Surah Al-Isra' , 17..Pseudo-profundity of the Modern Man..

....what I can't perceive, measure or comprehend is NOT THERE !.....



THE SURAH GOES ON TO ADDRESS and educate the unbelievers about God, accusing them of preferring to live in darkness rather than to accept the truth of God's existence. By refusing to accept His message, the unbelievers of Muhammad's time suspended their rational intellectual faculties and thereby denigrated themselves to a level lower than the animals which only live life on a day-to-day basis and see nothing beyond their immediate material existence. Their excuse was that Muhammad must have been a victim of incantation, influenced by a magic spell, and that what he was saying to them was absolute nonsense for there could not be life after death.

It is interesting to note here that modern civilization also adopts the exact same logic, with reference to life after death, as reflected clearly in its art, literature, law and philosophy. Ancient and modern skeptics would say in disbelief:

And they say: When we are bones and fragments, shall we forsooth, be raised up as a new creation? (49) Say: Be ye stones or iron (50) Or some created thing that is yet greater in your thoughts! Then they will say: Who shall bring us back (to life). Say: He Who created you at the first. Then will they shake their heads at thee, and say: When will it be? Say: It will perhaps be soon; (51) A day when He will call you and ye will answer with His praise, and ye will think that ye have tarried but a little while. (52) 

This is the second time this argument appears in the surah, indicating that human beings are raised above the animals by virtue of their free will and intellectual capabilities, but that once these capabilities are relinquished, their senses lose their human functions and begin to resemble more those of the animals- they look without seeing, hear without understanding, and speak without knowledge. More ominously, however, as man openly denies the existence and sovereignty of God and refuses to believe in his accountability to Him, he forfeits the right to and the privilege of God's guidance.

And he whom Allah guideth, he is led aright; while, as for him whom He sendeth astray, for them thou wilt find no protecting friends beside Him, and We shall assemble them on the Day of Resurrection on their faces, blind, dumb and deaf; their habitation will be hell; whenever it abateth, We increase the flame for them. (97) That is their reward because they disbelieved Our revelations and said: When we are bones and fragments shall we, forsooth, be raised up as a new creation? (98) Have they not seen that Allah Who created the heavens and the earth is Able to create the like of them, and hath appointed for them an end whereof there is no doubt? But the wrong-doers refuse aught save disbelief. (99) 

Shaykh Muhammad al-Ghazali
" A Thematic Commentary On The Qur'an "





Reflection and commentary by Imam Dr Yusuf Ziya Kavakci,
[ part 5 ]
[ ayat 58 - ayat 75 ]