Ep 7 — Faith and Adherence to Commitments

Session 5: Faith and Adherence to Commitments. delivered Monday, 1 Mehr 1353 / 6 Ramadan al-Mubarak 1394 Surat al-Nur (24:51-52). The only saying of the believers, when they are called to God and His Messenger so that he may judge between them, is that they say: 'We hear and we obey.' And it is they who are the successful. And whoever obeys God and His Messenger, and fears God and is mindful of Him — it is they who are the triumphant. Here is another important point within the discussion of faith: a believer's commitments are not occasional, not a matter of personal whim. Someone who wants to present himself as a believer cannot be a believer only where his own aggressive self-interest demands it. That is the picture we must reject — a man who, wherever he can "ride the mount of his desire" in the name of faith and through a show of action, invokes the name of faith and of action — but then, in cases where faith and action yield him no personal, transgressive benefit, turns away from the name of Islam and of faith, and from acting on faith's commitments. We have attributed this trait — which the Qur'an exposes in a variety of forms — to the profit-seekers; profit-seekers are like this, we said. All the people of the world are profit-seekers; who desires his own loss? But what we mean by "profit-seekers" here are those ready to sacrifice worldly interests for the benefit of their own person — the transgressing profit-seekers. Their way of life is this: they want and love faith and action only to the extent that it serves their own person, only insofar as, in the name of faith and through a show of action, they can derive some gain or pleasure. People of this sort are not believers, from the standpoint of Islam. The Qur'an declares explicitly that these have no faith. Faith was one of the very first topics that had to be raised in the chain of the intellectual understanding of Islam, and in discussing it we reached this conclusion: faith is faith only when it comes with commitment. Faith without commitment, without a sense of responsibility, without carrying out its commitments — without, in the Qur'an's expression, righteous deeds — is not faith. A bare, dry, merely mental faith bears no fruit. One further truth must be kept in view: commitment is perpetual and universal. A believer who wishes to remain a believer, and to enjoy the fruits of being one, must feel committed before every commandment of God, everywhere. Faith in God and in the prophetic mission brings a commitment: everyone must become a servant of God, and I, to the extent I am able, must make everyone a servant of God. Faith in the Prophet, and bearing witness that I affirm the messengership of my Prophet, brings this commitment: I must follow the Prophet and move along his path. Suppose I accept that — suppose I take on this commitment. Then one thing no longer makes sense: when I encounter some small phenomenon contrary to the Prophet's conduct, contrary to the path of God's Prophet, I fill the veins of my neck, I clench my fists — truly the performance of a Muslim. But when I face a larger phenomenon, a more troublesome one, again running against the direction of prophethood and messengership, I forget my responsibility. There is a saying: Asadun 'alayya wa-fi'l-hurubi na'amatun — "A lion against me, but in wars an ostrich." With the weak you are a lion; with the mildly bad you roar like a male lion; but with the great evildoers, the ones who breed evil, you have no fighting spirit at all! Asadun 'alayya wa-fi'l-hurubi na'amatun! This is an Arabic line of verse used as a proverb. It says: when they come up against us they are lions, but in the wars, when they face thick-necked, sword-wielding, armed enemies, they are ostriches. Does an ostrich do battle with anyone? Does an ostrich have claws and fangs? Commitment is not seasonal; commitment is not occasional. It is not directed at one time and not at another; it is not directed at one person and not at another. Commitment is universal and perpetual. The Noble Qur'an names the Jews — those who in one place would say that our brethren, meaning the Jews, must be preserved like dear ones, yet in the place where their personal interests came into play would kill these very brethren in wars, take them captive, sell them, and consume the price. Rebuking the Children of Israel, the Qur'an says: Do you believe in part of the Book and disbelieve in part? Do you have faith in some of the religion? In its untroublesome, comfortable parts you are believers and committed, while in some other parts you have no belief at all. Can such a thing be? Can one make a division between two statements and two commands, both of which spring from one origin and one point? Our great Imam, Imam al-Baqir — God's blessings and peace be upon him — points precisely to people of this very kind in that well-known hadith, the first in the chapter on enjoining good and forbidding evil in the noble book al-Wafi. This hadith is in al-Kafi as well, and in the reliable books of the Shi'a, but al-Wafi is the compendium of our four principal books, by the late Fayd al-Kashani — and when you open the book on enjoining good and forbidding evil, this is its first hadith. These are people who turn toward prayer and fasting, which are untroublesome, but toward enjoining good and forbidding evil — which is troublesome and, on the surface, harmful — they show no inclination at all. Here the Imam, peace be upon him, does not go on to say whether these are believers or not, nor whether they are corrupt (fasiq) or hypocrites. But the verse of the Qur'an says it explicitly: those who, where their interests are at stake, do not want the religion — these are not believers. Consider those who submit to the Prophet's judgment when the truth is on their side, but the moment the truth is not on their side and they know the ruling will go against them, refuse to submit. Of these the Qur'an asks: did they fear? Did some doubt arise in them? Did they fall into uncertainty about the rightness and soundness of the religion? Or worse — Or do they fear that God and His Messenger will be unjust to them? They feared that God and His Messenger would wrong them, a fear at the very level of unbelief. In all affairs, in every corner and aspect of life, the believer is committed — not only where his advantage requires it. Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan, when it became necessary, even raised the Qur'an as pages upon the spear-points — you have all heard the story. When advantage required it, he too would speak of the Qur'an, of prayer, of religion. When he had to win over the heart of one of 'Ali's friends, he would even praise the virtues of the Commander of the Faithful; when they mentioned 'Ali's virtues, he would even shed crocodile tears. How many times have you heard the story: Mu'awiya was seated, and 'Abdullah ibn 'Abbas was seated, and others too, and he said, "So, you so-and-so son of so-and-so, what do you know of the virtue of 'Ali?" The man said, "Am I safe?" Mu'awiya said, "Yes, you are safe." Then the man began to speak, and Mu'awiya broke into loud weeping and wailing. Where it serves him, he even speaks of love for 'Ali; where it serves him, he even presents himself as God's special servant; where, to keep ruling over a handful of Muslims, he must preserve their sentiments and not wound their feelings, he speaks of what the people love — the Qur'an and Islam. These are the places where religion serves his benefit, in line with his personal interests and his transgressing desires. But where religion and obedience to its commandments cost him something — there he no longer recognizes religion. Consider what those other matters are: the reckoning of justice, the observance of social justice, the regard for the oppressed and deprived classes, the placing of relatives and strangers on an equal footing — all of this is religion, all of it is Islam — and the raising of people's thought and reflection, which is the very goal of the messages, the prophethoods, the missions. When these come into play, Mu'awiya knows nothing of religion, feels no commitment before it. I use Mu'awiya as an example so that you and I have a way to bring ourselves into this same arena and test ourselves against this certain standard. Let me take as my example someone whose badness is clear and certain in everyone's view. Suppose we accept one portion of the religion with full commitment, reject the other portion, and still regard ourselves as believers. If that is how it works, then let us first count Mu'awiya a believer — because Mu'awiya was exactly like this. Toward one portion of the religion he professed intense adherence. Have I not said again and again that Mu'awiya prayed? He prayed in congregation, he prayed at the first time of prayer, he even led the prayer — and the merit of congregational prayer is greater for the leader than for those who follow. By the narrations on this subject, the reward the prayer-leader has before God is greater than the reward of the followers. And he would be the one leading. Here religion is a very good religion, a delightful religion, a harmless religion, a religion that attracts affection, draws sentiment, makes the people well-disposed — all good things. But this religion says its Prophet was sent to teach and train the people: Indeed God conferred a favor upon the believers when He sent among them a Messenger from among themselves, reciting to them His verses, and purifying them, and teaching them the Book and the wisdom. God sent the Prophet to humanity to teach them, to advance them, to make insight and reason strong and powerful in them. Whatever struggles against people's intellect, the religion struggles against. Whatever blocks their eye, their perception, their reason, their understanding, the religion blocks its encroachment. Any factor at all, in whatever form, that will not let people think and understand and perceive — the religion will not let that factor stay alive. This is religion. The thing they called the opiate and narcotic of the nations is something else entirely. In our Qur'an, in the conduct of our Prophet, in the conduct of our leaders, there is no sign of that sort of religion. Islam, which fights against unbelief, fights against that sort of religion too. Our Commander of the Faithful, the great Islamic leader, says that God sent the prophets to stir up and arouse the treasures of intellect within people — wa-yuthiru lahum dafa'ina'l-'uqul ("and that they might unearth for them the buried treasures of the intellects"). So anything of the opposite kind stands at the very opposite point of the philosophy of the prophets' mission — anything that buries these treasures more deeply, that conceals and hides the power of human reason and thought under mountains of dust, or of fanaticism, or false notion, or strangulation, or suffocation, or anything else. It makes no difference what it is or in what age it comes. The prophethoods deal with the thought and the reason of the people; the more precise that thought and reason, the more acceptable the prophethoods become. They strive to raise these thoughts up. So