Worship-Guidance-Mercy:
Some Reflections on the Surah The Heights in the Quran
Everything
happens according to God’s plan. If a
leaf falls or wind blows, if a grain of sand is moved by an insect or animal,
nothing is out of the insight and will of God.
For the contemporary secular mind, for one who sees his or her very
existence accidental and arbitrary, this is so difficult to be conceived. They can’t understand it.
As
I promised to myself to ponder the Quran
Beyond Fragmentation, I will reflect on the ending of surah The Heights (7:154-206),
after the story of Moses, despite its shifts of themes, to see the possible unfragmented
essence that holds these different themes together. This is not a designed writing for achieving
a planned goal. It is the experience of writing and reflection
with a critical attitude, though with an open heart and trust in God. I started from wondering what is the
connection of all these diverse themes at the third part of the surah, and you and
I will know the conclusion at the end.
After
the worshipping of the Golden Calf and Moses’s anger at his followers, we have
a dialogue between Moses and God:
“When Moses’ anger abated, he picked up the Tablets,
on which were inscribed guidance and mercy for those who stood in awe of their
Lord. Moses chose from his people
seventy men for Our appointment, and when they were seized by trembling, he
prayed:
‘My Lord, if You had chosen to do so, You could
have destroyed them long before this, and me too, so will You now destroy us
for what the foolish among us have done? This is only a trial from You– through
it, You cause whoever You will to stray and guide whoever You will– and You are
our Protector, so forgive us and have mercy on us. You are the best of those
who forgive. Grant us good things in
this world and in the life to come. We turn to You.’
God said:
‘I bring My punishment on whoever I will, but My
mercy encompasses all things. I
shall ordain My mercy for those who are conscious of God and pay the prescribed
alms; who believe in Our Revelations; who follow the Messenger– the unlettered prophet they find described in the Torah that is
with them, and in the Gospel– who commands them to do right and forbids them to
do wrong, who makes good things lawful to them and bad things unlawful, and
relieves them of their burdens, and the iron collars [Cf. 6: 146. This reference is said by interpreters to refer
to the difficult obligations imposed on the
Children of Israel.] that were on them. So,
it is those who believe him, honor and help him, and who follow the light which
has been sent down with him, who will succeed.’
Say [Muhammad], ‘People, I am the Messenger of God to you all, from Him
who has control over the heavens and the earth. There is no God but Him; He
gives life and death, so believe in God and His Messenger, the
unlettered prophet who believes in God and His words, and follow him so that
you may find guidance.’” (7:154-8)
Here
God talks about two kinds of mercy. One
is that which encompasses all things.
This is the sheer existence and sustenance of the worlds. The universe stays intact due to God’s
mercy. The second mercy is for those who
heed the guidance: who are conscious of God, pay the prescribed alms, and
believe in God’s revelations. After the
story of Moses, the Quran declares that Muhammad is a messenger not only for
Arabs but for all human beings, whose coming was predicted in the Torah and in
the Gospel [I will discuss this point later].
In
the next part, we have a brief history of Jewish twelve tribes. But the story is not about Jewish history as
much as it is a moral-spiritual parable.
“They did not wrong Us; it was themselves they
wronged. When they were told, ‘Enter
this town and eat freely there as you will, but say, “Relieve us!” and enter
its gate humbly: then We shall forgive you your sins, and increase the reward
of those who do good,’ the wrongdoers among them substituted another saying
for that which had been given them, so We sent them a punishment from
heaven for their wrongdoing.” (7:160-1)
And
the parable of how wrongdoers lose their path and how God punish them continues
in this way:
“[Prophet], ask them about the town by the sea; how
its people broke the Sabbath when their fish surfaced for them
only on that day, never on weekdays– We tested them in this way: because of their
disobedience– how, when some of them asked
[their preachers], ‘Why do you bother preaching to people God will destroy, or at least punish severely?’ [the preachers]
answered, ‘In order to be free from your Lord’s blame, and so that they may
perhaps take heed.’ When they ignored [the
warning] they were given, We saved those who forbade evil, and punished the
wrongdoers severely because of their disobedience. When, in their arrogance, they persisted in
doing what they had been forbidden to do, We said to them, ‘Be like apes!a Be outcasts!’ And then your Lord
declared that, until the Day of Resurrection, He would send people against them
to inflict terrible suffering on them. Your Lord is swift in punishment but
He is most forgiving and merciful.” (7:163-7)
a This is understood by some as ‘physically turn
into apes’ but in fact it is a figure of speech– the
structure ‘be apes’ is like ‘be stones/iron’ in 17: 50. Just as the Qur_an describes the disbelievers as
blind, deaf, and dumb, here the transgressors are apes.
