Ep 18 — The Social Resurgence of Prophethood

Session 16: The Social Resurgence of Prophethood. delivered Friday, 12 Mehr 1353 / 17 Ramadan al-Mubarak 1394 (1974) Today's recitation is drawn from two places: one from the blessed Surat al-Qasas, and the other from the blessed Surat al-Saff. So that some of the brothers who have not yet found a place in the prayer hall may be able to find somewhere, look at these verses on the printed sheets while I read the Arabic text once. Surat al-Qasas (28:1-6). In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate. Ta Sin Mim. These are the verses of the clear Book. We recite to you something of the account of Moses and Pharaoh, in truth, for a people who believe. Indeed Pharaoh exalted himself in the land and divided its people into factions, oppressing a group among them: slaughtering their sons and sparing their women. Indeed he was of the corrupters. And We desired to show favor to those who had been oppressed in the land, and to make them leaders, and to make them the heirs, and to establish them firmly in the land, and to show Pharaoh and Haman and their hosts, through them, the very thing they were dreading. Drawing on these verses and the verses of Surat al-Saff, we mean to discuss one matter, and its best title is exactly the one we chose: the social resurgence of prophethood. Our task, of course, is to explain what that resurgence is. You heard some of the groundwork on earlier days, when we said that the Bi'thah — the commissioning, the arising of a fervor and a stirring within the inner being of the Prophet — begins in his heart with the onset of revelation. This servant is God's chosen one, and because of the deep and abundant capacities he possesses, God has appointed him to a mission of such magnitude and weight. Once divine revelation descends upon such a servant, a surging comes into being in his spirit; a revolution is created within the very spirit of the Prophet. In his ordinary life, in his comings and goings, in his social orientation — in short, throughout his entire being — a resurgence rises up, a revolution comes into being. The man after revelation is not that man of yesterday, or of two hours before. Some writers who do not believe in the Prophet of Islam — orientalists, some of them perhaps impartial, though others certainly biased — claim, regarding his life, that before his Bi'thah the Prophet spent his years studying, thinking, reflecting, and that it was these reflections that brought him to the revolution he created. On its face, this claim is false — a lie — unless they mean something else by it. The Prophet did not arrive at the Islamic revolution and call through reflection and meditation at all. Only after this call, this revelation, this arising came into being in him did he become another being, another human, taking on another state. And not only that Prophet — all the prophets. Moses had taken his wife and child and set out on an ordinary journey; in the middle of the desert, at that critical moment when divine revelation descended upon him, Moses forgot everything else. At the moment he senses the mission, Moses is a human being other than the human of a moment before; within him another fervor, another surging, another stirring comes into being. Whoever makes the orientalists' claim has no belief in prophethood, in the Bi'thah, in revelation, or in the prophets' connection to the unseen world. It is a claim the unbelieving or biased orientalist writes down, and the ill-informed, uninvestigating writer then repeats it — in his book, in his writing, in his speech. In any case, the Bi'thah thus means a stirring, a revolution, a transformation, a change, an upheaval, a resurgence — whatever expression you wish to line up — in the being of the chosen Prophet. Once this revolution has come into being in the Prophet, it is time for that same revolution to be carried out in the external environment. That same transformation created in the spirit of the Prophet must, in some particular way, be carried out in the very fabric of society's reality — and this is exactly what we have named the social resurgence of prophethood. Once we have explained this transformation, other discussions concerning prophethood will follow. One of them is very important: the goal of the mission and prophethood — for what aim, with what purpose, for what work this social resurgence is carried out. And that, in turn, entails still other matters, which I will present in the days to come. Now, what can be said about this resurgence that we conceive for the Prophet? Today the word "revolution," in the sense it carries in modern culture, is a clear and significant word. What it means, plainly, is a transformation — a deep, fundamental change from the root in a society. The word "revolution" does not, by any necessity, contain conflict; it does not, by any necessity, contain bloodshed and killing; it does not, by any necessity, contain dispute and clash. A dispute may arise, a clash may come into being — but the word "revolution" does not itself carry the meaning of dispute and clash. The meaning of revolution is this. Take a very small, simple, tangible example: suppose this mosque, in its condition — its building, its walls, its structure — is