whatever blocks this is against religion, contrary to religion. Take any person, any factor, any power, any motive — whether inside a person or outside him — that holds back the thought, reason, and intellect from growth and development, that denies it any room to act, so that people cannot understand anything, find a path, and freely walk it under the light of their own thought and insight. That is what religion stands against. And Mu'awiya was of this kind. Here, where the enlightening of people's minds came into play, Mu'awiya understood nothing at all of what Islam is. Where Islam commands him — take hunger away from the people, remove class differences from society, permit no discrimination, set no conscienceless oppressors over the people, choose no advisors and friends and intimates from among the most criminal of the people, drive the people toward neither Hell nor the punishment of God and of this world — where these matters came up, where it was said to him, "Lift the pressure off the people, let them understand," there Mu'awiya stood leagues away from religion. He says to Ibn 'Abbas: "Ibn 'Abbas, do not recite the Qur'an." He said, "How should I not recite the Qur'an?" He said, "Well, recite it, but do not interpret it." He said, "How is it possible, Mu'awiya, that I recite the Qur'an and not interpret it? What are these words you are speaking?" Mu'awiya saw that he had said something that struck people badly — in those days it sounded wrong to them, that a man should recite the Qur'an and not interpret it — so he said, "Very well, interpret it, but the interpretation that has come down through your own family, through the Commander of the Faithful — do not tell that interpretation to the people." He did not want the people to understand the Qur'an, and at bottom he did not want them to understand anything at all. The less the people understood, the more it served Mu'awiya. So turn to Mu'awiya's record. Set aside the oppressions, the killings, the buryings alive, the rotting-away in prison, the destruction of men like Hujr ibn 'Adi and Rushayd al-Hajari, set aside those vile, contemptible crimes against the likes of Maytham al-Tammar — crimes everyone understands, that even the plainest person can see. Mu'awiya has one crime that only precise eyes can grasp. That crime is this. He should have carried this newborn thing, this Islamic society, forward at least twenty years; the trust placed in his hands he should have advanced twenty years. He did not advance it twenty years. He did not even leave it where he found it — he set it back two hundred years as well. Set it back in what respect? Did their money decrease? No — would that their money had decreased! Did their territory shrink, their country break apart? Did some of them die for nothing? Would that these things had happened! What he set back was the people's thought, their insight, their morals. This was a crime in no way pardonable, and is not. It was a sin no ten or twenty years of another just government could remedy. Twenty or thirty years after Mu'awiya's era came 'Umar ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz — the just one of the Banu Umayya. He could accomplish nothing: he could not make amends for Mu'awiya's atrocities, could not fill in Mu'awiya's pits. They did not even grant him more than two years to rule; they poisoned him and killed him. Mu'awiya had so arranged things that nothing but corruption would grow, nothing but corruption would be accepted. The people — ignorant, senseless, taking nothing in with reflection or care, their eyes wide open — would hear whatever Mu'awiya's loudspeakers said, and believe that very thing, and come to hold that very belief. I have stories of the ignorance of the people of Syria in the time of the Banu Umayya, and often they are amusing stories too. Let me tell one of them now, as a "joke," in today's phrase. See to what point they can drag a whole nation. In the time of 'Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, Mecca was conquered by Hajjaj ibn Yusuf. Hajjaj was the powerful, capable commander of the Banu Umayya, and he was intensely against anyone and anything that had the slightest inclination toward Shi'ism. Mecca, of course, was not in the hands of the Shi'a; it was in the hands of 'Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr. 'Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr was much like Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, except that God did not give him respite. Hajjaj fell upon 'Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr, and in the end took and conquered Mecca. Among other things, he seized control of Mount Abu Qubays, one of the mountains beside Mecca, right up against it. Hajjaj wrote a letter to Syria, to the caliph 'Abd al-Malik, saying: Praise be to God, we have gained control of Abu Qubays — that is, of the mountain of Abu Qubays — we have gained control. The caliph ordered that this letter be read out from the pulpit of Damascus. The people had all gathered; it was a Friday; the people were assembled. The preacher took the letter and said: Praise be to God, the caliph's commander, Hajjaj, has gained control of Abu Qubays. At once a cry went up from all the people. They said: No indeed, we do not accept this, we do not accept it; this Abu Qubays the Rafidi must be put in chains and sent to Syria so that we may believe it. In their imagination, Abu Qubays was some Rafidi man in Mecca! This is the level of understanding in a nation. And there are many stories of this kind. Who has done these things? Upon whose shoulders is the sin of