THE WORD OF GOD

THE WORD OF GOD My servants who believe, My earth is vast, so worship Me alone. Every soul shall taste death and then to Us you shall return. We shall lodge forever those who believe and do good works in the mansions of Paradise beside which rivers flow. How excellent is the reward of those who labour, and who are steadfast and put their trust in their Lord. 29: 56-59 How many creatures cannot fend for themselves! God provides for them and for you. He is the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing. 29: 60 Sometimes a change is necessary in the mode of performing a task. This may require a change in the sphere of influence, in the way that the Hudaybiyah Pact shifted the scene of action from the battlefield to the field of missionary work. But more often it requires a major step, like migration; for example, the migration of the Prophet from Makkah to Medina. In these verses the faithful living in Makkah were told that if the people of Makkah were harassing them, they should leave Makkah, migrate to some other place, and carry on God’s worship there. This shows that the exercise of patience and trust means being steadfast in prayer and not persisting in clashing with enemies. Had it been God’s will that they should engage in hostilities under any circumstances, then the instructions would have been to continue fighting with their opponents and not, in any event, to move away. If you ask them who it is that has created the heavens and the earth and subjugated the sun and the moon, they will say, ‘God.’ How then T HE Quran is the book of God. It has been preserved in its entirety since its revelation to the Prophet of Islam between 610 and 632 A.D. It is a book that brings glad tidings to mankind, along with divine admonition, and stresses the importance of man’s discovery of the Truth on a spiritual and intellectual level. Translated from Arabic and commentary by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan