Sunday, February 23, 2014

Should I take to worshiping [other] deities beside God?

Qur'an 36:20-27 (Asad) 
At that, a man came running from the farthest end of the city, [and] exclaimed: “O my people! Follow these message-bearers! 
Follow those who ask no reward of you, and themselves are rightly guided! -
“[As for me,] why should I not worship Him who has brought me into being, and to Whom you all will be brought back? 
Should I take to worshiping [other] deities beside Him? [But then,] if the Most Gracious should will that harm befall me, their intercession could not in the least avail me, nor could they save me:
and so, behold, I would have indeed, most obviously, lost myself in error!
“Verily, [O my people,] in the Sustainer of you all have I come to believe: listen, then, to me!”
[And] he was told, [15] “[Thou shalt] enter paradise!” - [whereupon] he exclaimed: “Would that my people knew
how my Sustainer has forgiven me [the sins of my past], and has placed me among the honored ones!”


Note 15 (Quran Ref: 36:26 )
I.e., by the apostles or, more probably (in view of the allegorical character of this story), by his own insight. The intervention of the man who "came running from the farthest end of the city" is evidently a parable of the truly believing minority in every religion, and of their desperate, mostly unavailing endeavours to convince their erring fellow-men that God-consciousness alone can save human life from futility.(Note by translator Leopold Weiss Muhammad Asad)

In my opinion the story skips directly from this life to the next, as God and Its narrations are unbound by time.

In reading these verses, it helps me to remember that "deities" are not referring to little statues of ancient times, but anything to which we attribute the Divine Names (Infinite Source of Mercy (Ar-Rahmaan, Ar-Raheem), Beauty (Al-Jameel), Justice (Al-Aadil), Wisdom (Al-Hakeem), Provision (Ar-Razzaq), Existence (Al-Khaaliq), Sustainance (Rab), etc.) Anytime we perceive any property of the creation as originating from the creation itself and not their Single Unique Creator (Al-Ahad, Al-Fard) we are worshiping other deities besides the True Source (Al-Haqq).

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