of a particular form. Its foundations and footings were laid to fit, say, a rectangular building bounded on the east at one limit and on the west at another — the hall of the mosque's prayer chamber, without internal partitions. The foundation beneath these walls was laid for the sake of those things. If, instead of a prayer hall, this were meant to become a residential building, the foundation would certainly have been poured differently, the footings laid differently. If partitions were to be built inside this prayer hall, so that five, ten, twenty rooms appeared in it — as an inn, for example — then the foundation and footings would have had to be laid differently again. But because it was readied for this work, built entirely for the purpose of a gathering, the footings and foundation and the rubble-grouting and the wall and base are of a particular form. Suppose it were decided to demolish a building that has been fully finished — a hotel, for instance — and convert it into a mosque; or to convert a bank building into a lecture hall; or to convert a residential house into something that is not for family residence. What would they have to do? They would have to change all the foundations and substructures beneath it. They cannot say: we will give it a coat of paint, take it out of the form of a house, and make it a mosque. No! Such a thing cannot be done. They cannot say: we will gather up these middle walls so that the National Bank becomes such-and-such mosque, for the gathering of Muslims and prayer and worship. It cannot be done. Why? Because the way the building's foundation was laid was not made for a mosque. For this building to become a mosque requires a special grouting, a special foundation-laying, a special walling, a special partitioning, a special roofing. To convert a building raised for one purpose into a building for a purpose entirely contrary to the first, they inevitably have to carry out a revolution. And what does revolution mean? It means they change the bases, foundations, main sections, frames, and essential underpinnings of this structure into other frames, other underpinnings, other walls, other bodies, other limbs. This is what is called revolution. Take a society — fifty thousand people, five hundred thousand, fifty million, it makes no difference. A society means that number of people living together on one course, under one general program. It has a top and a bottom, but the path is one path, bound together in a single social direction. That is what we call a society, a unit. And a society like this — fifty thousand, five hundred thousand, five million, fifty million people — can be built in two ways. In general there are two, though within each there are various kinds and sorts. Two ways, then, that a population can be built, that a social form can come into being. The first: among the fifty thousand, or the fifty million, who live in a certain place, a class of people, a minority, are the rulers and masters of every affair of the rest. They set the people's path, they lay down the people's laws. If the people act against their wishes, they take severe revenge. If the people so much as dare to object, they discipline them harshly. If some event arises in this society, they turn it to their own benefit, even to the detriment of everyone else. And if it is decreed that this community should be struck by some calamity, they make the people their shield against it and step off to one side. This is one kind of society. What lies at the foundation of any society is precisely this question: whether or not it has class difference. Suppose, then, a society that has class difference. The term sounds pompous to some ears, but class difference is exactly what I just described — it was simple, you saw how easy its meaning is. In such a society the people are not equal in rights, not on one level in the possibilities and advantages of life. One group can take more, take better, speak better, bully, and do exactly what they want. A larger group are forced to watch the hands of those people, to be at their command, to stand before them with hands folded at the waist, to prostrate in the dust before them. A society in this form is what we call a class society. Its economy is a class economy; its government works to the benefit of the upper classes; even its basic rights are class-based, weighted toward those above. This is one kind of society. The society of some number of people, from five thousand to fifty million, is sometimes in this form and sometimes not. And how is it then? Among the fifty million living in this society, no one has the right to bully anyone else. There is no class set above the rest — no, not one person! You cannot find a single person in this entire society who, if you asked him, "Sir, why did you do such a thing?" would answer, "I felt like it." "I felt like it" does not exist here. No one holds domination, mastery, bullying, or the plunder of another's rights over anyone else; and in turn no one suffers, before anyone else, abasement, weakness, submission to force, or being wronged — these have no meaning for him. All the people in that society, from five thousand to fifty and five hundred million, obey the command of one power, and that power