Accepting the New Reality

Accepting the New Reality

1989 1 January 6-7 Accepting the New Reality (409) When living faith in God degenerates into stagnant ritual, it is time to make a reappraisal of the ways into which we have fallen, for meaningless ritual can never find favour in the eyes of God. If he has sent His Prophets into the world at different points in human history, it is so that through the different forms of His religion, man should be put to the test. The differences in the religions of the successive prophets are usually explained as a matter of evolution, God’s religion, it is said, was first revealed in a simple, incomplete form, which gradually developed until it reached the stage of perfection. But this explanation does not stand up to inspection, for it is made quite plain in the Quran that no evolutionary process was ever intended, and· that the differing forms that God’s religion has taken over the ages were designed to separate the wheat from the chaff.

“We have ordained a law and assigned a path for each of you. Had God pleased, He could have made you one nation: but it is His wish to prove you by that which He has bestowed on you, so vie with each other in good deeds” (Quran 5:48).

The change of qiblah (direction) of prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca is explained in similar terms:

‘‘Each one has a goal towards which he turns. Emulate one another in good works.... We decreed your former qiblah only in order that We might know the Apostle’s true adherents and those who were to disown him. It was indeed a hard test, but not to those whom God guided” (2:143,148).

In reality, Shariah is a living expression of true faith in God. But when one particular form of religion has been adhered to by successive generations, it gradually loses its soul. It becomes the trigger of mechanical obeisance, without any profound significance for the human psyche. When such religious practices are characterized by such emptiness, God feels it is time to alter the form which His religion takes. He puts an end to the old established order so that people may free themselves from conventional belief and make the conscious decision to rediscover true religious awareness. When God reveals a new religion, it becomes clear who the truly faithful are. Those who are wedded to convention will remain set in their ways, whereas those who accept the new reality will bow to the will of God.