God’s punishment is
the immediate ramification of “doing wrong to oneself”. Everywhere in the Quran, it is highlighted
that the very act of disgracefulness and cruelty, i.e., disobedience to God,
affects the wrong doers. In the Quran,
we constantly hear that God guides or punishes whoever God wills, but this is
not an arbitrary and whimsical will. It
is clarified repeatedly that it is so because we are unable to understand how
our moral flaws affect our body/soul, and we are also unable to understand
fully the wisdom of God’s actions. In
each case, everything happens according to the exact justice of God.
But I ask myself,
“Did Quran’s prediction about the Jews not come true?” It is painful to say that it reminds me of
all the calamities that Jewish people went through, including Nazi’s
concentration camps. We have to be
careful here, because the Quran clearly mentions that God saves those [including
Jews] who obey God and don’t follow their whims. The Quran always qualify and quantify its
arguments and never falls into hasty generalization and never fall into
religious and racial bigotry and hatred, if and only if, we pay attention to
its consistency:
“We dispersed them over the earth in separate
communities– some are righteous and some less so: We tested them with
blessings and misfortunes, so that they might all return [to
righteousness]– and they were succeeded by generations who, although they
inherited the Scripture, took the fleeting gains of this
lower world, saying, ‘We shall be forgiven,’ and indeed taking them again if
other such gains came their way. Was a pledge not taken from them, written in
the Scripture, to say nothing but the truth about God? And they have studied
its contents well. For those who are mindful of God, the Hereafter is
better. ‘Why do you not use your reason?’ But as for those who hold fast to the
Scripture and keep up the prayer, We do not deny righteous people their
rewards. When We made the mountain
loom high above them like a shadow, and they thought it would fall on them, We
said, ‘Hold fast to what We have given you, and remember what it contains, so
that you may remain conscious of God.’”
(7:168-171)
This is the
consistency of God’s message: the nexus of action falls back on a divine
Law. The divine Law in is inscribed into
each one of our cells. Our body/soul has
set to a direction: God-consciousness and righteousness. This is a very intricate and subtle setting
as we might deviate from the Divine Law in the name of God-consciousness and
righteousness. So, the measure of the
Law is action, not words. The Quran
tells us that the Law of Justice is enacted in a way that whatever we do can
potentially bring about blessings or misfortunes. Everything happens to us is a guidance. God’s punishment, as long as we live on the
earth and keep on living after the punishment, is a guidance. If a people are punished to death by God,
this is also a guidance for others. And
the wrongdoers will be punished on the Day of Judgement because they have
exhausted the body/soul to a deprivation of God-consciousness: the suffering is
an immediate just ramification of their action.
On the other hand, if one has ingrained falsehood, disgrace, dishonesty,
and the deviation from the Law of God, the Quran is clear that “the good repels
the evil”. Purification is possible only
by changing the direction of body/soul to good.
The more we divert our previous misdeeds to the right course of action
and mindfulness, to God-consciousness (taqwa), the more we realize our malice
and cure the sickness of our soul and heart.
So, the surah The Height (7) continues this way:
“[Prophet], when your Lord took out
the offspring from the loins of the
Children of Adam and made them bear witness about themselves, He said, ‘Am I
not your Lord?’ and they replied, ‘Yes, we bear witness.’ So, you cannot say on
the Day of Resurrection, ‘We were not aware of this,’ or, ‘It was our
forefathers who, before us, ascribed partners to God, and we are only the
descendants who came after them: will you destroy us because of falsehoods they
invented?’ In this way We explain the
messages, so that they may turn [to the right path].” (7:172-4)
God clearly
indicates that the divine Law (God-consciousness) is set in motion from the
very beginning. What is striking about
this “seed” is that everywhere the seed of action is extenuated by actions to
the extent that we can’t separate seed-action from each other. Why?