is higher than any human power. Who is it? It is God. This too is one kind. We have two kinds of social structure. In one, the people — all of them, or most of them — are slaves and captives before other humans. In the other, the people are all free of captivity to any power. In the first, when you reckon it up, the economy serves that same upper class, the government rests in the hands of that same upper class, and the basic rights and advantages of society belong to that upper class alone, or to whoever is close to them. The second society is the reverse. In this classless society, where no one bullies or dominates anyone, the economy is shared, and government — in the sense of governance — is shared, held in the hands of all. Basic rights are shared, they are for all; in short, whatever is good is for all, and whatever is bad concerns all. If discomfort arises, all share in it; if a good thing comes about, all share in it — and the world is a paradise. Two kinds of society can be conceived. Both of these kinds we have described for you, and both have existed throughout history. Consider these two kinds. One is the class society: a place of oppression, of injustice, of class difference, of exploitation, of domineering, of brutishness, of discrimination. The other is the classless society: a place of justice, of humanity, of freedom. I lean especially on freedom, and for a reason — some of the classless societies named in the world have, by their own claim, everything except freedom. A classless society, then, has welfare and above all freedom: no one is anyone's servant, no one is anyone's slave, no one is subject to anyone else's word. Both these kinds of society have existed in history — both. The societies of the first type, the ones marked by discrimination, are the societies that the Qayasirah and the Akasirah of the world and the tyrants of history brought into being. The societies of the second type — prosperous, free, without discrimination, humane — are the very societies that the great divine prophets brought into being throughout history. You say: did the prophets really form societies? We reply: yes, they did. In the Qur'an the signs of the societies the prophets formed are abundant: the affair of Solomon, the affair of Saul (Talut), the affair of Moses and his coming to the Holy Land, the affair of Moses and his demand to bring out the Children of Israel. Where did he want to take them? He wanted to take them so as to form a society, a virtuous city. These are the subject of discussions I may touch on tomorrow and the day after; for now I wanted only this brief reference. We have two kinds of society, and both kinds have existed in history. The bad type — the one that reason deems bad and that humanity condemns — the anti-religious political powers of the world and history have always had; the good type, the divine and spiritual powers of history have always had — that is, the prophets. When the prophets come into a society, what do they come for? They come to convert that first type into the second. This is the substance of our discussion today. Most often people picture the prophets differently. They imagine that when a prophet appears in a society, he is like a wise, learned, eminent sage — a mountain of knowledge — who comes into society, takes a house, and sits in a corner so that people may come in groups to benefit from the harvest of his grace and his knowledge. That is the person, the being, they imagine the Prophet to be. Take Abraham the Friend of God (Khalil Allah), say, or Moses the Interlocutor of God (Kalim Allah): in this picture, the Prophet enters a society and takes a house — dignified or small or large, it hardly matters — and sits there. He sets aside an hour for meeting believers and non-believers, and whoever comes to him he enjoins to good and forbids from evil: "People, fear God; people, God exists." He argues with them, debates with them, reforms a number of people, and then departs from the world. That is what they imagine the Prophet to be. The Prophet is not of this sort. When the Prophet is commissioned in a society — that is, is made to arise — a resurgence comes into being in his inner being and in his spirit, as I explained, and he enters society a man who knows not his head from his foot, a man who has no rest and no repose. He has been turned into a blazing, searing whirling torch. He casts a glance at the condition of society, and he sees — ah! — this structure is wrong, this edifice was badly built, wrongly founded; its walls and its footings and its grouting were laid incorrectly and contrary to the architectural method of human nature (fitrah). He understands that this must be changed, that this edifice must be converted into a good edifice. Meaning what? He understands that this society — this class society, where there is discrimination, oppression, disorder, inhumanity — must be changed and converted into a tawhidi (monotheistic) society. What is a tawhidi society, sir? We spoke of it in the discussion of Tawhid. We pointed out that Tawhid is the negation of classes. Divine Tawhid means the power and government of God; it means that everything — law, custom, regulations, manners, culture — must be inspired from the side of God. Divine