The Quran is a direction and a warning. This life is brief and subject to vicissitudes. Our ideas of Time are defective, as shown in the story of Companions of Cave, who had faith, truth, patience, and other virtues. But their life was a mystery that can be fathomed but by few. Knowledge is for Allah: be on your guard against idle conjectures and cocksure hopes. Learn from the Quran the Parable of the man who is puffed up with this world's goods and is brought to naught. This life is uncertain and variable: goodness and virtue are better and more durable. For the Day of Reckoning will come,...

Surah Mominun deals with the virtues which are the seed-bed of Faith, especially in an environment in which truth is denied and its votaries insulted and persecuted. But Truth is One and must prevail. Those who do wrong will be filled with vain regrets when it is too late for repentance. Faith, coupled with humility in prayer, charity, abstinence from vanity and from indulgence in appetites, and strict probity, must lead to final success, even though people mock and accuse the righteous and false motives, as did the contemporaries of Noah, of Moses, and of Jesus.The prophets of Allah and the...

We begin a series of Surahs Surah 34 to Surah 39 which recapitulate some of the features of the spiritual world. This Surah leads off with emphasis on Allah's Mercy and Power and Truth. - In Surah Fatir we are told how angels manifest the Power of Allah, and how different is Good from Evil and Truth from Falsehood. - Surah Yasin is devoted to the Holy Prophet and the Quran that came through him. - In Surah Saffat the emphasis is on the snares of the Evil One; - in Surah Saad, on the conquest of evil by wisdom and power as in the case of David and Solomon, and by Patience and Constancy as in...