Pay attention to the verses above and the whole Quran. God could set God-consciousness in us like an
instinct or simple biological motor, but the seed comes to awareness by being
shown to us by God. We are conscious and
aware of an external encounter as well as an internal predisposition. If there were no concordance between these
inner and outer dimensions, we wouldn’t be able to perceive 1) the divine message
and Law, 2) the limits of desire and transgressions of the self against the
self or evil, and 3) we wouldn’t have freedom of the will. So, God comes to us (direct or indirect) and
asks us: to bear witness. Why? God asks us to say it: “Yes, I bear witness”.
The seed of God-consciousness is activated through an external encounter
with God by expressing, saying it in language and in action: “Yes, I bear
witness that you are my Lord.” The Quran
takes this as a sufficient reason to reject the claim of any generation in the
Day of Judgement to say that our forefathers and fathers or mothers were
misguided or believed differently, consequently we lost our way. The Quran takes each and every individual responsible
for accepting, adopting, and following the belief-action-system of one’s
forefather, because our forefathers of our forefathers, the offspring from the loins of the Children of Adam, encountered God
and bore witness. It is seeded in us, in
our primordial memory and more importantly in our capacity to reason and think:
“Do not follow blindly what
you do not know to be true: ears, eyes, and heart, you will be questioned about
all these.” (17:36)
This is one of the
strangest thing about us and God. God
treats us individually responsible for all our choices as long as we can
reason, think, and heed our heart. So,
this self-reflection is not only an intellectual endeavor, but also a soul-heart-searching
phenomenon. The surah continues:
“[Prophet], tell them the story of
the man to whom We gave Our messages: he sloughed them off, so Satan took him as his
follower and he went astray– if it had been Our will, We could have used these
signs to raise him high, but instead he clung to the earth and followed his own
desires– he was like a dog that
pants with a lolling tongue whether you drive it away or leave it alone. Such is the image of those who
reject Our signs. Tell them the story so that they may reflect. How
foul is the image of those who reject Our signs! It is themselves they wrong: whoever God guides is truly
guided, and whoever God allows to stray is a loser. We have created many jinn and people who
are destined for Hell, with hearts they do not use for comprehension, eyes they
do not use for sight, ears they do not use for hearing. They are like cattle, no, even further astray: these
are the ones who are entirely heedless.”
(7:175-9)
I have to confess
that this continuity, coherency, and consistency is striking and startling to
me. I feel a shiver of cold in my bones,
as I have been that man in the above verses: in 2005, God gave me clear messages
and I exactly sloughed it off [slough: a swamp; a state of moral degradation]
and I followed my own desires! I was so
lost I couldn’t read it clearly. I feel
a chilling trembling as I was that dog who was panting to receive divine
guidance and when I received it, I followed my own desires and became a follower
of Satan, consciously and unconsciously, so it makes a lot of sense to me when
the Quran says: “We could have used these
signs to raise him high, but instead he clung to the earth and followed his own
desires– he was like a dog that pants with a lolling tongue whether you drive
it away or leave it alone.”
If it was not for my
hope and faith in God’s mercy, with a darkened face I would perish now. But I can’t even perish, because the divine
message told me then that I would live into my eighties. What is the use of this life that I don’t use
it to ponder the pathos and ethos of God?
I pray: May God, the merciful and just, the forgiving and the guide, bring
mercy to me and guide me, save me. But
the Quran tells me the first step is up to me to separate my path from “many jinn and people who are destined
for Hell, with hearts they do not use for comprehension, eyes they do not use
for sight, ears they do not use for hearing. They are like cattle, no, even further astray: these are the ones who are entirely heedless.”
