Allâhu ta’âlâ has pity on all the people on the earth. He
sends useful things to everybody. He shows them the ways to protect themselves
against harms and to attain happiness and salvation. In the Hereafter, He will
be magnanimously kind, forgiving those whom He chooses of the Muslims who are
to go to Hell on account of the sins they have committed in the world. He,
alone, creates every living being, keeps every being in existence, and protects
all against fears and horrors. In the name of such an omnipotent being, Allah,
we begin to write this pamphlet.
We offer our hamd (praise and gratitude) to Allâhu ta’âlâ.
If a person thanks any other person at any place, at any time, in any way and
for any reason, the thanks paid, in its entirety, belongs to Allâhu ta’âlâ by rights. For, He is the
sole creater of all, the single educator and trainer, and the one and only
maker and sender of everything in the name of goodness. He, alone, is the owner
of power and authority. No one can think of doing something good or bad, or
have the will or desire to do so, unless He creates the idea. The choice that a
slave exercises between doing good or bad to another is a mere nullity unless
He, too, wills it and gives the power and the chance to do so. When some of His
slaves whom He likes wish to do something bad, He does not will it and does not
create the malevolent action. Therefore, only benevolent deeds proceed from
such slaves. On the other hand, when His enemies, who have already somehow
incurred His Wrath, will and desire to do evils, He, too, wills and creates
those evils. Such iniquitous slaves have enslaved themselves to their nafs, and
they never wish to do something good. Therefore, malevolence is the only
product that comes out of them.
We present our salât and salâm (benedictions and salutations) on
Muhammad ‘alaihis-salâm’, the most beloved Prophet
of Allâhu ta’âlâ. We invoke blessings on his Ahl-i-Bayt and on each and every
one of his Sahâba ‘radiy-Allâhu ta’âlâ
Allâhu ta’âlâ commands Muslims to cling to the Qur’ân al-kerîm and to unite around the Qur’ân al-kerîm. The Ashâb-i-kirâm, who were
perfectly obedient to all the commandments, united together, loved one another
and became brothers. Allâhu ta’âlâ praises them for this brotherly love among them in the Fath-h sûra. Unity engenders power.
Disunity causes ruination. Let us be like the Ashâb-i-kirâm. Let us adopt their
high moral values. Let us love one another. Let us unite in the path guided by
the Qur’ân al-kerîm. Let us not
believe the lies fibbed by those separatists who have deviated from that true
path. Let us do good to everybody. Let us be soft-spoken and gently smiling with
everybody and try to promulgate Islam’s honour worldover. Obedience to the
government and to the laws is incumbent upon every Muslim. It is a grave sin to
cause fitna or chaos. Differences of Madhhab should not be grounds for
fighting. Some foreign bureaus are publishing books in all languages for the
purpose of sowing discord among us. Defiling the hadîth-i-sherîfs, misinterpreting the âyat-i-kerîmas, and concocting sad stories, they are deceiving the young
people.
In order to expose the plots for undermining Islam from
within and to refute the slanders and lies that the plotters have fabricated,
the Islamic scholars have written thousands of books for a thousand years,
thereby protecting the Muslims from falling victim to the guided extinction
stalking them. One of those useful books is Qurrat-ul-aynayn, written in Fârisî by Shâh Waliyyullah Ahmad Sâhib ‘rahmatullâhi
ta’âlâ ’aleyh’, a great scholar of India. Hadrat Shâh Waliyyullah was born in
Delhi in 1114 [1702 A.D.], and passed away there in 1176 [1762 A.D.].
All the arguments in the book owe considerable corroboration to the
long and detailed documentary proofs written in the book Tuhfa-i-ithnâ ’ashariyya. In the seventh chapter,
for instance, after confuting the wrong meanings which some people attributed
to five âyat-i-kerîmas and twelve hadîth-i-sherîfs in their futile efforts to prove that
Hadrat Alî should have been the first Khalîfa, it says, “According to the
scholars of Ahl as-Sunnat, the second most valuable book after the Qur’ân al-kerîm is Bukhârî-i-sherîf,
which contains the hadîth-i-sherîfs of our Prophet. According to some people, Nahj-ul-balâgha is the second most valuable book
after the Qur’ân al-kerîm. That
book
contains the khutbas of Hadrat Alî written by a person named Radî. As he wrote
the khutbas, he excised Hadrat Alî’s statements which lavished praise on the
Shaikhayn (Hadrat Abû Bakr and Hadrat ’Umar), in addition to other additions
and changes. So badly changed and defiled were the khutbas of Hadrat Alî that
the Shiite scholars who revised Nahj-ul-balâghawere
unable to elicit any clear meanings from most of the book and had to copy the
ambiguous parts exactly as they were.” The book Tuhfa-i-ithnâ
’ashariyya is in the Fârisî language. It was translated into Arabic.