the people's not understanding? You may say it lies upon the shoulders of Shurayh the judge, upon the shoulders of Muhammad ibn Shihab al-Zuhri, upon the shoulders of so-and-so the judge or so-and-so the hired, mercenary jurisconsult. He ought to have made the people aware — and I accept that too. Abu Yusuf the judge, or Shurayh, or Muhammad ibn Shihab al-Zuhri, or others and others, committed the greatest of crimes, just as we read and saw in the letter of Imam al-Sajjad to Ibn Shihab. But I want to see this: whose making and shaping is Muhammad ibn Shihab? That pole which makes the spiritual powers that stand against religion and against the Qur'an — who is that pole? Is it not the pole of Mu'awiya? So the sins, in the end, are upon the shoulders of Mu'awiya, upon the shoulders of 'Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, upon the shoulders of all the heads of the tyrants (tawaghit) of the Banu Umayya and the Banu 'Abbas and others besides them. And these people, with all their sins, sometimes even speak of following the Qur'an and the religion! Here, what is our duty? Faced with a man like Mu'awiya, a man like Shurayh, a man like al-Mughira, a man like Zayd ibn 'Amr of the time of Mu'awiya — it makes no difference, in whatever class — how must we judge this human being? In some places he has accepted the religion and the faith in a committed way; in others he has left no trace of them in his life. What shall we say to this man? Shall we regard him as a believer? The Qur'an explicitly states that a man of this kind is not a believer. So the faith that is valid in the Islamic way of thinking is not the faith of men of this sort — whose like in our age are countless, may God preserve us. It is, rather, the firm faith of those who stay faithful everywhere, with everyone, at all times, in every condition — in their commitment and in their action: Indeed those who believe and do righteous deeds… — and so on to the end. And the promises given for faith and for the believers are given for that faith, not this one. When they said the believers are victorious, they meant those believers — and victorious they are, certainly! When they said the hand of God is with the believers, they meant that sort of believer. When they said that nature cooperates and goes along with the believer, they meant that sort of believer, not the likes of you and me. So this discussion yields us at least one benefit. If we see that our faith lacks the effects, the properties, the glad tidings of faith — the glad tidings the Qur'an and God gave to the believers — we will not be surprised, because we understand that the faith for which all those promises were given is not this one. (Tomorrow, on the subject of the promises that have been given for faith, with a Qur'anic survey, we have a discussion which, God willing, we will present.) Now let me translate these verses. Indeed We have sent down clarifying verses. We have indeed sent down clarifying verses. These verses of the Qur'an give light. Those who do not permit themselves to understand the Qur'an, the wretches, are deprived of that light. And God guides whom He wills to a straight path. What does God's "willing" mean? Does it mean that God wills one person and not another — that toward some He has a special regard, drawing them and carrying them along, while He pushes others away? It is not like that. God's will and God's decree — in ordinary cases, of course — show themselves only in the form of natural and customary causes. If you decided, you resolved, you sat down at the foot of a guiding and illuminating discourse, and you were guided — then God had willed that you be guided. That same you: if you were lazy, if you were slack, if you closed off the road of understanding, then God had willed that you not understand. God's willing means only that the ordinary means and instruments either came about or did not. If, by your will, by your wish, those ordinary means and causes came about and carried out this effect, then here God has willed. If you did not will, then plainly God did not will either — not that God's not-willing makes you fail to will; no, you are free in your willing. God did not will means the necessary cause did not follow; this is what "God did not will" means. Why, then, do we not say "the necessary cause did not follow," and instead say "God did not will"? Because it was God who brought the causes into existence and gave them their properties. Take this fire kindled here: I put my hand into it, my hand burned — God willed it to burn. If I did not put my hand in and it did not burn, God willed it not to burn. What does that mean? "God willed it to burn" means the natural cause for burning was present: the fire, the absence of an obstacle, my willing, the putting in of the hand. And when we say "God did not will it to burn" in the second case, it means the natural cause of burning was not present — I did not go near the fire, or the hand was wet, or the object was wet, or the fire was too small, and so on. So why do we attribute to God what is really connected to the causes? Because God is the creator of the causes — that is the reason. Every "whom He wills" (man yasha'u) throughout the Qur'an is of this kind. I have explained it in detail before, and here too I have given an indication of it. They make these claims, which are easy to make: And they say, 'We believe in God and in the Messenger, and we obey.' But then a group of them turns away after that. And when they turn away — the talk is not of unbelievers, not of apostates who suddenly take offense, leave the world of Islam, and