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1014
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
“And unto whomsoever God shall not grant his light he shall enjoy no light at all" (Chapter XXIV).
Also: “Whom God shall cause to err, he shall find no way to the truth" (Chapter XLII).
We have already commented upon the injustice of unequal creation, and need not reproduce the arguments over again here. The conclusion is that if the creation of the world be ascribed to an Almighty God, he must be found fault with for differences and inequalities, but if, in agreement with the dictates of reason, we attribute the causation of differences to the working out of past karmas, in obedience to the laws of nature, all the difficulties vanish from our path at once.
As regards the teaching of the Qur'an about the soul, it is certain that that great Book itself promulgates the truth about the pre-existence of soul before the formation of the physical body. The author of ' Al Bayan' (p. 144) tells us that the general Muslim belief on this point is that the souls were created by God 'thousands of years' before the making of the body. Sufeism, too, on the whole, is decidedly opposed to the idea of the creation of a soul there and then to inhabit a body.
In order to arrive at a perfect understanding of the symbolic teaching of the holy Qur'an with reference to the nature of the soul, it is necessary to analyze the idea underlying the statement, 'soul is by the command of God.' A little thinking will show that 'command' differs as much from the uttered word which gives it expression as man differs from the body of matter in which he is ensouled. The spoken word is perishable, because it
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