Tawhid means that all people are servants of God and that alone, not the servant of anyone else, and that the servants are free from the servitude of other servants. When the Prophet enters society, he enters with this idea, this aim, this thought: to transform that class society, to demolish it, to break it apart, and to bring into being a tawhidi, classless, non-discriminatory, non-oppressive society under the government of the Lord of the worlds. The Prophet comes for this work. If I wanted to give examples of famous figures and personalities other than the Prophet, I could easily cite the ones that students of the subject know more or less already; I just don't like inserting non-religious names into a religious discussion, and pinning down their limits would take time. He comes into society to transform it — I do not say he comes for bloodshed, never; I do not say he comes for slaughter, never; I do not say he comes to set people at one another's throats, never. It is not so. As I said, the word "revolution," the word "transformation," the word "change," does not even contain the flowing of blood from one person's nose. In all the ordinary affairs of life, bloodshed may possibly occur, and it is also possible that it may not. For what did the First World War come about? A small assassination against one gentleman, one master, in one corner of the world, dragged the whole world into the maw of war and fire — was it not so? The crown prince of Austria and I-don't-know-what. A small assassination may set a whole world on fire. Of course, in a revolution too there may be bloodshed, and it is also possible that there may not be. The word "revolution" does not contain bloodshed, killing, or setting people at one another's throats. If the Prophet, when he entered society, when he uttered his revolutionary speech — that is, when he said to Pharaoh that you must not sit there and must not put the Children of Israel under so much pressure and must not build different social classes — if Pharaoh had said, "Certainly, I am ready, I hear your command, I will come down from there," then the Prophet would begin, with his own powerful, skilled hand, to build society, and not a ripple of water would be stirred. Conflict and clash arise in the revolutions of the prophets — as God says in the Qur'an, And how many a prophet there was alongside whom many devoted servants of God fought. — and jihad is legislated in Islam, because that affluent class, the class toward whom the sharp edge of the revolution is directed and from whom privileges are being taken away, is not willing to accept this revolution. Otherwise the Prophet would in no way be compelled to resort to slaughter and conflict. If that class became reformed, if it truly understood the truth — like many of the great political, economic, and financial figures of history who suddenly, under a beautiful and good transformation in their spirits, turned into ordinary human beings — if all those who stood against the prophets and against the call of the prophets had submitted and had come down from that summit, there would be no compulsion at all. So when the Prophet comes into a society, he comes for this transformation. The Prophet comes to create change. Meaning, to do what? Meaning, for example, in the Arabia of the Prophet's time, to say: why must the sources of wealth in this society, the springs of surging riches, be in the hands of a minority of aristocrats? Why? Why must slaves and bondsmen be those who toil under the whims of the masters? Why must the weak be the burden-bearers and beasts of burden of the inclinations of the Walid ibn Mughirahs and the Abu Jahls and the Abu Lahabs? Why? Why should these not all be on one level? al-nasu sawasiyatun ka-asnani l-musht — take a comb in your hand: from the first tooth to the last, do you see one of them enjoying any greater privilege? All at one limit, all at one level, all of one size, all of one shape, equal — and how beautiful! Humanity is precisely this. al-nasu sawasiyatun — humans are equal — ka-asnani l-musht — like the teeth of a comb. This is the call of the Prophet: kullukum min Adam, wa Adamu min turab — humans are all the children of Adam. That gentleman who has raised a palace in some corner of Mecca must eat well, drink well, keep trade reserved for himself, make others his slaves and camel-drivers, take the profit himself, and chart the destiny of Mecca himself. That gentleman, for all his grandeur, is no different at all from the lowly servant in his house. They have no difference at all; in human element and essence they are equal, no difference whatsoever. Why must the field for that man's benefits be so wide, while this wretch cannot even flap a single wing in his cage? Why? The field must be open before all equally. You see, these are the claims of the Prophet. In every society where a prophet appeared, he appeared with this claim: he came to convert society from a wrong form — an unbalanced form, a form coupled with oppression and tyranny — into a balanced form, a beautiful form, a just form. This is one matter. This is what the resurgence of prophethood means. Every prophet who was commissioned and appeared in any society appeared with this aim — know this. There has never