depart; no, it is of these very ordinary believers inside the Islamic societies — then about them He says: And those are not the believers. They are not believers. And more clearly still: And when they are called to God and His Messenger so that he may judge between them, at once a group of them turns away. They are not willing to go and hear the ruling from the Prophet. On the surface the verse is about judgment, since in the Qur'an the term "rule/governance" (hukuma) most often — I do not say always — means the rendering of judgment, the very thing we call arbitration and adjudication. But the import of the verse is general. It does not concern only those who refuse to submit to the Prophet's judgment; it also takes in those who refuse the Prophet's command in matters other than judgment, and this is clear. But if the right is on their side, they come to him submissively. If the truth is on their side, they come to the Prophet obediently, with acknowledgment. Where the ruling is to be in their favor, they are submissive before the religion; where the ruling is likely to go against them, they will not accept it. Here the Qur'an, in truth, calls them to account. Why is it that where the religion is not to your own benefit, you will not accept it? It comes down to one of three things. First: Is there a disease in their hearts? The disease of hypocrisy? The disease of caprice and desire? The disease of ignorance and conceit? Are these diseases in their hearts, so that they do not accept the ruling? Or is it higher than this? Second: Or do they doubt? Have they fallen into doubt about the religion? Suppose you have no doubt about the religion, no uncertainty, no misgiving regarding it — then why, the moment it costs you something, the moment it grows troublesome, are you ready to deny it, to reject the religion outright, to deny that very ruling? Or is it even higher than this? Third: Or do they fear that God and His Messenger will be unjust to them? Higher still than that doubt — this is the very essence of unbelief. For a person to be so ignorant as to disbelieve that God and the Prophet would ever wrong a human being in their rulings! Whoever fears that God or the Prophet might do him injustice plainly does not know them at all, and does not accept them. Nay, it is they who are the wrongdoers. God wrongs no one; it is they who wrong themselves and the truth. Whatever position they hold, however high their rank over the rest of humanity, they are the ones doing wrong — to themselves, to the truth, to the people. But the believers are not like this. Look at how the Qur'an uses its vocabulary: it has a lexical meaning, and it has a specialized one. "Believer," in the Qur'an's terminology, carries the very meaning being expounded here: The only saying of the believers, when they are called to God and His Messenger so that he may judge between them, is that they say: 'We hear and we obey.' As I've said, "we hear" means we have understood — not that we heard with the ear, but that we gave heed. Take the term "hearing" (sam'): Or gives ear while he is a witness. "Hearing" and "listening" in the Qur'an, in a great many instances — I came across yet another just last night studying the text, too many to note down — carry the sense of understanding, not of hearing with the ear, with that organ, that limb, but of understanding. These are saying: we have understood; that is, we became believers knowingly. This is the same point from the previous session: faith must be conscious. We hear and we obey. Having believed knowingly, we also obeyed. And it is they who are the successful. Falah means success — becoming victorious, attaining the goal and aim. It has also come in the sense of "salvation," of "deliverance," in some lexical usages, but most often, when falah is used for the believers, it fits best with the very meaning already stated — the ordinary lexical one. And whoever obeys God and His Messenger, and fears God, and is mindful of Him — it is they who are the triumphant. They are the ones who have attained the purpose and the aim. Fawz ("triumph") carries this very meaning. The next two verses have little bearing on our discussion; the one I want to reach comes after them: God has promised those who believe… This too is a promise of God, again to the believer — the committed believer. Notice what it says. The divine promise in this verse is explicit: We have promised the believers that rule over the earth is yours. Your idea, your creed, your school will pitch its tent over the world. Your fear and dread will turn into safety and security. If throughout history you have suffered torment and borne oppression, from now on you will live in comfort — no anxiety, no disquiet — and you will worship God and cast the rivals of God off the earth. That is the divine promise in this verse. And if God has given such a promise to the Muslims, it pertains to the believers — to the committed believers. Some grow overly scrupulous, they grow rigid, and they say it is reserved for the time of the Lord of the Age (Wali al-'Asr) — God's blessings and peace be upon him. We have no doubt that the time of the appearance of the Imam of the Age — God's blessings and peace be upon him — is the complete instance of this verse; of that there is no uncertainty. But where in this verse is it written that the promise belongs to that time alone? Tell us, let us see! Which narration states that it is reserved for that time? Why do you restrict the verse? Did God not fulfill this promise with the believers of the early days of Islam? It was this very verse that was