The Arabic version was abridged byMahmûd Shukrî Âlûsî, who entitled the
abridged version Muhtasar-i-Tuhfa.
Hadrat Sayyid Abdullah Dahlawî, a great Walî renowned for his high grade in the
zâhirî knowledge as well as in the knowledge of Tasawwuf, states in the sixty-first
letter of his Fârisî book Maktûbât that
the khutbas in the book Nahj-ul-balâgha
are not sahîh. Some people have been reproducing the schismatic book under the
title Istinâd-i-Nahj-ul-balâgha and
sending the subversive copies to countries worldover. Muhammad bin Husayn
Mûsawî Radî was the brother of the lâ-madhhabî heretic named Alî bin Husayn
Murtadâ, who attacks the scholars of Ahl as-Sunnat with a coarsely abusive and
foul language in his book Husniyya. Both
of them were Persian sayyids. They passed away in Baghdâd, Muhammad Radî in 406
[1016 A.D.], and Murtadâ in 436 [1044 A.D.]. The author of the book Tuhfa-i-ithnâ ’ashariyya, namely Hâfid Ghulâm
Halîm Abdul’azîz bin Qutbuddîn Shâh Waliyyullah Ahmad Sâhib Dahlawî, passed
away in 1239 [1824 A.D.].
Every Muslim has to learn, and also teach others, a book of ’Ilm-i-hâl written by (one of) the scholars of
Ahl as-Sunnat. Each of us has a nafs-i-ammâra which is an unbeliever. (The
nafs-i-ammâra inherent in the human nature is such a stupid being that) it
wishes us to lose our îmân or, at least, to deviate from the right path. It
tries to drag us into reading the seditious and harmful books and magazines
written by irreligious and heretical people and watching and listening to the
radio and television programmes broadcast by foreign organizations. It relishes
doing whatsoever Islam prohibits (harâm), believing the lies fibbed by
heretics, and observing the customs and fashions of disbelievers. Worship is
one of its pet aversions. It is for this reason that disbelief and heresies
catch on so easily and
spread
so readily everywhere. Allâhu ta’âlâ declares in
a hadîth-i-qudsî, “Know your nafs as My enemy. Your
nafses are My enemies.” It is a great act of jihâd not to do the
desires of the nafs. It brings much thawâb.
The one and only medicine requisite for immunity against
the traps set by our own nafs-i-ammâra and baited by heretical, lâ-madhhabî and
irreligious people, is to read the books of ’Ilm-i-hâl, which have been written
by the scholars of Ahl as-Sunnat and which are the only true sources for
learning the Islamic tenets pertaining to belief (îmân) and practices of
worship. Muslims should be sure to send their children to teachers of Qur’ân al-kerîm so that they will learn how
to read the Qur’ân al-kerîm, how to perform namâz, and the tenets of îmân and Islam, before
they begin their elementary education. This is one of the crucial points where
the nafs-i-ammâra will set its traps by raising various doubts. For instance,
it will delude you into thinking, “A child should first learn how to make a
living. Learning other things might as well wait.” Parents who look ahead to
their children’s being good Muslims in future should first, themselves, weather
the deceits and lies of their own nafs and of the human devils, by sending
their children to teachers of Qur’ân al-kerîm. It will be very difficult, and even impossible in some cases, to
do so after schooling begins. Cane is pliable when wet. Once past its prime, it
will break rather than bend, which in turn will cause harm. A child who is not
equipped with a religious background will become a heretic, if not a
disbeliever. Parents’ mourning over it afterwards will not save them or their
children from Hell. Our beloved Prophet ‘sall-Allâhu ’alaihi wa sallam’ warns about this utterly bitter
fact as follows: “Helek-al-musawwifûn!” Its meaning is as follows: “Do your good deeds immediately. Do
not procrastinate until the following day.” The primary good deed, which is of
foremost importance, is to teach Islam to your children. Each Muslim has to do
this primary duty instantly and not delay or postpone it even for a day.
No one has possessed worldly property forever, be it gold’n silver;
Repair a broken heart for an art, and
it will remain forever.
Ephemeral is the world called, it only
and always turns over and over;
an is a lantern, which will one day eventually go out for ever!