water, say — and you help that nation with something other than that thing: you have not performed infaq; you have committed an unlawful squandering of money. So infaq is not the work of everyone; infaq is the work of intelligent people — those who understand the voids and the needs, and are ready to fill those voids and needs in their proper place. Infaq is very important. Those who spend in prosperity and adversity — one of the signs of the people of taqwa is this: they spend in ease and in hardship. And those who restrain anger — those who swallow down their wrath. What does swallowing down wrath mean? It means: they do not act on the basis of emotion — everywhere, intellect. But sometimes intellect is also accompanied by righteous wrath. Do you not see that the Qur'an says: Harsh against the disbelievers, merciful among themselves. When they say "those who restrain anger," it doesn't mean what you might imagine. It doesn't mean that wrath itself — a nation's wrath, a person's wrath, a society's wrath toward those who deserve it — should be erased and brought to nothing. No. The Qur'an, too, does not say to swallow down these instances of wrath; it says: don't act out of wrath. "And those who restrain anger" — those who suppress it, who swallow it down — not those who forget, but those who swallow down their wrath; so that when the wrath has subsided, a person may, with intellect, with understanding, do what is fitting. And those who pardon people — those who overlook what people do, who forgive people's faults. From people's errors, from people's mistakes, from people's sins, from people's slips, one must overlook, one must let it pass. But not the sin that was no slip — God Himself would hardly overlook such a sin. Not the wrong done out of deliberate intent and obstinacy. It is the slips, the shortcomings, so common in the conduct of ordinary people, that are pardonable and to be overlooked. And those who pardon people; and God loves those who do good. What else marks the people of taqwa? And those who, when they commit an indecency or wrong themselves, remember God and seek forgiveness for their sins — those who, when they commit some great sin, or wrong their own selves, immediately fall to remembering God. In the valley of heedlessness, beneath the cover of heedlessness, they do not tarry long. There is a very strange verse in the Qur'an on the theme of remembrance and recollection — and this one too, as it happens, is for the people of taqwa: Indeed, those who are God-conscious — when a touch of Satan afflicts them, they remember. When a band of satans — with the wide meaning that "satan" has — when a band of satans and the satan-natured ones surround a man to lead him astray, to draw him off the path, to cast him into forgetfulness, he immediately falls to remembering God. The remembrance of God is just such a thing. It is a weapon in our hand against the satans; it is a rope within our reach, to pull us out of the chasm the enemies have opened before us, behind our backs. The remembrance of God is a precious and priceless thing. They remember God — when they do some wrongful deed or wrong their own selves, they fall to remembering God, and seek forgiveness for their sins, coming to seek that this sin, this void, may find healing. But even this is not possible without the help of the Lord. And who forgives sins except God? The striving is from you and the movement is from you, and the blessing is from God; the striving is from us, and the acceptance is from our God. So we have no right to strike the striving from our own record. And they do not persist knowingly in what they have done — they do not persist in what they know to be a sin. Those — their reward is forgiveness from their Lord — such people, who do not give up striving, who seek forgiveness for their sins, who do not persist on the way of error and wrong — and gardens beneath which rivers flow, abiding therein eternally; and excellent is the reward of the workers. Here again it says: the reward of the workers. The matter of deeds is one of the most important matters. (In this series of Islamic teachings, which God willing I intend to set forth and expound in order, in these Qur'anic discussions and recitations, through to the end of the month of Ramadan, one session will be devoted to this very matter of deeds.) In the booklet "The General Outline of Islamic Thought in the Qur'an" (Tarh-i kulli-yi andisha-yi islami dar Qur'an), which the author arranged at the conclusion of the sessions, this section was placed in place of the sessions "Faith 1" and "Faith 2." So that this content should not be overlooked, an image of the pages of that book has been included at the end of this session. The text of the other mimeographed copies corresponds with the text given in the booklet.