Another night…
“Jem… Imagine Allah had chosen and sent you as a messenger to the Eskimos… Would you have talked to them about the benefits of staying away from cold waters, ice, and the Sun, as these can burn them? Or would you have told them about a paradise made of ice where they can live forever in freezing bliss, if they are good? I wonder how well a ‘Paradise made of ice, full of snow and surrounded by icy cold water’ would go down with the Eskimos!”
“Obviously, the message I give them would be appropriate to their situation! I would not talk about the benefits of the cold and an icy paradise to people who have spent a lifetime freezing in the snow!!!”
“Ok, Jem. Here’s another question for you: Imagine there was a man who had one hundred million dollars. Would you ask him to give his one hundred million dollars to you in return for fifty million? What kind of a response do you think you will get for such an offer?”
It seemed Jem wasn’t exactly sure about the point Alph was trying to make. He stared at him with a blank expression for a while… and then said:
“Obviously I won’t make such a silly offer. Who would give up one hundred million in return for fifty million?”
“So, then, can you please tell me, which man, in a society where men could buy as many women as they desire, would give up the tens of women in their possession, in return for some concubine they are told they are to receive in paradise?
“When Rasulullah saw came to Mecca, the men of that region were able to buy and sell women, own and be with as many women as they desired. Now, if these men were told ‘give up all of these women and live with only one woman; one woman is enough for you here and in the hereafter’, how many of these men do you think would have found this offer attractive?”
“Ok, Alph, so what is your point? That the universal messages are imparted according to societial and environmental needs and conditions? The Quran is a universal book about universal truths... This is what we believe! So how can you degrade it to suggest it merely addresses the local needs of certain societies? You’re messing with my head, Alph!”
“No, Jem, your head is already messed up with an illusory ‘God’ that you’ve labelled Allah! As long as you don’t cleanse that head of yours from this ‘God’ belief and the concept of a ‘Messenger’ that is formatted according to this so-called God, you will never attain the reality of Allah’s Rasul or anything else for that matter!
“There is no God up in the heavens, or sitting on Sirius somewhere, who has ‘chosen’ a messenger from amongst you to be his postman! When are you going to wake up to this reality, Jem? When are you going to start contemplating and deciphering the truths these words are pointing to?
“The Supreme Book you know as the Quran, is the manual of the ‘System and Order’ of the One denoted by the name Allah, which claims by the way: ‘Some of our verses are the clear truths and some are symbolic and allegorical’. Why don’t you take heed of this?
“If you continue like this, you’ll even start thinking of five or twelve fingered gigantic hand reaching down to Earth from the heavens when you hear the phrase ‘God’s hand’...”
Jem was absolutely dumbfounded...
What was Alph trying to say?
What reality was Alph trying to wake Jem up to?
AHMED HULUSI
From ‘Beyond the Ocean’[1],1998