been a prophet who came merely to expound for the people a handful of secondary matters and minor details of life. Of course, the great prophets — the ones we call the prophets of firm resolve (ulu al-'azm), the title by which we know them — were the poles of the divine revolutions. As for the other prophets: some came to take up the continuation of their revolution, some to complete their work, some to bring their work to fruition, some to turn back the regressions that set in after a revolution had borne fruit and to launch a new revolution once again. This is the very work that the executors (awsiya') of our Prophet performed after his passing: the work of the Commander of the Faithful (Amir al-Mu'minin), the work of Imam Husayn, the work of the other Imams, the work of the scholars of the Ummah of Islam, and finally the work of the Lord of the Age (Sahib al-Zaman), the Master of the Era (Wali al-'Asr) — God's blessings and peace be upon him. Here is another matter about this resurgence worth attending to. We ask: what is the problem with the order of ignorance (jahili) remaining in place? With this just order never being established? This Prophet who comes, who suffers so much, who throws himself into water and fire to turn a wrong condition into a beautiful and good one — what would be the harm if he did none of it? What would be the harm if he left things as they were? Why is that condition bad? Why is it wrong? What standard gives you the right to judge? "al-haqqu li-man ghalab" — right belongs to whoever prevails. Whoever became dominant, whoever seized power, may it be sweet and wholesome to him; and the one who gets slapped on the head, to hell with him — he had only to refuse, he had only not to be there. Now that he is there, let them carry out whatever plundering raids they wish. Why does the Prophet throw himself into water and fire? Why? It is another question. You may say no one asks it. True — no one asks it aloud. But in the inner being and the spirit of most people, who face disorder without the prophetic stance, this question lives, and it has gone unanswered. Here is the answer: the Prophet does not move without cause, does not throw himself into water and fire without reason. What he sees of the existing condition of his time is a false condition, contrary to human and universal nature (fitrah); what he wants to bring about is the condition of right (haqq) — that is, one in accordance with universal and human nature. Right (haqq) and falsehood (batil): you meet these two words again and again throughout the Qur'an. Dozens of its verses embody and specify them, naming the instances where the battle lines are drawn between right and falsehood. What do right and falsehood mean? We already offered the explanation. The human being — this being who, with this form and this stature, walks about in the world — was made and built with certain characteristics. The human being has certain characteristics, certain possibilities, certain needs; in short, he came into existence with a fixed measure of his own special characteristics and possibilities. Keep this in mind. The world the human being lives in was likewise structured with certain conditions and characteristics, given a certain movement toward a certain direction. This world that you look at and see with your eyes — each of its things seems to have fallen into some separate corner: its sun sits millions of leagues away from such-and-such a planet; its human, its plant, its animal appear to have no connection with one another. But in the view of a God-worshipping, God-knowing person, this is an indivisible unity. This entire world is one thing; the parts of this world are the parts of one body. Just as in one body a single movement runs through all its parts, so it is in this world. In a human being, the stomach does one task, the eye another, the liver another, the brain and nerves another — but the sum of all these tasks is one single, shared thing. And what is that? It is that this human being stays alive, moves, strives, and goes on living. The sum of all the movements you observe in this world too — above and below, this sphere and the others — comes out as one single thing, one single movement. (These matters need some reflection. Do not expect, in these discussions, to drink something down like running water and be nourished by it; consider them in need of digestion, in need of effort — reflect and think on them a little.) The rest of the beings, having no consciousness, no will and no choice, advance willy-nilly along this path, along this general movement. It is the human being who possesses choice — who can be obstinate, withdraw himself from this caravan of the world's things, and move in the opposite direction. Only the human being can fail to follow this caravan — this caravan of the world which, as we said, has one single direction — can fail to set out, fail to advance. Only the human being. The rest of the beings, even when at some point they leave their natural course, it is the human who takes them out of it. When they split the uranium and, instead of using it to cure thousands of ailments, make an atom bomb, drop it, and kill millions of humans — the human does this; the uranium itself never transgresses