And the surah The Heights (7) continues:
“The Most Excellent Names belong to God: use them to
call on Him, and keep away from those who abuse them– they will be requited for
what they do. Among those We created are
a group of people who guide with truth and act justly according to it. But We lead on those who reject Our messages,
step by step, without them realizing it: I will give them respite, but My
plan is sure. Has it not occurred to them that their companion is not mad but is giving clear warning?
Have they not contemplated the realm of the heavens and earth and all
that God created, and that the end of their time might be near? What [other revelation] will they believe in
if they do not believe in this? No one
can guide those God allows to stray: He leaves them blundering about in their
insolence.” (7:180-6)
Now, after this
description of misguidance and getting lost, the Quran shows us how to find our
way: to call on the Excellent Names of God, and keep away from those who abuse
them. The Quran clearly alarms us
against the abuse of the names of God.
It is not easy just to say the name, one has to understand how one might
abuse those names. And the measure is inside
and outside us, in revelations, and in our own eyes, ears, heart, and reasoning
capacity. “Have they not contemplated
the realm of the heavens and earth and all that God created, and that the end
of their time might be near?” (7:186) What a difficult task and what a
warning! I must use all my wits and
understanding to contemplate the heavens and earth to find my way to God. But first and foremost, I have to open up my
heart to the scriptures and Quran. Otherwise
I am one of losers, losing my soul to Hell.
Then the surah continues:
“They ask you [Prophet] about the Hour, ‘When will
it happen?’ Say, ‘My Lord alone has knowledge of it: He alone will reveal when its
time will come, a time that is momentous in both the heavens and
earth. All too suddenly it will come upon you.’ They ask you about it as if you
were eager [to find out]. Say, ‘God alone has
knowledge of [when it will come], though most people do not realize it.’ Say [Prophet], ‘I have no control over benefit or harm, [even] to myself, except as God may
please: if I had knowledge of what is hidden, I would have abundant good things and no harm could
touch me. I am no more than a bearer of warning, and good news to those who
believe.’” (7:187-8)
The lines are clearly
drawn: The Day will come that we will be awakened to God’s Judgement without
any doubt. The consistency and coherency
of the Quran and my own personal experience—my eyes, ears, heart, reason—bear unabashedly
witness to this truth. It will come unabatingly
and indubitably. But no one knows the
moment and the hour and no one has any control over benefit or harm to
oneself. God saves our soul and my soul!
Then the surah start coming to closure
and landing from Heights:
“It is He who created you all from one soul, and
from it made its mate so that he might find comfort in her: when
one [of them] lies with his wife and she conceives a light burden, going about
freely, then grows heavy, they both pray to God, their Lord, ‘If You give us a
good child we shall certainly be grateful,’ and yet when He gives them a good
child they ascribe some of what He has granted them to others. God is far above the partners they set up
alongside Him! How can they set up with Him these partners that create nothing and are themselves created, that cannot help them
at all, or even help themselves? (7:189-192)
It was a strange experience for me to read and reflect on this surah
today. I felt it was talking
straightforwardly to me. In this part,
God says we are from one soul, men and women, and our children also are from
our soul. However, our soul is dual:
earthly and heavenly. We can lose ourselves
in following our desires (evil) or following God-consciousness (good). Our children also can go this way or that
way. I prayed to God to give me a good
child. And then I was lost again after
being guided! God clarifies that it is
only God and no other source, nature or spirit or jinn, who gives us children,
but we always seek partners for God. Now
it is fashionable to say genetic trait embedded in dead particles and matter
gives us children. We can’t see and
understand that human spirit, which is distinguishably divine, is created by
God, and there is no partner for God’s creative power—everything else,
including genes, are tools at the disposal of God’s creation, necessary but not
sufficient conditions. The surah ends
with these two paragraphs. First:
“If you [believers] call such people to guidance,
they do not follow you: it makes no difference whether you call
them or remain silent. Those you
[idolaters] call upon instead of God are created beings like you. Call upon
them, then, and let them respond to you if what you say is true. Do they have feet to walk, hands to strike,
eyes to see, or ears to hear? Say [Prophet], ‘Call on your “partners”! Scheme
against me! Do not spare me! My
protector is God: He has revealed the Scripture, and it is He who protects the
righteous, but those you call on instead of Him
cannot help you or even help themselves.’
