The Second Comparison

Once, an uncivilized man entered an astonishing military camp and observed the extremely ordered drills and movements of a perfectly disciplined army. He saw a battalion, a regiment, and a division rise, halt, march, and fire at the command of a single soldier. His defective and diseased mind could not understand that the soldiers were actually carrying out these orderly actions at the command of a commander, according to the decrees of a sultan. This led him to imagine that the soldiers were tied together with ropes. He pondered the extraordinary qualities of this imaginary rope and was amazed.

He then left and, during the Friday prayer, visited a most impressive mosque, the Hagia Sophia. He saw a Muslim congregation standing, bowing, prostrating, and sitting, all under the leadership of one man. Since he neither understood the SharīahThe body of Islamic laws and guidance, based on the Qur’an and the Sunnah, that prescribes the proper way of life; Islamic law., which consists of a collection of spiritual and heavenly laws, nor recognized the spiritual principles that arise from the commands of the Lawgiver, he imagined that the congregation was connected by material ropes that held them captive and moved them like puppets. He then left the mosque with such a ridiculous thought that even the most foolish people would laugh at it.

As in the preceding example, a denier of Allah, carrying a purely primitive, atheistic-naturalist way of thinking, entered this universe, which is a magnificent military camp for the countless soldiers of the Sultan of all times and all ages, and an ordered mosque of Mabūd-i AzalīAllah, Who alone is worthy of worship and whose existence is without beginning.. He imagined the immaterial laws by which the order of the universe is established, and which arise from the wisdom of Sultān-i AzalīAllah, the Pre-Eternal Sovereign of all things and all times., to be material things. He also supposed that the laws—the so-called “laws of nature”—which have only a theoretical existence within the lordship of Allah, as well as the rules and principles of the laws of Mabūd-i AzalīAllah, Who alone is worthy of worship and whose existence is without beginning., which possess only a conceptual reality, had an external, material, and physical form. On the basis of this way of thinking, he placed those laws in place of the power of Allah, attributed creation to their hands, and called the whole of it “nature.” Such reasoning, which regards the “forces in the universe”—which are merely manifestations of the power of the Lord—as a mighty, independent, and self-sustaining ruler, is a thousand times more primitive than the primitiveness in the previous example.

In short, what naturalists call “nature” could at most—assuming it has external existence—be a work of art; it cannot be the artist. It is rather an embroidery; it cannot be the embroiderer. It is determined; it cannot be the determiner. It consists of laws related to creation; it cannot be the lawgiver. It is rather a created veil so that the glory of Allah remains preserved; it cannot be the Creator. It is a being that is subject to influence; it cannot be the influential Maker. It represents a law, not a power; it cannot be powerful. It is like a template; it cannot be the painter.