ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Role of Women towards the System of Wilayat The Holy Quran – Source of Guidance The Holy Quran has a collection of several stories related to different Prophets, communities and societies. As a matter of fact all these stories contain a set of lessons of guidance and knowledge for human beings. Our objective should be to acquire those lessons of guidance through these stories.

This objective can be justified with the fact that the Holy Quran itself says that it is a book of guidance: هُدًى لِلْمُتَّقِينَ "and it is a guide for those who guard against evil" (Surah al-Baqarah, 2:2) And at other place it says, شَهْرُ رَمَضَانَ الَّذِي أُنْزِلَ فِيهِ الْقُرْآنُ هُدًى لِلنَّاسِ "The month of Ramazan is that in which the Quran was revealed, a guidance to men and clear proofs of the guidance"(Surah al-Baqarah, 2:185) This is how the Holy Quran has introduced itself as a book of specific guidance to the pious and a general guidance to the entire humanity.

If the Holy Quran is a book of guidance for humanity, then each and everything inside it, is for guidance only and has no other objective. We have treated the Quran in a very indecent manner to the extent that the Holy Quran will complain about this. These days there are those infidels who desecrate the Quran by flushing it in washrooms, but more than those, the Quran will complain against us for the maltreatment we have done to this Holy Book.

This is because those infidels who desecrated the Quran were ignorant and had no sense about the significance of this book, but we are inheritors of this book. We have wrapped the Quran in a beautiful cloth cover and don't even open to read It. This is the biggest insult to the Quran that its followers don't even open it, they have no concern with it, don't read it and worst is that there are many who don't even know how to read it.

It is present in traditions also that the biggest humiliation for a religious scholar is not that he is stoned, abused and criticized, but the worst of humiliation and difficulties for a scholar is that he is present in a society and no one takes benefits from his knowledge.

Hence, the peak of the difficulties for Ameerul Momineen (as) was that he used to invite people to ask him, but they used to ignore him; they did not increase their knowledge through him, and they were not concerned of getting rid of their ignorance through him.

✦ ✦ ✦