Incidentally in this verse an allusion has been made to...

Incidentally in this verse an allusion has been made to another important question also. It is the question of the stages of knowledge. Apart from the sense and the faculty of thinking the Holy Qur'an equally recognizes piety and purity of soul as the means of acquiring knowledge.

This point has been mentioned in many verses implicitly or explicitly: "Believers, if you fear Allah, He will give you power to distinguish between what is good and what is bad." (Surah al-Anfal, 8:29) "By the soul and Him who perfected it and inspired it with the consciousness of what is wrong for it and what is right for it!

He is indeed successful who purified it and he is indeed a failure who corrupted it." (Surah al-Shams, 91:7 - 9) Learning and reading are some other means of acquiring knowledge which have been formally recognized by the teachings of Islam. In order to illustrate this point, it is enough to say that the first revelation to the Holy Prophet began with the word, 'Read'. "Read in the name of your Lord who created. He created man from clot.

Read, for your Lord is the most Bounteous, Who taught by the pen. He taught man what he did not know." (Surah al-'Alaq, 96:1 - 5) (iv) Subjects of Knowledge What are the things worth knowing and what is that which one should know? One should know Allah, the world, man, society and time. All of them are worth knowing and one should know all of them.

Conception of the World This book being an introduction to the Islamic conception of the world is mainly concerned with this subject and it is the subject which you will find scattered throughout this book. Anyhow, to maintain continuity, we give a brief narration of the main features of the Islamic conception of the world: (1) Nature of the world is 'from Him'. In other words the reality of the world is derived from His reality.

A thing may come out of another thing, but its reality is not necessarily completely derived from that of the latter. For example take the case of a son and his parents. The son comes from his parents, but the reality of his existence is different from theirs and is something additional to their reality. In contrast the nature of the world is 'from Him'. Its entire reality is nothing more than its attribution to Allah.

Its reality and its attribution to Allah are identical that is what is meant when we say that the world has been created by Allah. Had the creation of the world meant differently, it would have been procreation and not creation.