November 2012
November
2012 Webcasting on the world’s first real-time Islamic service at www.virtualmosque.co.uk Editors: Shahid Aziz Mustaq Ali
Contents:
Page
Call of the Messiah Umar bin Abdul Aziz Persecution and False Piety
1 4 6
َّحیْم ِ بِس ِْم ہللاِ الرَّحْ مٰ ِن الر
Webcasts: Please note that the Friday khutba and prayers, the dars, as well as all meetings are broadcast over the Virtual Mosque (www.virtualmosque.co.uk).
Call of the Messiah (Continued from the last issue)
Prayer precedes plan This investigation leads us obviously to the conclusion that prior to the creation of a plan there is the stage of prayer, which the Law of God has preordained and destined as necessary and inevitable for man, so that every seeker after an object has naturally to cross over this bridge. It is, therefore, a shameful matter if one should say or think that prayer and plan are contradictions and inconsistent with each other. What is the aim or purpose of prayer? It is evidently that the Great Knower of the Unseen, Who has knowledge of even the subtlest schemes, might drop some nice and excellent plan into the supplicant’s mind, or create one from his own side by exercising His attributes of all-powerfulness and creative action. How, then, could there be any contradiction or inconsistency between prayer and plan?
A spiritual argument Besides this, just as the mutual relation between prayer and plan is proved by the testimony of
The beauty Allah created – so which of Allah’s bounties will man deny by destroying it? the Law of Nature, in the same way, the Book of Human Nature, too, offers the evidence that at the time of some affliction, human minds, as is our observation, turn to adopting a remedial plan, and tend to prayer, sacrifice and charitable deeds under a natural impulse. If a glance should be cast upon all the nations of the world, it seems that up to this time no nation’s conscience has stood up against this universally accepted principle. It is, therefore, a spiritual argument upon the fact that the internal law of man has also, from ancient times, decreed unto all the nations that prayer shall not be separated from plan and proposed action, and that plan and method of procedure should rather be sought and explored by means of prayer. In short, prayer and plan are two natural requirements of human nature which have, ever since the creation of man, come down through the ages, like two real brothers, to attend upon and serve human nature. Whereas plan is the necessary outcome of prayer, prayer is the incentive or stimulus for plan; and man’s blessedness and obedience lies in the fact that he should, before launching upon a plan, seek