THE WORD OF GOD

announced his prophethood, it was difficult for people to believe that this ordinary-looking-person was chosen to receive God’s revelations. It is crucial to understand that once history has taken shape, even a blind man can recognize a prophet, but before history takes shape immense sincerity is required to acknowledge a prophet. The exceptionally different style of the Quran used to stun its opponents, but the ordinary image of the bearer of the Quran would cast them into doubt. Bent on rejecting him, these people used to denigrate the Prophet in various ways, they called him a magician or a liar. They could not reconcile themselves to the possibility of their great men being in the wrong as against an ordinary man. ‘Hold fast to your deities’. These words refer to the paucity of argument of those who oppose the Quran. Finding themselves helpless they try to keep their people away from the powerful effect of the Quran with the help of age-old traditions. Do they possess the treasures of the mercy of your Lord, the Mighty, the Great Bestower? Have they control over heavens and earth and whatever [lies] between them? Then let them climb up to heaven by ropes: this host too, among other hosts, is bound to suffer defeat. Before them the people of Noah denied the truth, as did the ‘Ad and Pharaoh of the Stakes, and the tribe of Thamud, and the people of Lot, and the dwellers of the Wood—these were the confederates. There was not one of them but treated their messengers as liars, so My punishment rightly overtook them: they have only to wait for one single blast [of punishment]: it shall not be delayed by one whit. They say: ‘Our Lord! Hasten on for us our fate before the Day of Reckoning.’ (38: 9-16) God’s blessing of guidance is not meted out in such a way that one who is favoured with worldly greatness is also granted God’s guidance. If worldly greatness were enough to make people great in the eyes of God, it would have become possible for them to confer God’s grace on anybody they liked, while withholding blessings from all others. But the fact is that God bestows His grace by His own standards and not by those laid down by human beings on the basis of appearances. Those who rejected the Prophet used to say, ‘Bring upon us God’s punishment with which you are threatening us.’ The non-believers were so audacious because they believed that they were not going to face God’s punishment. The previous communities had also considered themselves safe and behaved insolently with their prophets, but all of them were destroyed. o