or oversteps the natural course of the world, but moves along its ordinary path. When this substance LSD, which ought to be used for the healing of ailments, is turned into a narcotic and put into the mouth of some youth, leaving him dizzy and oblivious for hours to what is going on around him — this is the fault of the human, not of that plant, not of that substance, not of that thing itself. In this caravan we have depicted for you — in which the sun is one part, the earth another, the galaxies and the small and great beings of this vast world each elements and parts of it — they are all going their way with heads bowed, all going. It is only this one being, the human, who is mobile and active, who possesses choice, who sometimes bends his own path crooked, turns back the opposite way, veers left and right. Sometimes, too, he drags along the hand of other speechless beings and takes them with him: he takes uranium, he takes LSD, he takes morphine. Morphine, which ought to work to man's benefit, works to his ruin; the plant that ought to give him life gives him death instead. It is not the thing itself that does this — this too is done by the same human who has turned back from the path and left the course. This is the characteristic the human possesses. Because a person has this characteristic — he has choice, he has will, he can change his own path — a law must be set for him. A line of travel must be marked out, and he must be told, "Sir, you must move along this line of travel, so that you have set out behind this caravan. If you transgress it, if you go outside the map we draw for you, know that you have left the course of this caravan." Meaning what? Meaning that this person needs a law. And this law that accords with the line of travel of the collective movement of the beings of the world — what is its name? Have you guessed it? Right (haqq). Right means the law that conforms to the nature of the world; and because it conforms to the nature of the world and the universe, it conforms to the nature of the human too — for a person too is one of the parts of this world, a part of the parts of this great body. And because this law conforms to the nature of the human and the universe, it also turns out to his good and welfare. What is falsehood (batil)? Falsehood is that course, that law, that way and custom laid down contrary to the nature of the universe and the nature of the human. Falsehood is what the brutes and the satans and those who want to deviate from this course make. The prophets always bring right so that falsehood may be removed. Take the society Pharaoh makes, dividing people into classes, pressing down on one class of them, keeping one class affluent while oppressing the others — that condition, that order, that social form is the form of falsehood. The prophets come to overturn that form of falsehood. They come to dismantle it, to do away with it, to give its place to right. So when the Prophet throws himself into water and fire, it is for the sake of right, because right is the thing he says and the thing he wants. It is for the sake of right that he places himself in such discomfort and exposes himself to hardship. It is for the sake of substituting right in place of falsehood that the prophets never for a moment set down their striving, never forget it, are never for one moment idle. The matter comes to this: the substitution of right in place of falsehood. This is the interpretation and analysis of the work of the prophets. Let us sum up the matter. The prophets want to convert the jahili order into a divine order, into a tawhidi social mold — to convert it so that society becomes the domain of the government of God, not the domain of the government of caprices and lusts. (For all these negative traits taken together — being class-based, being oppressive, being exploitative, being inhumane, and points of this sort — the best word is "jahili"; jahiliyyah means the unjust, un-natural (ghayr-fitri), inhumane order.) This is the outcome of the work of the prophets. The prophets come to convert a wrong social order into a correct one; their slogan of Tawhid too is for this very reason, and their struggles against the false deities (tawaghit) too are for this same purpose. And the struggles of the false deities against them are for this same purpose too. This too is a chapter of this continuous discourse; one day, God willing, we may set forth who the classes opposed to the prophets were, and what the motives of their opposition and resistance were. The verses I chose from Surat al-Qasas describe this very condition — the jahili condition, the condition of the Pharaonic government and the Pharaonic society — and the condition Moses wanted to establish in its place. But the verses do more than set these two conditions against each other. They also give a glad tiding to those who move in the direction of the Mosaic condition: that ultimately the will of the Lord has settled on one outcome — the Mosaic ones of the world, that is, the tawhidi ones, the divine ones, shall be successful and victorious. And the reason is clear. This too is the subject of another discussion, among the titles we intend to set forth in turn: the outcome of prophethood — what is the final end of the work of prophethood? Conquest and victory. And why? Because it accords with the nature and disposition of the universe and the human. In summary, this is what these few verses mention, and this is what is intended. So now we present their translation. In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate. Ta Sin Mim. This cipher at the opening of the surah is, of course, among the very minor questions that may be raised about some of the verses of the Qur'an — namely, what these ciphers are, as the commentators have said. We have no business with that. These are the verses of the clear Book. — these are the verses of the clear, clarifying Book. We recite to you something of the account of Moses and Pharaoh, in truth. We recite to you a portion of the important story of Moses and Pharaoh. A portion of that important affair is to be set forth. This is the method of the Qur'an: in each section where it narrates the affair of a prophet, it has a particular purpose, and from whatever dimension it looks at the story, it selects a special portion to narrate in keeping with that purpose. Here it mentions a very short portion, because it has a particular purpose — the victory of right over falsehood. We will not bring the rest of the story into today's discussion, and we did not bring them. We recite to you a portion of the important story of Moses and Pharaoh — "in truth," in accordance with right, in accordance with reality, far from fable and legend — "for a people who believe." What we set forth and recite to you is not useless, of little effect; rather, for the believers who have inclined toward you, it is extremely effective, beneficial, and profitable. When they hear this story with this insight and understand the divine custom (sunnah) at work in it, they determine their path. The gist of the matter is this: "Indeed Pharaoh exalted himself in the land." Pharaoh sought superiority in the land, sought greatness for himself, took on loftiness ('uluww). What does it mean that he took loftiness? Standing at this level — equal with other humans — he suddenly rose up, sat upon that ledge, took himself to be higher than the rest. All were equal, all on the same level; and he took superiority over the other servants. "Indeed Pharaoh exalted himself in the land" — on the face of the earth he attached superiority and greatness to himself and chose it for himself, "and divided its people into factions." Having set himself in the upper degree, he then partitioned the land, classified it, made it into groups: one group nearer to himself — the class of Haman and classes resembling his; one class lower, then another lower still. He made classes in his Pharaonic society, on the face of God's earth. "Oppressing a group among them" — beyond making society class-based, with its various groups, he especially bore down on one class. "Oppressing" — he made a group of them oppressed (mustad'af). Here a Persian equivalent for "oppressing" occurred to me, which I wrote: he took one class under tyranny, in the grip of weakness and incapacity — istid'af. Istid'af cannot be rendered "making wronged," though I did write "subjected to tyranny," because the mustad'afin are usually understood as those counted as wronged. He kept these in the grip of weakness; within society he stripped away their possibilities, stripped away their powers, made them weak and held them there. "Oppressing a group among them" — one class of the people of society he held severely in the grip of weakness and incapacity, casting them into the maw of weakness, into the maw of incapacity. "Oppressing" — he counted them weak, took them as contemptible, in various expressions; the upshot is that within society he deprived them of every possibility of growth and progress. And if you are familiar with social issues and social books, you see and grasp this fully in the world — especially in these Third-World countries. All the possibilities of growth and progress fall into the monopoly of a chosen few; the rest cannot grow, cannot breathe, and even if they do grow, their growth is in the service and exploitation of that chosen class. "Oppressing a group among them" — a group of them he took severely under pressure, in weakness and incapacity. And his pressure was this: "slaughtering their sons" — he killed their young men. He would not let their young generation rise. He sensed a stirring among them, and he knew that the one who could carry that stirring through to its end was the young generation. And in that era, under the social conditions of that age, the women perhaps had no part in these social matters; the burden fell on the shoulders of the sons — so the pressure fell heavier on the sons. You know this from outside the verse: in the accounts and narrations that have come down on this subject, we have heard and have word that he knew a Moses was to come forth from among these very youths, and that it was this Moses who would in the end transform and overturn the world upon him. Either he knew it specifically — as the narrations make plain — that a soothsayer had told him, "A son with these traits will be born whose name is Moses." Or he did not know it specifically, but he was a clear-sighted man. He understood — he understood that ultimately, from