Why Heavenly Light is Needed
The Young Islam, 15th August 1934 Issue (Vol. 1, No. 6, Supplement p. 2)
If you are just and fair in your dealings you can bear witness against yourself that instead of the love and worship of God there is present before your heart an idol of Mammon-worship, before which you make thousands of prostrations within the space of a second. Your precious time and energy is all so pre-occupied with every idle talk and prattle that you do not find time even to direct your attention to the other side.
Have you ever pondered as to the end and future of this existence of yours? Where is justice in you? Where is trustworthiness in you? Where is in you that honesty, that fear of God, that trust and that humility towards which the Holy Quran invites you? You do not seem to bring to mind, even in an unguarded moment, for years together, whether there is any God for us all. It does not occur to you at all what duties and obligations towards Him are imposed upon you. Yes, the truth is this: that you have neither any business with Him nor any concern with Him, nor even any relation with Him, Who is the Eternal and the Everlasting. It is difficult for you even to mention His name.
But now you will argue with great skill and dexterity that it is not at all so. But hark! The law of God puts you to shame when it points out to you that there are in you no signs of the religiously-minded people. Though you may claim for yourselves, with great force, wisdom and thoughtfulness in worldly schemes and designs, yet be assured that all your ability, your sagacity and penetrating intellect, and your foresight must end with the shores of the earth, and that with all your wisdom you cannot hope to perceive, even to the extent of an atom, that other world, in which to rest eternally your souls have been created. You repose so contented with the life of this world as though it were a permanent and abiding thing with which any person would rest secure. But you do not call to mind, even once in your whole life, that the other world, the joys and pleasures of which are abiding and capable of yielding true contentment and satisfaction.
What a misfortune it is that you should sit with closed eyes, completely unmindful of and thoroughly indifferent to this great and important affair; and in the desire of things which are merely transitory and which are to be neglected, you seem to rush headlong.
Are you aware of that time which is sure to befall you and which will put a drastic end to all your desires, your ambitions and to your very life? What a deplorable evil it is that you should waste all your time in seeking after the world, in spite of such knowledge! And even this desire for the worldly goods and possessions is not limited to the legitimate means but you have made lawful all illegitimate means, beginning from falsehood and fraud and ending with even unlawful murder.
In addition to all these disgraceful crimes that are so rife in you, you yet dare to say that you do not require any Heavenly Light and Heavenly Movement. Nay, you bear the bitterest hostility towards it, and you have considered this Heavenly Movement of God to be a trifling affair so much so that your tongues only discharge the function of scorn and ridicule through words filled with contempt and that in the most insolent and haughty manner, whenever they choose to speak about it.
And you frequently reiterate as to how you could become convinced of the fact of the Movement being from God. I have just now replied to this question—that you should recognise the tree by its fruits, and the star by its light. I have for once delivered to you this message, and henceforth it is left to your will and pleasure to accept or reject it, and to remember or erase from memory my words:
جیتےجی قدر بشر کی نہیں ہوتی پیارو
یاد آئیں گےتمہیں میرےسخن میرے بعد
“Not honoured is man when yet alive, dear ones; After my death, my words remember you will.”