fulfilled. They came to Medina; they brought that government into being. The Bilals who, out of fear of the unbelievers of Quraysh, had not dared even to utter "There is no god but God" with their tongues now called out the takbir aloud from the minarets and sang "There is no god but God." Before, they had been compelled every day and every night to prostrate before three hundred non-human idols, several human idols, and the idol of their own carnal desires — rendering absolute servitude and obedience, setting up all these partners for God. Now these same people came and settled, taking up the business of life in that safe and secure land of the sublime Islamic society, without the least anxiety. They set up no partner for God at all — none, great or small, inanimate or animate, from themselves or from others. This verse of ours was fulfilled once there; it can be fulfilled a thousand times more. But on what condition? The condition is that the opening clauses of the verse be realized, where it says: God has promised… — to whom? those among you who believe and do righteous deeds; that is, those who act in accordance with the commitments of this faith. To these He has promised that He will surely make them successors on the earth. (This gentleman, the translator of this Qur'an that I have in hand, has very many errors in his Qur'an, among them this error which my eye just fell upon: he renders "fi'l-ard" ["on the earth"] as "in this land," and this is wrong. "This land" would mean the Arabian Peninsula. Was it some great feat that they should gain control of the Arabian Peninsula? They gained control of forty, fifty regions the size of the Arabian Peninsula. "Fi'l-ard" means upon the earth. I mentioned this because translations of this sort sometimes carry certain mis-teachings with them. We have no ill thought of anyone. We do not say that you said "in this land" so as not to include the other lands — that is, that the believers and those who act righteously can gain control only over the land of the Hijaz, but no longer over other lands: Rayy and Rome and Baghdad and Andalusia. We say, God willing, his intention was not these things.) even as He made those before them successors. He will make them successors on the earth, even as He made the believers before them — that is, the believers of earlier eras. We imagine that the believers, wherever they were from the beginning of the world, have always been beaten down, always taken a blow. Indeed, the historical knowledge and worldview of the general mass of Muslims is that faith means being inseparable from being beaten; that being a Muslim, being a believer, being on the path of God, is inseparable from suffering torment and tasting defeat. This is exactly the opposite of what the Qur'an wishes to say. We once explained this — we had a class of Qur'anic interpretation in the Mirza Ja'far school, two or three years ago, one or two years ago; there, on some occasion, for two days, three days, I recall, I spoke about this — how religion, from the very first that it came into being until today, has had nothing but progress, with not one step of retreat. Not one step, in our belief, has religion retreated until now. That which they imagine to be retreat is in fact progress. In any case, the earth is yours and the rule over it is in your hands, even as it was in the hands of your predecessors — that is, the believers of earlier eras. And He will surely establish for them their religion — He will firmly establish their religion and creed and way, which He has approved for them — the religion He has chosen as pleasing for them, the religion that is worthy of them; that is, this very religion of Islam, which encompasses this world and the hereafter, and the present and the future, and the body and the soul, and in short is all-sided, sufficient for all needs. And He will surely change their state, after their fear, to security. After their fear and apprehension, He will transform it into safety and security. So that what may happen? Under the shadow of this security, what are they to do? Are they, under the shadow of security, to sit beside the garden in the heat of the summer afternoon, drinking tea with a Chinese teapot and a Warsaw samovar? Is the matter of security for these people? Are they to have security so that they can recline comfortably, loll about, and idle their time away? No. That security is so that, under its shadow, they may draw one step and ten steps nearer to the final destination of the human being — namely, perfection. So that they may be servants of God, so that the servitude to creatures may be lifted from their heads, so that they may be obedient and humble before God, and through this path may become exalted and perfected. Every word of these has a discussion of its own. They worship Me, not associating anything with Me. They render servitude to Him and associate no partner with Him. The verse ends with a warning: "if, after they have believed, they associate a partner [with God], here they will be corrupt (fasiq)." Fasiq means one who has departed from the religion. O Lord! In what we say and do, make our hearts sincere, and set them all for Yourself alone. O Lord! By Muhammad and the Family of Muhammad, let us taste the savor of a monotheistic life. O Lord! By Muhammad and the Family of Muhammad, wipe away polytheism even from the region of our hearts. O Lord! By Muhammad and the Family of Muhammad, do not withhold Your good from us. Remove conceit and afflictions and miseries and disorders from among the Muslims. O Lord, occupy the enemies of the Muslims with themselves.