ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books An Enlightening Commentary into the Light of the Holy Qur'an vol. 17 Surah al-Jathiya, Verses 23 - 37 Surah al-Jathiya - Verse 23 أفَرَأيْتَ مَنِ اتَّخَذَ إِلَهَهُ هَوَاهُ وَأضَلَّهُ اللَّهُ عَلَی عِلْمٍ وَخَتَمَ عَلَی سَمْعِهِ وَقَلْبِهِ وَجَعَلَ عَلَی بَصَرِهِ غِشَاوَةً فَمَنْ يَهْدِيهِ مِنْ بَعْدِ اللَّهِ أفَلا تَذَكَّرُونَ 23. Have you seen him who takes his own vain desires as his god?

And Allah knowing [him as such] left him astray and sealed his hearing and his heart and put a cover on his sight. Who then will guide him after Allah? Will you not then remember? When one follows his vain desires and regards his concupiscence as object of worship, they will turn into a cover covering his vision, hearing, and heart. As a consequence, the Words of Truth may not affect him. In this way, he is not worthy of being guided and thereby he is led astray.

God has made available to man the means of deliverance from error, but when he does wrong to himself and follows the path of error, he will be deprived of Divine Guidance. It is not Divine Will to lead him astray, but his deprivation from Guidance is mere error.

It is for the same reason that the Verse closes with the question; “Will you not then remember?” Surah al-Jathiya - Verse 24 وَقَالُوا مَا هِيَ إِلاّ حَيَاتُنَا الدُّنْيَا نَمُوتُ وَنَحْيَا وَمَا يُهْلِكُنَا إِلاّ الدَّهْرُ وَمَا لَهُمْ بِذَلِكَ مِنْ عِلْمٍ إِنْ هُمْ إِلاّ يَظُنُّونَ 24. And they say: “There is nothing but our life of this world, we die and we live [viz.

a group departs and another group enters] nothing destroys us except Nature and Time.” And they have no knowledge of it: they are only wishful thinkers. The word dahr denotes the passage of time. Materialists maintain that the passage of life time leads to human perdition.[^1] Following vain desires blinds the eye of the heart such that he denies resurrection and regards life restricted to transience.

According to this blessed Verse, those who take their vain desires as their deities and obey Satan and concupiscence and thereby weaken their intellect think that life is restricted to this mundane and transient life and deny the life in the world to come, saying that life is nothing save this mundane life in which we see the light and then we die and nothing may destroy man except the passage of time.

Their words are not substantiated by knowledge since they have lost their innate sound nature owing to following their vain desires.

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