∗ When the sky is rent asunder.(84:1) ∗ And the trumpet will be sounded, and all that are in the heavens and all that are on earth will fall down senseless, except such that it pleases God [to exempt],(39:68)

it smashes the delusion that the world is eternal. Through such thunderous blasts as,

He knows what enters within the earth and what comes forth out of it, what comes down from the skies and what mounts up to them. And He is with you wheresoever you may be. And God sees all that you do.(57:4) ∗ And say: Praise be to God, Who will show you His signs, so that you shall know them. And your Sustainer is not unmindful of all that you do,(27:93)

it scatters the heedlessness born of the notion of nature.

Thus, from beginning to end the Qur’an’s verses which are turned towards the universe proceed according to this principle. They reveal and display the reality of the world as it is. Through showing just how ugly the ugly world is, it turns man’s face from it and points out the beautiful world’s beautiful face, which looks to the Maker. It fastens man’s eye on that. It instructs in true wisdom and knowledge, teaching the meanings of the book of the universe, and looking infrequently at the letters and decorations. It does not cause the meaning to be forgotten like drunken philosophy, nor make man enamoured of the ugly and waste his time on meaningless things due to the decoration of the letters.

Third Gleam

THIRD GLEAM: In the Second Gleam we pointed to the fall of human philosophy before Qur’anic wisdom and to the miraculousness of Qur’anic wisdom. Now, in this Gleam, we shall show the degree of the wisdom and science – before Qur’anic wisdom – of the purified scholars, the saints, and the enlightened among philosophers, the Ishrāqiyyūn, who are all students of the Qur’an, and shall briefly indicate the Qur’an’s miraculousness in this respect.

The truest evidence of the All-Wise Qur’an’s sublimity, and the clearest proof of its truth and justice, and the most powerful sign of its miraculous inimitability is this: it has preserved the balance of all the degrees of all the areas of divine unity together with all their necessities and not spoilt it, and has expounded them; it has preserved the balance of all the exalted divine truths; it has brought together all the ordinances dictated by the divine names and preserved their mutual proportion; and it has brought together the dominical and divine acts with perfect balance. Thus, such preserving and balance and bringing together is a characteristic that is certainly not