If you [believers] call such people to guidance, they do not hear. You
[Prophet] may observe them looking at you, but they cannot see. Be
tolerant and command what is right: pay no attention to foolish people. If Satan should prompt you to do something,
seek refuge with God– He is all hearing, all knowing– those who are aware of
God think of Him when Satan prompts them to do something and immediately they
can see [straight]; the followers of devils are led relentlessly into error by them and cannot stop.” (7:193-202)
At
the closure of the surah, God enheartens the Prophet that no one can hurt or
protect him but God. So, a real believer
endures harm and enjoys blessing as God-given.
It is astounding that the Quran calls upon the enemies of the Prophet to
scheme against him, absolutely sure that they can’t harm him! And the best advice to the prophet and us is
to be tolerant and do the right thing rather than reacting foolishly. Just thinking of God will transform our soul
from rash decisions prompted by Satan to see clearly and make a right
decision. And what is the right decision? To be tolerant and not to be reactive. The surah ends with a command for worshipping
God:
When you do not bring them a fresh revelation, they
say, ‘But can you not just ask for one?’ Say, ‘I merely repeat what is revealed to me from my
Lord: this revelation brings you insights from your Lord, and guidance and
mercy for those who believe, so pay attention and
listen quietly when the Quran is recited, so that you may be given mercy.’
[Prophet], remember
your Lord inwardly, in all humility and awe, without raising your voice, in the
mornings and in the evenings– do not be one of the heedless– [even] those who live in the presence of your Lord
are not too proud to worship Him: they glorify Him and bow down before Him.”
(7:203-206)
The ending is the confirmation
of the fact that the Quran is a revelation from God and an
insight-guidance-mercy for those who believe.
In this context, the worship is commanded not only as an authoritarian
and arbitrary demand but as an essential component of this
insight-guidance-mercy. In this way, we
come to a full circle from the worship-guidance-mercy of God in Moses’ tablets
to worship-guidance-mercy of God in the Quran.
The Conclusion to
"Worship-Guidance-Mercy: Some Reflections on the Surah The Heights in the
Quran":
At the beginning of the
reflection, I wrote: “As I promised to myself to ponder the Quran Beyond
Fragmentation, I will reflect on the ending of surah The Heights (7:154-206),
after the story of Moses, despite its shifts of topics, to see the possible unfragmented
essence that holds these different themes together. This is not a designed
writing for achieving a planned goal. It is the experience of writing and
reflection with a critical attitude, though with an open heart and trust in
God. I started from wondering what is the connection of all these diverse
themes at the last third part of the surah, and you and I will know the
conclusion at the end.”
Conclusion
Now I will try to pull all the
strings together: we started from the tablet of “mercy and guidance” in the
hands of Moses, the ten commandments and the command to love and worship God
with all our heart, and it was striking to me that it turned out also that
worship-guidance-mercy in the surah The Heights come together. The surah
Heights ends with asking the Prophet to remember God inwardly and in humility
and awe. God asks the Prophet not to be one of the heedless. Every being
worships God even those who live in the presence of God. But the surah
cultivates us “why” and “how” this worship is guidance and mercy and in which
sense those who don’t worship God and are heedless don’t receive guidance and
mercy.
But then, one may ask, how does
the world stands as it is for millions on this planet who don’t worship or
believe in God? In the next paragraph, the surah says God shows two kinds of
mercy: one that encompasses everything, even for those who don’t worship God,
God still sustains them to the appointed time of their death and then in the
Day of Judgement they will be risen, judged, and rewarded-punished based on
their actions. And the second mercy is for those who heed the guidance and
worship God.
1) From raising the point about
guidance-mercy-worship at the beginning, we move to “why” and “how” these are
interrelated phenomena.
2) It starts from how wrongdoers
do wrong to themselves. We have to make sense of the fact that there is
something inward in relation to what we do: whatever we do, we do to our own
soul/body. The similes and stories of Jewish tribes and the generations after
them, the Quran declares, says something striking: the later generations have
no excuse as they had the scriptures-guidance-mercy and some distort it, hence
the punishment and suffering for those who deviated.
