Quranic Foundations And Structure Of Muslim Society
APPENDIX 2
THE PROBLEM OF DESPAIR AND
THE GOSPEL OF EMANCIPATION
In many human beings the
consciousness of past sinfulness creates a sense of despair—sometimes involving
great severity—as to the possibility of their moral emancipation; and it can
actually damage their prospects with respect to moral reformation, unless they
are offered some principle that may ensure to them that the evil spiritual
consequences of their past sins could be washed away, enabling them to build up
a healthy moral life with hope and confidence and serenity, and without any lurking
sense of past guilt that may disturb their moral enthusiasm.
The Holy Qur’an has supplied that
principle in its teaching that sincere repentance (taubah)[1]
brings immediate forgiveness from God which washes away the spiritual stains of
guilt. It says:
“O you who believe! Turn to Allah with sincere repentence:
Belike your Lord will expiate from you your misdeeds
…” (66:8).
The fact is that doubtlessly the
commission of sins leads a person farther and farther away from moral purity.
But once a person performs taubah, i.e., repents truly and with all the force
of his personality, his latent will for the good is revived and activised,
reinforcing his moral fibre. This is what we learn from the story of Adam, the
father of humanity. The Holy Qur’an attributes his entanglement in the Devil’s
deception not to deficiency in knowledge but to deficiency in will. It says :
“And verily We made a covenant of old with Adam, but
he forgot: and We found in him no firm resolve [2] (in
that affair).” (20:115).
The wrong which Adam pbuh had committed
was of an innocent type, consisting, as it did, not in moral turpitude but only
in error of judgment. But even so, it did not repeat itself, because his
repentance brought about the tazkiyah, i.e., purified him of the deficiency in
his will, as we read in the Holy Qur’an:
“Then Adam learnt from his Lord words (of penitence),
and He relented towards him; for He is Oft-Returning, Most Merciful.” (2:37).
The Attribute of God as
‘Oft-Returning’ (Tawwab) in the above verse is expressive of the Islamic
teaching that God’s attitude towards the sinners is one of continued mercy and
compassion. Persons with weak will but a good heart may relapse time and again
from their commitment in respect of taubah. But they should not lose heart.
Rather, they should re-affirm their taubah with greater determination, each
time they fail, and keep up the exercise for their firm establishment on the
path of virtue. For that they will have to return again and again to the seeking
of God’s mercy; and they will not fail to get it, because God is Oft-returning,
Most Merciful.
Besides inviting to Repentance, the
Holy Qur’an has also stated the law:
“Lo! good deeds annul ill deeds: Be that the word ofremembrance to those who remember (their
Lord).” (11:114).
However, the following proclamation
forms the greatest Message of Hope even for the worst sinners, provided they
repent truly and start their life in conformity with the Divine Law:
“Say: ‘O My Servants who have transgressed against
their souls! despair not of the Mercy of Allah: for Allah forgives all sins:
verily, He is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful. Turn you to your Lord (in
repentance) and bow to His (Will), before the Penalty comes on you after that
you shall not be helped.” (39:53-54).
Indeed, evils already committed can
be blotted out, with regard to the spiritual effects on the human personality,
if: (a) an evil-doer repents truly, and (b) wages a determined struggle for
pursuing Good in Submission to God.
g
[1] The act of taubah is actually three-dimensional, because it
consists of: (1) sincere acknowledgment in one’s heart of the wrong committed;
(2) firm establishment in one’s consciousness of a proper estimate of the evil
nature of that wrong and the consequent dissociation from it; (3) firm resolve
in respect of avoiding its commission in the future. As such, it might be
termed as a ‘contract with the future’.
[2] “wa lam najid lahu ‘azma” in the Arabic text may also mean: “and We
did not find in him determination (to disobey) “—implying that Adam’s act of
eating from the forbidden tree was not voluntary, and, consequently, Adam’s
sinlessness was not impaired in spite of that act.
A tree has no free will,
and hence cannot exhibit ‘conduct’. It should therefore be quite apparent that
the Lord-God has used the ‘tree’ as a symbol to represent something quite
reprehensible.
We learn something about
the symbol when Iblis, i.e., Satan, sought to seduce them to approach the tree
while claiming that they would become like unto Angels who live eternally,
i.e., for a very long period of time. The objective which he was pursuing in
disclosing this information to them was to inject into their spiritual heart a
form of lust, i.e., the lust to live forever. Such lust, like its sexual
counterpart, i.e., sexual lust, destroys spiritual innocence and reduces one to
a state of (spiritual) nakedness:
(Qur’an, al-An’am, 7:20)
Satan whispered unto
both Adam and his wife Hawwa, or Eve, with a view to making them conscious of
their nakedness, of which hitherto they had been unaware; and he said: Your
Lord-God has but forbidden you this tree lest you two become as angels, or lest
you live forever.
Iblis went on to reveal
more about the symbol of the forbidden tree when he disclosed that it was not
only the tree of immortality, symbolizing ‘eternal life’ (angelic style), but
also ‘eternal rule’. His objective in disclosing this information to them was
to inject into their spiritual heart another form of lust, i.e., the lust to
rule forever or eternally. In order to achieve eternal rule they would have to
establish a ruling State that would rule eternally. The lust for such eternal
rule, like the lust to live forever, and sexual lust, destroys spiritual
innocence and reduces one to a state of spiritual nakedness:
(Qur’an, Ta Ha, 20:120)
Satan whispered unto
(only) Adam, saying: O Adam! Shall I lead thee to the tree of life eternal; and
thus to a kingdom that will never perish or decay?