among this young generation living in the Pharaonic society among the Children of Israel, seething with fervor and idea and uproar, a Moses would rise: a great man, a self-sacrificing man. And he feared this, so he killed the young men. and sparing their women. And he kept their women alive — either to corrupt them, or to drag their lineage into vice, or to destroy the soundness of their stock (nasab); for the daughters of the Children of Israel apparently did not marry the sons of the Israelites. He wanted no young men, only daughters, so that the lineage would grow mixed and the Children of Israel would be absorbed into the Pharaonic society, into Egyptian society — would dissolve, disappear, be wiped out. For four hundred years, as I have said before in the opening verses of Surat al-Baqarah, the Children of Israel had held firm within that disordered, unbalanced Pharaonic society and had preserved their own noble ideals. So the lines are drawn between these two groups. On one side stands Pharaoh, whose condition the end of the verse names: "Indeed he was of the corrupters." Truly and certainly he was of the corrupters, the fomenters of corruption. He created corruption in nature (fitrah), in society, in the world — as that other verse in Surat al-Baqarah says: And when he turns away (or gains authority), he strives to spread corruption in the land and to destroy crops and offspring; and God does not love corruption. The mark of Pharaoh's kind is that they create corruption in the land and bring ruin. By every means they can, they block the maturing and ripening of this world's spiritual reserves; or if they do bring them to fruition, they do it in a wrong and twisted form. And Pharaoh too was of this sort. Now, in contrast, what is right? On what has the will of God settled, and in which direction has the divine custom (sunnah) been set? "And We desired" — and We desire — that is, this is Our creative custom and will. "And We desired to show favor to those who had been oppressed in the land." He does not say "We had desired" (wa aradna), which would tie this will to the Children of Israel alone — no, it holds for always, for all of history. We have desired and We desire to bestow favor upon those same oppressed, that same class held in the grip of subjugation and captive to the claw of weakness — to deliver them from that lowliness, to bring them out of oppression. "And We desired to show favor to those who had been oppressed in the land" — that We bestow favor upon the oppressed of the earth. "And to make them leaders" — that We bring them up from the rear of society, from being followers, to leadership; that We give the oppressed of the earth mastery over the Akasirah and Qayasirah of the world, over the bullying powerful ones. "And to make them the heirs" — that We make them the heirs and inheritors of the good things of the earth; this too is Our will. "And to establish them firmly in the land" — that We make them settled and established in the land. "And to show Pharaoh and Haman and their hosts" — these are the representatives of two classes. Pharaoh is the exemplar of a privileged class — he belongs to the high class, indeed he is its eminent person — a class under whose authority and exploitation even Haman falls. And Haman is the symbol and representative of another class, a class that pours all its possibilities and forces into the service of Pharaoh — those the Qur'an apparently refers to as the mala', of whom we will speak in the future, God willing. "And their hosts" — their armies, those who strive on their behalf without seeing any good from them, yet remain in their service. That We show to them, "through them" — through these oppressed — "the very thing they were dreading." That same thing which Pharaoh feared, We bring down upon his head; that same thing from which Haman fled and shrank, We bring down upon his head. That is, We take these powers away from them and place them in the hands of the oppressed, in the hands of the dust-dwellers, in the hands of the destitute — who, of course, always constitute the majority of any society. This too is the will of the Lord. Then it goes on to other matters: "And We revealed to the mother of Moses: 'Suckle him,'" which shows the power of the Lord. That other verse we chose for you from Surat al-Saff again points to the victory of the divine order over the jahili order — though its victory is not our concern in today's discussion. Our concern is this: that against the existing jahili order, when the Prophet comes, he presents a divine and tawhidi order of right and strives to establish and settle that order of right. O Lord! By Muhammad and the family of Muhammad, do not place us as followers of the false deities (tawaghit). O Lord! By Muhammad and the family of Muhammad, keep us alive as Muslims and make us die as Muslims. Cast no separation between us and the Qur'an. Grant us the grace to act upon the Qur'an. Sever and uproot the hands and elements opposed to the Qur'an. Make the enemies of Islam, in whatever spot of the world they are, abased and abject. Make the helpers of Your religion, the supporters of Your Qur'an, in whatever spot they are, victorious and exalted. Set the end and outcome of the matter to our benefit.