Seventh Point: It is about the wisdom behind the following verses: “Show us the straight way, The way of those on whom Thou hast bestowed Thy Grace,-…” (al-Fatiha, 1:6-7)

SEVENTH POINT

Then, when I said:

Guide us to the Straight Path, * The path of those on whom You have bestowed Your bounty,¹

I saw among the convoys of mankind that were travelling towards the past, was the luminous, radiant caravan of the prophets, the veracious ones, the martyrs, the saints, and the righteous. They were scattering the darkness of the future and travelling the road to post-eternity on a straight way, a direct highway. The phrase was showing me the way to join the caravan, indeed, it was joining me to it. Suddenly I exclaimed: “Glory be to Allah! Anyone with an iota of intelligence must know what a loss it is not to join that long, light-scattering caravan which is illuminating the future and travelling in perfect safety. Where can one who deviates from it by creating innovations find a light; which road can he take? Our guide, Allah’s Most Noble Messenger (Upon whom be blessings and peace) decreed: “All innovations are misguidance, and all misguidance is in Hell-fire.”²

I wonder what advantage do certain wretches worthy of the epithet ‘bad religious scholars’ find in the face of this certain statement? What fatwa do they issue so that unnecessarily and harmfully they oppose the clear matters of ‘the marks of Islam,’ and deem it possible to change them? It must be that a temporary awakening caused by a fleeting manifestation of meaning deceived those ‘bad scholars.’ For example, if an animal or fruit is stripped of its skin, it displays a temporary delicacy, but in a very short time the delicate flesh and delicious fruit go black and rot under the skin which is now a stranger, withered, dense, and extraneous. In exactly the same way, the prophetic and Divine phrases in ‘the marks of Islam’ are like a living and meritorious skin. On being stripped, the luminosity of the meanings is temporarily naked and visible to an extent. But like a fruit that has been separated from its skin, the spirit of those blessed meanings flies away leaving behind the human skin in darkened hearts and minds. The light flies away, while its smoke remains. However....

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1. Qur’an, 1:5-6.
2. Muslim, Jum’a 43; Abu Da’ud, Sunna 5; Nasa’i, ‘Idayn 22; Ibn Maja, Muqaddima 6-7; Darimi, Muqaddima 16, 23; Musnad iii, 310, 371; iv, 126-7.