Iblis succeeded in
deceiving them, in consequence of which they both tasted the tree, i.e., they
allowed their hearts to lust for that which the tree symbolized. As soon as
that lust entered their hearts, i.e., the lust to live and to rule eternally,
they lost their spiritual innocence and became conscious of their nakedness.
They then sought, symbolically so, to cover themselves with leaves from the
trees of heaven:
(Qur’an, al-An’am, 7:22)
And thus Satan led them
on with deluding thoughts, guile and deception. But as soon as the two had
tasted the fruit of the tree, they became conscious of their nakedness; and
they began to cover themselves with pieced-together leaves from the garden. And
their Lord-God called unto them: Did I not forbid that tree unto you and tell
you, Verily, Satan is your open foe?
Since they lost their
spiritual innocence, they no longer qualified to dwell in heaven. This is so
because heaven is reserved for those whose hearts are Salim, i.e., sound,
healthy and innocent:
(Qur’an, al-Shura, 26:88–89)
On Judgment Day neither
wealth nor children will be of any benefit, rather, only he will automatically
qualify for heaven who comes before Allah Most High with a heart which is
Salim, i.e., sound, healthy, and innocent, and hence free from the lust for
life and the lust to rule.
We learn from the passage
below that both Nabi Adam ʿalayhi as-salām, and his wife were expelled
from heaven and sent to reside on earth, as soon as they tasted the forbidden
tree:
(Qur’an, al-Baqarah, 2:36)
But Satan caused them
both to stumble therein, and thus brought about the loss of their erstwhile
state of spiritual innocence. And so Allah Most High said: Down with you, and
experience the plague of enmity and hostility for one another as the lust for
life and for rule corrupts you; and on earth you shall have your abode and your
livelihood for a while!
They responded by seeking
Allah’s forgiveness, and He, in turn, forgave them:
(Qur’an, al-Baqarah, 2:37)
Thereupon Adam received
words of guidance from his Lord-God, and He accepted his repentance: for,
verily, He alone is the Acceptor of Repentance, the Dispenser of Grace.
The order of expulsion
from heaven was maintained despite that Divine forgiveness. However they were
informed that adherence to Divine guidance which would come to mankind from
time to time, was the necessary condition for life on earth, and for efforts to
establish Pax Dei that would be free from fear and grief:
(Qur’an, al-Baqarah, 2:38)
For although Allah Most
High did say, Down with you all from this heavenly state, there shall, none the
less, most certainly come unto you guidance from Me: and those who follow My
guidance need have no fear, and neither shall they grieve.
The same event is
described in the Torah quite differently. We quote the Torah at length:
Now the serpent was craftier than any
of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God
really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
The woman said to the serpent, “We
may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat
fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch
it, or you will die.’”
“You will not certainly die,” the
serpent said to the woman. ”For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes
will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
When the woman saw that the fruit of
the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for
gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband,
who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and
they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made
coverings for themselves.
Then the man and his wife heard the
sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day,
and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
He answered, “I heard you in the
garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
and he said, “Who told you that you
were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
The man said, “The woman you put here
with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
Then the Lord God said to the woman,
“What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived
me, and I ate.”
So the Lord God said to the serpent:
Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock, and all wild
animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of
your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your
offspring and hers. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.
To the woman he said: I will make
your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labour you will give birth
to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.
To Adam he said: Because you listened
to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must
not eat from it,’ Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you
will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and
thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of
your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it
you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you will return.
Adam named his wife Eve, because she
would become the mother of all the living. The Lord God made garments of skin
for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the Lord God said: The man has now
become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach
out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever. So
the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which
he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of
the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to
guard the way to the tree of life.
Genesis: 3–4 NIV
This book concludes with
a warning to those who lust for life, seeking to live for as long as possible,
and who also lust to rule over others with eternal rule, that such are a
morally and spiritually naked people whose nakedness will increasingly become
clearly visible to all of mankind (who have eyes with which to see) as Truth is
proclaimed in the world. This book, which introduces the subject of Dajjal or
the Anti-Christ, is written to assist readers to be able to see and to
understand the reality of the world today in which events which are ominously
unfolding, have a parallel in a forbidden tree in Awwal al-Zaman.
The Qur’an has exposed
the Jewish lust for life:
(Qur’an, al-Baqarah, 2:96)
And thou wilt most
certainly find that they, the Jews, cling to life more eagerly than any other
people, even more than those who are bent on ascribing divinity to other beings
beside Allah: every one of them would love to live a thousand years, although
the grant of long life could not save him from punishment in the hereafter: for
Allah sees all that they do.
There is also ample
evidence of a Jewish lust to rule the world eternally which, also, is a part of
the forbidden tree. Consider Rabbi Emanuel Rabinovich’s declaration:
“We will openly reveal our identity with the races of Asia and Africa. I can state with
assurance that the last generation of white children is now being born. Our
Control Commissions will, in the interests of peace and wiping out inter-racial
tensions, forbid the Whites to mate with Whites. The White Women must cohabit
with members of the dark races, the White Men with black women. Thus the White
Race will disappear, for the mixing of the dark with the White means the end of
the White Man, and our most dangerous enemy will become only a memory. We shall
embark upon an era of ten thousand years of peace and plenty, the Pax Judaica,
and our race will rule undisputed over the world. Our superior intelligence
will easily enable us to retain mastery over a world of dark peoples” Rabbi
Emanuel Rabinovich's summation of the progress of his tribe, the Modern Tribe
of Jews, toward their goal of the One World under Jewry.
Emergency Council of European Rabbis
in Budapest on January 12, 1952
We have attached the full
text of his speech as an Appendix 3 to this book.