3) God proclaims that
reward-punishment is the immediate result of the individual’s action. When we
hear the words "reward-punishment" in the Quran, it is not an
arbitrary act of an angry God. In the Quran, these terms indicate
attunement-deviation from the internal working (God-consciousness) of a system
(body/soul) with inevitable immediate results. And there is no excuse for
anyone not to use one's eyes, ears, heart, and reason to follow
God-consciousness for the following reasons:
4) Everything happens to us is a
guidance. God’s reward-punishment, as long as we live on the earth and keep on
living after the attunement-deviation, is a guidance. If wrongdoers are
punished to death by God, this is also a guidance for others. If blessings
occur to some, this is also for guidance. And the wrongdoers will be punished
on the Day of Judgement because they have exhausted the body/soul to a
deprivation of God-consciousness: the suffering is an immediate just
ramification of their action.
5) On the other hand, if one has
ingrained and internalized falsehood, disgrace, dishonesty, and the deviation
from the Law of God, the Quran is clear that “the good repels the evil”.
Purification is possible only by changing the direction of body/soul to good.
The more we divert our previous misdeeds to the right course of action and
mindfulness, to God-consciousness (taqwa), the more we realize our malice and
cure the sickness of our soul and heart.
6) God could set
God-consciousness in us like an instinct or simple biological motor, but the
seed comes to awareness by being shown to us by God. We are conscious and aware
of an external encounter as well as an internal predisposition. If there were
no concordance between these inner and outer dimensions, we wouldn’t be able to
perceive 1) the divine message and Law, 2) the limits of desire and
transgressions of the self against the self or following one's desires, and 3)
we wouldn’t have freedom of the will. So, God comes to us (direct or indirect)
and asks us: to bear witness. Why? God asks us to say it: “Yes, I bear witness”.
The seed of God-consciousness is activated through an external encounter with
God by expressing, saying it in language and in action: “Yes, I bear witness
that you are my Lord.”
7) The Quran takes each and every
individual responsible for accepting, adopting, and following the
belief-action-system of one’s forefather, because our forefathers of our
forefathers, the offspring from the loins of the Children of Adam, encountered
God and bore witness. It is seeded in us, in our primordial memory and more importantly
in our capacity to reason and think:
“Do not follow blindly what you
do not know to be true: ears, eyes, and heart, you will be questioned about all
these.” (17:36)
8) This is one of the strangest
thing about us and God. God treats us individually responsible for all our
choices as long as we can reason, think, and heed our heart. This
self-reflection is not only an intellectual endeavor, but also a
soul-heart-searching phenomenon. And the Quran declares that some can detach
themselves from the earth and from following their desires and some can’t. A
veil will fall upon the eyes, ears, and heart of those who can't and the Quran
analogize them to dogs and cattle or even worse. Hence, they lose
worship-guidance-mercy. This is a system set from inside out.
9) Now, after this description of
misguidance and getting lost, the Quran shows us how to find our way: to call
on the Excellent Names of God, and keep away from those who abuse them.
10) In the end, in the Day of
Judgement we will be kept accountable for everything we did and there will be a
measure to see whether we have accomplished worship-guidance-mercy. If not, no
one is to blame for the punishment—indeed our own body and soul will punish us
in the end. And the time of the Day of Judgement is hidden and no one knows
when it will come.
11) The best advice to the prophet and us is to
be tolerant and do the right thing rather than reacting rashly and foolishly.
The Quran declares just thinking of God will transform our soul to see clearly
and make a right decision. And what is the right decision? To be tolerant and
not be reactive. But one has to reflect on this: how and why does just thinking
of God transform our soul? This says a lot about the inner working
(ethical-spiritual) and telos (end, purpose) of existence.
12) The ending of the surah is
the confirmation of the fact that the Quran is a revelation from God and an
insight-guidance-mercy for those who believe. In this context, the worship is
commanded not only as an authoritarian and arbitrary demand but as an essential
component of this insight-guidance-mercy. In this way, we come to a full circle
from the worship-guidance-mercy of God in Moses’ tablets to
worship-guidance-mercy of God in the Quran.
