28. " how can you deny allah and
you were dead and he gave you life,
then
he will cause you to die, then again restore you to life,
and
unto him you will be returned ? "
(therefore,
neither your life nor your death is in your will;
what
you have is allah's.)
29.
" it is he who created for you all that is in the earth;
then
turned (his will) to heaven and fashioned it into seven heavens,
for
he is all-knowing of all things."
commentary :
the mysterious
bounty of life !
in these couple of
verses, through a series of the divine blessings
and some of the
marvelous phenomena of creation, the holy qur'an
attracts man's
attention to the lord of the world and his magnificent
sovereignty. it very
clearly completes the undisputable evidence set
forth for the
acknowledgment of allah's omnipotence, that was
previously cited in
verses 21 and 22.
it must be
remembered that the correct conception of allah is
the basic need for
proper faith. this faith serves as guidance from the
main generative
source (allah) for the whole system of religion. the
most practical
method of acquiring this basic knowledge about the
existence of the
essence of allah is to carefully observe and
thoughtfully reflect
on the creation which is before our own eyes. this
is a point that
nobody can deny or express any doubt about. this
method is repeatedly
impressed and demanded in the holy qur'an. the
course adopted in
the holy qur'an to educate man is the most scientific
and the most modern
one, i.e. of proceeding from the concrete to the
abstract.
at first it inquires
: " how can you deny allah and you were dead
and he gave you
life,..."
the qur'an reminds
all individuals that formerly they were
inanimate like the
pieces of stone, wood, and the like of them. the
water of life had
not been poured on you and the breeze of vitality had
not blown through
the garden of your being to open the blossom of
your lifetime in the
realm of your entity.
now, you are gifted
with the bounty of life and you are actually
living. numerous
organs and limbs, and various integral systems of
sensing to form
conceptions are bestowed upon you. who has given
you this very
blessing of life and being ? did you yourself give it to
your own self ?
it is clear that
every rational person will unhesitately confess that
this blessing is not
from his own origin, but it has come from a knowing,
mighty source, the
one who knows all its secrets and its complicated
arrangements;and who
is able to design it totally. in this case there will
arise the question
of why you deny the one who has granted you life.
today, it has been
proven by the scientists of the world that there
is not anything more
complicated than the phenomenom of life. man
has surprisingly
gained a great deal of successful progress in the field of
science, in general,
and experimental natural science, in particular, but
the secret of the
riddle of life has not been uncovered yet. this subject
is so mysterious
that it has remained inexplicable for millions of learned
individuals whose
thoughts and efforts have been left fruitless in
conceiving it.
possibly, in the future, under the light of further
scientific
development, man will gradually become more acquainted
with the secrets of
life. but the main question is : can anybody ascribe
such an
extraordinarily delicate and precise phenomenom, which is full
of mysteries and is
in need of superior knowledge and power for itself,
to the irrational
nature, which itself does not have `life' from its own ?
that is why we say
the phenomenom of life, in the world of
nature, is the
greatest evidence for the affirmation of the existence of
allah about which
abundant books have been compiled. the qur'an,
in the above verse,
emphasizes on the very matter, too.
after the citation
of this bounty, it refers to another vivid
example, i.e., the
phenomenom of death. it says :
"...then he
will cause you to die, ..."
everybody usually
sees that his relatives, kinsfolk, acquaintances,
companions, and
friends die one after another, and their lifeless bodies
are buried in the
soil. this actual circumstance is also a station of
contemplation : who
took their beings from them ? if their beings were
theirs by
themselves, they would be eternal. when it is taken from
them, it is further
proof that life is bestowed upon them by someone
else.
true, the ` bestower
of life ' is the ` bestower of death ', as the
qur'an says : "
he who created death and life, that he may try which of
you is best in
deed ...",
(sura al-mulk, no. 67,
verse 2).
the qur'an, after
providing these two clear statements as proof
for the essence of
allah in order to make the soul of man disposed to
grasp other
problems, refers to the subject of resurrection and being
restored to life
after death. it says : "...then again restore you to life, ..."
this phenomena of
life after death, indeed, is not so surprising
because it is not
unfamiliar and man has formerly seen the same
situation in nature.
therefore, regarding the first statement, viz. `the
enlivening of the
inanimate', the acceptance of raising the dead after
the decomposition of
the body, it is not so difficult, but it is easier than
the first time he
created man; (although the easiness and hardness is
meaningless for the
essence whose power is infinite).
it is odd that there
have been some people who have been
doubtful about man's
life after death. they believe that the first life
has originated from
some inanimate things.
it is interesting
that the above verse has made everything, from
the beginning to the
end, manifest before the eyes of man. in a short
argument, it has
expressed the advent of life to its last point in this
world, death, and
then the resurrection is illustrated for him.
the objective
meaning of the phrase " unto him you will be
returned " is
returning to allah's blessings; that is, you will return to
the blessings of
allah in the hereafter. the witness to this meaning is
sura al-'an`am, no.
