Welcome to our weekly program "Path towards Enlightenment" in which we present you a fluent and easy-to-understand explanation of the ayahs of the holy Qur’an. We start from where we left you last Friday and here is ayah 18 of Surah Fatir:

 “No bearer shall bear another’s burden, and should one heavily burdened call [another] to carry it, nothing of it will be carried, even if he were a near relative. You can only warn those who fear their Lord in secret and maintain the prayer. Whoever purifies himself, purifies only for his own sake, and to Allah is the return.”

This ayah refers to one of the fundamental principles of Islam, that is, Divine Justice. It means to say that on the Day of Judgement, no person, whether friend or relative, will bear the burden of another’s sin, and the sinners cannot evade punishment by blaming others. Obviously, those who had lured others into sins, while not committing sins themselves, will also be punished, as is the case with those who had encouraged good deeds, and will certainly be rewarded by God Almighty. According to a hadith, on the Day of Judgement, a sinful mother and her sinner son will be brought to the Divine Court with heavy burdens upon them as consequence of the evil they had committed in the world, and died in the unrepentant state. The mother would ask her son to carry part of her heavy burden of sin by reminding him of how she had cared for her and tolerated hardships for his sake. The sinful son will say to his sinner mother to keep distance from him, because he is already burdened with sins of his own.

The next part of the ayah means to tell the Prophet and through him the believers that only those will heed warnings whose hearts are mindful of Almighty Allah, and who are regularly in their obligatory prayers. In other words, those who acquire spiritual values and purify their souls are receptive to words of guidance, or else the words of the Prophet will not have any effect upon them.

In the last part of the ayah, God means to say that those who abstain from sins and purify themselves, they have done it for their own sake, and will be duly rewarded by God, to Whom is the eventual return.

From this ayah we learn that:

1. On the Day of Resurrection, those who die unrepentant and unforgiven, will have to bear the burden of their sins, which no one will share, irrespective of being a friend or a relative.
2. We should not deceive ourselves by those who try to lure us towards sins, by saying: Do not fear, if your deed deserves punishment, we will bear the burden of your sin.
3. Everyone is responsible for his/her sin and will not be punished for the sins of others, but those who had lured others into sins, will also be punished.
4. Likewise, if we do not fulfill our duty to prevent others from committing sins, we will be punished for our silence vis-à-vis the committing of sins.
5.  It is fear of God and inclination towards spiritual values that save a person from leading an aimless and wayward life, since those who do not believe, are unwilling to hear the words of guidance.
6. When we purify ourselves by abstaining from sins, we will indeed be rewarded by God.

Now we listen to and read ayahs 19, 20 and 21 of Surah Fatir:

“The blind one and the seer are not equal,”

“Nor darkness and light;”

“Nor shade and torrid heat;”

These ayahs compare the believer with the infidel and mean to say: Do not consider the one who is blind and does not see anything to be equal to the one who has the sight to see everything? It is clear that they are not equal and their perceptions of truth are different. This same rule applies to those blind of faith and those whose minds and hearts are aware and responsive to facts, realities and the Ultimate Truth. The blind, whether of eyesight or insight, sees everything black and can neither differentiate between darkness and light nor between shade and torrid heat.

Faith is both light and giver of light; and it gives the light cognizance to man’s whole existence and worldview, including belief and action. On the other hand, infidelity and disbelief is darkness in which there is neither a correct insight, nor a proper conviction, let alone the doing of any righteous deed.

Here it should be clarified that is for us to use our God-given faculties of the intellect to differentiate between faith and disbelief. The All-Merciful Lord has not left mankind stumbling in the dark, as is evident by His sending of Divine Guides and Guidelines, in the form of Prophets and Heavenly Scriptures that enable us to emerge out of darkness into the light of faith.

Thus, in the light of these ayahs, if darkness is the cause of errors and dangerous deviation, light is the source of life, of movement, of growth, and of development. If light were blacked out, all sources of energy in the world would be wiped out and death would prevail everywhere. Therefore, in the world of spirituality, the light of faith is the cause of exuberance, growth, development and salvation. In other words, a believer continues to live in peace, security and safety under the shade of his faith, while a disbeliever, because of his/her infidelity, is in perpetual pain.

From these ayahs we learn that:

1. It is differentiation between good and evil that guides us to the right path and helps us avoid the pitfalls of disbelief and deviation.
2. The Prophets and Heavenly Scriptures brighten our perceptions and enable us to avoid the darkness of disbelief.
3. As is evident in these ayahs, the word “noor” or light has been used in singular form, while darkness has been used in plural form, that is, “zuloumaat”, since there is only one straight and unwavering path of truth towards God and the bliss of paradise, while all crooked and deviated paths end up in the abyss of hell.

• AS/ME