The Devotion of Life — Page 284
284 ahead of us. We will have to sacrifice them in the manner that a person who roasts grain in a furnace puts dry leaves in his furnace. The land where today the office of the Accountant stands, there used to be a furnace for roasting grain where its owner would take turns in roasting grain with his wife. I observed that both of them would gather dry leaves all day long and would have a huge pile of leaves ready which they later would throw into the furnace most nonchalantly, a little at a time. When I saw this I realised that the example of putting fuel in an oven is not as good an example as that of a person who roasts grain by putting dry leaves in his furnace. This is because the heat of leaves is not as strong as that of fuel and a person who roasts grain has to throw dry leaves frequently in order to maintain the heat. Thus, just as the roasting man puts dry leaves in his furnace we too will have to put our men in the furnace of faith, only then will Islam triumph. ” Example of Shah Jahan “The wife of Emperor Shah Jahan saw a dream before her death. She recounted it to him and took his promise that she should be buried at a place that is in accordance with the dream. At her death, Shah Jahan called engineers and explained the plan to them. The engineers said that neither could they construct a building like that, nor could such a building be constructed in the world. The king was deeply grieved. Eventually a new engineer arrived from Iran and the king mentioned to him that he wished to have a particular kind of building