Approaching the West — Page 190
A pproaching the West—190 When the sentence is passed against them, We will bring forth for them a creature out of the earth which shall injure them because people did not believe in Our Signs. (27:83) The Arabic word d ā ’bbah connotes an earthly insect/worm/germ and it is interpreted either as appearance of devastating plagues in the Latter Days, or spreading of a craze for materialism among Western nations ‘whose labor is all lost in pursuit of the life of this world’ (18:105). Some other Signs are narrated in S ū rah Al-Takw ī r: When the sun is wrapped up, and when the stars are obscured, and when the mountains are made to move, and when the she-camels, ten-month pregnant, are abandoned, and when the beasts are gathered together, and when the seas are made to flow forth one into the other, and when people are brought together, and when the girl-child buried alive is questioned about, ‘For what crime was she killed?’ When the books are widely spread abroad, and when the heaven is laid bare, and when the Fire is caused to blaze up, and when the garden is brought nigh, then every soul will know what it has brought forward. (81:2-15)