Welcome to our weekly program "Path towards Enlightenment" in which, as usual, we present you a fluent and easy-to-understand explanation of the ayahs of God’s Revealed Word for all humanity, the holy Qur’an.

 We start from where we left you last Friday and here is ayah 43 of Surah Roum:

فَأَقِمْ وَجْهَكَ لِلدِّينِ الْقَيِّمِ مِن قَبْلِ أَن يَأْتِيَ يَوْمٌ لَّا مَرَدَّ لَهُ مِنَ اللَّـهِ ۖ يَوْمَئِذٍ يَصَّدَّعُونَ

“So set your heart on the upright religion, before there comes a day irrevocable from Allah. On that day they shall be split [into various groups].”

Among the dynamism of Islam is the harmony of its teachings with the human intellect and nature. In other words, Islam is the religion of peace, rationality, healthy way of life, and submission to none but the One and Only Creator. Thus it is the most morally upright creed catering to all needs of the individual and the human societies. This warrants adherence to its laws in full conformity of its teachings, rather than accepting part of it, and ignoring other parts. Here the Day of Resurrection comes into significance, since life is short and requires us to make the most of the opportunities provided by God Almighty, so that there won’t be any regrets and loss in afterlife. One of the characteristics of the Day of Resurrection is that on that day, mankind will be divided in groups, the path of the faithful separate from that of the faithless. No one on that Day has any power to turn back the reality of Resurrection or to disrupt what Allah has programmed for rewarding the faithful with the bliss of paradise and punishing the unrepentant sinners and disbelievers who never took benefit of the ample opportunities provided by the All-Merciful Lord and died in the state of sin, atheism, polytheism, and agnosticism, thereby condemning their own selves to the eternal fires of hell.

From this ayah we learn that:

1. Islam is the most perfect creed and thus requires full attention to all its teachings, rather than accepting something and ignoring other laws.
2. What saves the individual and the society from ethical and social harms is practical adherence to the teachings of Islam.

Now we listen to ayahs 44 and 45 of Surah Roum:

مَن كَفَرَ فَعَلَيْهِ كُفْرُهُ ۖ وَمَنْ عَمِلَ صَالِحًا فَلِأَنفُسِهِمْ يَمْهَدُونَ

لِيَجْزِيَ الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا وَعَمِلُوا الصَّالِحَاتِ مِن فَضْلِهِ ۚ إِنَّهُ لَا يُحِبُّ الْكَافِرِينَ

“Whoever is faithless shall face the consequences of his faithlessness, and those who act righteously only prepare for their own souls;”

“That He may reward those who have faith and do righteous deeds out of His grace. Indeed He does not like the faithless.”

The previous ayah implied that on the Day of Resurrection people will scatter and become separated into different groups. This ayah explains that this separation is necessary in accordance with Divine Justice, so that each group of believers and disbelievers are given their appropriate reward and retribution. In the Hereafter, of course, the Grace of Allah covers those who had faith and did righteous deeds, which means that entry into paradise requires belief from the heart and performance of good deeds, through repentance and abstention from sins and dissolute behaviour. Thus reward and punishment in afterlife is the result of our deeds in this world. We should not think that belief and disbelief, or ugly and good deeds of mankind have any effect on the Pure Essence of Allah, since it is human beings who benefit and lose on the basis of their own deeds. It is interesting to note that concerning the disbelievers, the Holy Qur’an has sufficed with the sentence: Whoever is faithless shall face the consequences of his faithlessness, but concerning the believers, in the next ayah, the Qur’an explains that not only they will see rewards of their good deeds there but also Allah will bestow more merits upon them because of His Grace, since they deserve bonus for keeping their faith intact in the face of adversities, and performing good deeds.

On the Day of Resurrection, the disbelievers and unrepentant sinners will be subjected to Divine Wrath because of the destruction they had brought upon human societies during the transient life of the mortal world, since evil actions not only worsen the plight of individuals but effect the society as a whole, resulting in a kind of corruption in the social system. Sin, vice, and breaking law is like poisonous food which has unpleasant effects on the system of body. Thus falsehood erode confidence; breach of trust disturbs the social fabric; injustice is always the cause of another injustice; misuse of freedom leads to dictatorship; and the denial of the rights of others creates enmity, causing the foundation of society to become unstable.

From these ayahs we learn that:

1. Our faith or lack of it, and our good or evil deeds, do not affect the Majesty and Might of God, and are beneficial and detrimental to our own selves.
2. Divine punishment is based on justice and is definitely not in excess of the evil deed done, in view of the intransigence of the sinners and the disbelievers who during life never availed of any opportunity to repent or rectify their beliefs.
3. Likewise, the increase of the rewards of the faithful in greater proportion to their good deeds, is also based on Divine Justice, in view of their sincerity of intention that requires Allah the All-Graceful to demonstrate His Munificence.