6, verse 36 which says : "... as to the dead,
allah will raise
them up; then will they be turned unto him".
the objective of
" unto him you will be returned " may be a reality
more delicate and
fragile than that. it is to say that : all creatures, in
the process of
development, begin from the station of non-existence,
the zero point, and
go forth towards `infinite', which is the pure
essence of allah.
thus, the path of development does not end with
death, but, in the
hereafter, man will continue his life again, miserably,
or prosperously with
a higher standard of living to pave the path of his
further development.
conclusion :
the arabic term
/kuntum/, (the second person plural), applied in
the above verse, may
address the human ego which was not as it is now
as a conscious
entity. the previous state is termed as `being dead',
brought into the
present conscious state, by allah's means of
`enlivening'. the
departure of the conscious self from the body, is
termed death
appointed by allah. the state of the human cognitive
self, after its
departure from the body, is termed as the `enlivening' and
from that state
proceeding to the other states, up to the infinite point
of the return to
allah. this shows that once our life begins, there is
no reversion or
regression. it is the continuous process from one state
to the next, dying
from the previous state and entering life into the
succeeding one. be
the succeeding state pleasant or painful, it is the
evolutionary
consequence of the preceding state.
also, this single
verse alone denotes the continuous evolutionary
transformation and
the transcendence of a conscious human entity up
to the communion
with the infinite, not in the sense of annihilation or
the absorption of
the finite into the infinite, but in the sense of the
realization of the
fact that nothing is real but the one, the cause of all
causes : the essence
of allah, the exalted.
* * * *
after mentioning
the blessing of life and pointing to the ` origin
and end ', it refers
to another divine bounty from among the immense
bounties of allah.
it says : " it is he who created for you all that is in
the earth,
..."
in this manner, it
specifies the worthiness of the existence of man
and his high
mastership over all beings in the earth. it is just this very
matter that
clarifies for us that allah has created man for a very
worthy and
magnificent affair. it is so important, that everything in the
world is created for
him! what is he created for? yes, he is the most
excellent being in
the world of existence and the worthiest of all. a
partial explanation
will also be provided when commenting on verses
30-33 of the current
sura.
it is not this verse
alone that defines the majestic position of man
but there are also
abundant verses in the holy qur'an that reveal the
same and introduce
man as the main goal of the whole world of
creation; for
example : " and he has subjected to you, as from him, all
that is in the
heavens and on the earth : ...", (sura al-jathiyah, no.
45,verse 13).
some further
instances from the verses of the holy qur'an are as
follows :
"...who hath
made the ships subject to you, ...", (14: 32).
"...and the
rivers (also) hath he made subject to you...", ( 14: 32).
"...and the
night and the day hath he also made subject to you." (14:
33).
" it is
allah who has subjected the sea to you, ...", (45: 12).
" and he
hath made subject to you the sun and the moon, ...", (sura
ebrahim, no. 14,
verse 33).
on this subject, we
will have some explanations later, too, when
commenting upon sura
ar-ra`d, no. 13, verse 2, and sura ebrahim
no. 14, verses 32 and
33.
again, it turns to
the concept of monotheism and says :
"...then
turned (his will) to heaven and fashioned it into seven heavens;
for he is
all-knowing of all things."
the seven
firmaments :
the word /sama'/, as
oppose to /'ard/ `the earth', in the lexicon
means : `to be
lofty, upward'. this is a collective meaning which
encompasses numerous
concepts,in which some of the dimensions were
formerly mentioned. 1 but what is the objective meaning of the phrase
`seven heavens'
here?the islamic scholars and the commentators of the
holy qur'an have
offered different arguments on the subject, but the
important idea which
seems to be the most correct is that the purpose
of `seven heavens'
is its very actual meaning of `seven firmaments'.
yet, from the verses
of the qur'an, it is understoond that the
whole of celestial
bodies : planets and fixed stars that we can see, are
totally in the first
heaven, and there are six other heavens that are not
visible to us and
even our modern scientific equipment are not able to
show them.
therefore, there are, on the whole, seven firmaments which
make up the very
`seven heavens'. 2
the evidence to this
statement is the words of the qur'an where it
says : "...and
we adorned the lower heaven with lights,...", (sura
al-fussilat, no.
41, verse 12).
in another
occurrence it says : " we have indeed decked the lower
heaven with beauty
(in) the stars,...",(sura as-saffat, no. 37, verse 6).
these verses clearly indicate that
what we see in the sky, which
are generally called
stars, are completely located in the first heaven.
beyond this heaven,
there are six other heavens about whose details we
do not have any
exact data at present.
the reason why we
said that there are six other heavens which are
unknown to us yet,
and science may realize them in the future, is that
human knowledge is
still incomplete. the more developed it becomes,
the more new
surprising facts about the creation it discovers. for
instance, the
science of astronomy has now reached a point where
earthly telescopes
are incompetent and satellites equipped with
powerful radars and
specific means for the purpose, are utilized instead.
what the great
astronomical observatories and the modern equipment
with the help of
spacecrafts and scientific excavations have discovered,
in the arc of
descent, is a distance as far as about one thousand million
(a billion) light
years away from us wherein they have discovered
innumerable solar
systems other than ours. the astronomers
themselves have
confessed that this is just the beginning of the way of
the world, not the
end of it, and the discovery of further such systems is
yet expected with
the successful invention of or the enhanced structure
of stronger
telescopes or more advanced means of celestial excavations.
therefore, there is
no doubt that, in the future, with the further
progress in
astronomy and science, other galaxies and firmaments, or
the like, might be
discovered.