A Speech by Hazrat Ameer Prof. Dr. Abdul Karim Saeed during his U.K. Visit
Part of a speech delivered at a public meeting on Saturday 23rd April 2005 at the New Haw Community Centre near Woking
The Light (UK), August 2005 Issue (pp. 7–8)
Editor’s Note: The following is part of a speech delivered by Hazrat Ameer Prof. Dr. Abdul Karim Saeed at a public meeting on Saturday 23rd April at the New Haw Community Centre near Woking. It is based on a transcript made from a recording. We have edited the text in order to convert the oral speech to a written form of presentation.
Today I am going to talk to you on a subject which I call as the
“Miracle of the Transformation of the Human Soul.”
This is the recipe which anybody from any religion can follow, keeping the Creator in mind, keeping God in mind, keeping Allah in mind, because there is not a single religion in the whole world which would spread evil but every religion must have one aim and that is to bring goodness into the hearts of the people and make the hearts so good that the person transforms, the soul transforms. The Quranic verse of Chapter 2, verse 152 is translated as follows:
فَاذۡکُرُوۡنِیۡۤ اَذۡکُرۡکُمۡ وَ اشۡکُرُوۡا لِیۡ وَ لَا تَکۡفُرُوۡنِ ﴿۱۵۲﴾٪
“Therefore glorify Me, I will make you eminent and give thanks to Me and be not ungrateful to Me.” [The Holy Quran, 2:152]
Now all religions of the world, as I said, have one thing in common and that is to transform the human soul and raise it from its death state to a living state. If any religion works to the contrary it is not from God. The mission of all Prophets, sent by Allah, has been to give spiritual sight to the blind, put words of God into their deaf ears and cure them of their ills and raise them from their spiritually dead states into living humans. As Muslims, we believe that all the Prophets have achieved this miracle of transformation of soul by following some guidelines and then had been given the task of giving this mission on to the people and purify them. If a religion cannot purify the people, it does not stand the test of being a living religion. As Muslims, we believe that Prophets have came from Allah, right from the Prophets Adam through Noah, Abraham, Ishmael, Jacob and Jesus, and the last of the Prophets that came to mankind was Prophet Muhammad (may peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). We believe that Prophet Muhammad has finalized the Prophethood and no more Prophets are to come. Reformers, however, will come because over the years the religion cannot stay uncorrupted. People introduce their ideas into it. People have misinterpretation regarding it and someone has to come to put people back on the right course. Since there are not going to be any more prophets, reformers have to come and Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the reformer we believe in, was one of the series of many reformers that came and gave the interpretations of Holy Quran and sayings of the Prophet in the right direction, which had been misinterpreted by even the clergies of Islam themselves.
The subject I have chosen today to talk about is the miracle of the transformation of the human soul. In the verse that I recited to you at the start of my speech, Allah says:
“Therefore remember Me, I will transform your soul making you eminent”.
Now, the Arabic words used have been translated into
“remember Me and I will make you eminent”,
the words being: You keep remembering me and I will keep remembering you. So, when Arabic is translated, it’s a very wide language. It has got many meaning. So, the translator has to pick what he feels is the most appropriate and there are many more meanings and a lot of depth to this verse which is the basis of transformation of the human soul. It could be interpreted as
“glorify Me and I will make you eminent”
and it could be
“remember Me and you will find Me with you”.
Also it may imply
“guard against harmful things and I will protect you against harmful things and evil so that you get close to Me”.
Saying good things about someone also means zikr or remembering and that’s how Allah wants to be remembered all the time. So lives have to be freshened in a way where we have God in our minds and our souls all the time. Fighting evil is also mentioned as one of the meanings of remembering Allah and fighting evil is by you being good, ignoring the devil and his suggestions. It is not at all the meaning that you have to fight something with a gun or with a sword or with a suicide bomb. Islam has to be spread peacefully for its beauty and you have to completely submit yourself to Allah.
To stay determined and to keep on to a course is also remembering Allah all the time through patience and prayers and it can also be mentioned that this can be translated as
“you remember Me when you are having an easy time, when you are in ease and comfort, and are living a life without any danger, so that I can remember you when you are in trouble and get you out of that trouble”.
It is human nature to suddenly fall before God when in trouble. The Quran says that when you are travelling in the sea and storm surrounds you, you remember Allah from the core of your heart, ask His forgiveness and pray that if you land safely on the shore, you will always be grateful to God. Our reformer said that being close to Allah is the objective of human life, irrespective of whatever religion anyone may belong to. They have to keep remembering their Lord, they have to keep remembering God all the time and at any time they are not remembering God is the time spent away from God and therefore that time can be said to be a time of disbelief. You have to make an effort to make God to come down into your hearts and be in there, the same God that cannot be accommodated in the whole universe and beyond.