ভূমিকা
Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Beseeching For Help (istighathah) Chapter 1: Preliminaries Allah, to whom all honour belongs, is the Creator of the universe. He has unlimited power and His sovereignty extends over everything, living and non-living, earthly and ethereal. He is the only true Helper. While all other aids are bound in the vicious chain of cause-and-effect, His transcends these limitations.
Whatever takes place in the universe, on the earth and in the heavens, owes to the exercise of His will and power. The world of becoming and the world of being dance to His tunes. From Him alone emanate the eternal concepts of right and truth.
He is the One Who causes the brightness of the day to lapse into the darkness of the night and then the brilliant sun to pop out of its murky folds and the whole process occurs in imperceptible grades and shades that one is simply stunned by its inviolate precision. While human calculation fails or shows unpredictable variation, divine calculus remains steady and varied and is immune to the "slings and arrows"[1] of unpredictability. He is Unique in His self-orientation and in His attributes.
He has no partner and associate and, single-handedly, He blesses billions of creatures with the gift of life, reclaims His blessings in the flash of a second leaving the living creature a mere bundle of bones and "a heap of broken images"[2] and administers countless worlds stretching to inconceivable limits. Each particle in the universe carries the stamp of His identity.
No other object or creature has the power to possess anything of his own free will because his will is moulded by divine consent. Whatever he owns or possesses is a divine gift and not a self-created achievement. An individual has no right of possession even over his own body. Gain and loss, life and death and resurrection after death are not in human control.
Allah alone is directly responsible for the act of living and the act of dying because He controls each breath we inhale, each movement we make and each step we take. Human acts may be justified by purely human motives in terms of cause-and-effect and, only to this extent, it is supported by Islamic regulations and Qur’anic injunctions.
On this level it is possible to believe that a creature is himself responsible for his gain and loss and it is through his personal efforts that he has attained certain possessions or achieved a specific degree of excellence.