Now we listen to ayah 46 of Surah Roum:

وَمِنْ آيَاتِهِ أَن يُرْسِلَ الرِّيَاحَ مُبَشِّرَاتٍ وَلِيُذِيقَكُم مِّن رَّحْمَتِهِ وَلِتَجْرِيَ الْفُلْكُ بِأَمْرِهِ وَلِتَبْتَغُوا مِن فَضْلِهِ وَلَعَلَّكُمْ تَشْكُرُونَ

“And of His signs is that He sends the winds as bearers of good tidings and to let you taste of His mercy, and that the ships may sail by His command, and that you may seek of His grace, and so that you may give [Him] thanks.”

Nothing happens accidentally in the world of creation, even the winds blow with the Will of Allah, the All-Wise. Whatever we receive from the blessings of the winds is a part of His signs and bounties. Again, the movement of a ship on the sea is per divine decree, and not in the hands of the helmsman who is apparently in charge of piloting it with all his skills and modern technology. The previous ayah was about faith and righteous deeds, while here in this ayah, monotheism and its evidences are referred to by citing the power and benefit of winds. The One and Only Creator of the universe has devised a wonderful and orderly system, where plants, animals, human beings, and even the microscopic insects, play their own role, but it is mankind, despite being endowed with the intellect, the power of speech and free will, who often acts insolently, thereby affecting the environment and the society and as a result suffering the consequences of misdeeds both in this world and in the Hereafter. God has put the world and its bounties at the disposal of mankind whose two most important means of nourishment and survival are agriculture and animal husbandry, which are indebted to wind and rains. The winds come before rainfall. They take the scattered pieces of cloud with them and join them together and send them toward the dry and thirst lands. They cover some parts of the sky and, by altering the heat of atmosphere, they cause the cloud to be prepared for raining. The importance of the arrival of these harbingers of rain may not be so clear to many of us who enjoy the comforts of life, but those thirsty people who are in need of some drops of water in the desert, when the winds come and move the pieces of cloud with them, and they smell the special odour of rain which has come down on the plants somewhere else, the light of hope appears in their hearts.

Though the ayahs of the Holy Qur’an have emphasized on wind as a harbinger of rainfall, the Qur’anic term “mubashiraat” (or bearers of good tidings) cannot be confined to it, because winds possess many other good tidings. Winds adjust the heat and cold of the weather. Winds purify the air. Winds decrease the pressure of the sun’s heat on leaves and plants, and work as a barrier against sunburn for human beings. Winds bring to the benefit of mankind the oxygen produced by the leaves of the trees, and take the carbonic gas produced by human breath as a present for plants and vegetation. Winds inoculate a lot of plants and join the male and female seeds to each other in the world of vegetation. Winds are a means for mills to move, as well as a factor for filtering the heaps of corn. Winds often carry the seeds of some plants from the places where there are a great deal of them and, like a compassionate gardener, scatter them throughout the plains. Winds take sailors and ships with passengers and much heavy loads to different parts of the world; and even today, when machinery claims to have substituted the wind force, the winds are still very effective in the work of ships to be slow or fast. Yes, they are givers of glad tidings in different ways. Thus, in continuation of the ayah, God, in order to make us realize His bounties and our natural attitude of gratitude, says: “and that you may seek of His grace, and so that you may give [Him] thanks.” 

Thus, winds are both a means of creating abundant bounties in the fields of agriculture and breeding livestock, and a means of carrying kinds of loads, and a cause of lustre in commerce. But the magnitude of this bounty is not recognized until it is taken away from us. In the same way, man does not understand what calamity has come to him unless these winds and breezes stop. For instance, the stopping of winds makes life, even in the best gardens, like life in the dark holes of a dungeon; and if a breeze blows in the cells of solitary prisons it makes it like an open place and, in principle, one of the factors of torture in prisons is the stop of weather therein. Even on the surface of oceans, if wind stops and waves do not exist, the life of the living creatures therein will be in danger as the result of the scarcity of oxygen of the air, and the sea will be altered into a terrible fetid marsh. But unfortunately many of us do not pay attention to these great divine blessings which God has put at our disposal and consider them natural things which occur by themselves without any superior power shaping these phenomena.

From this ayah we learn that:

1. Wind is responsible for spreading the clouds and transferring fresh water through the air to the various parts of the earth, for the benefit of all creatures.
2. It is the power of winds that make ships sail on the seas, despite the progress in technology.
3. Winds and other natural phenomena firm up the proper cognizance of the One and Only Creator of the universe, and require us to be grateful to Him.

AS/MG/SS