The Holy War — Page 160
160 understand what may be the cause of rights of men not being dis- charged, and you should, therefore, also see that the concept of innate sin breaks this rule of yours. According to your Torah, there are many parts of it from which your concept of mercy without recompense is proven to be false. If you believe the Torah to be true and from Allah then the intercession that Moses did through which the sins of great sinners were forgiven would be deemed as useless and pointless. You should know that the solution which the Holy Quran provides for this issue is the most appropriate which can have no objection against it; for, it states that there are just two types of rights: the rights due to God and the rights due to man. The rights of man have been made subject to the following conditions: That so long as the victim is not granted his right or does not forego his right, he will retain title to his right. And regarding the rights of God it has been stated that just as a person adopts the path of sin out of audacity and arrogance, similarly, when he turns towards God with repentance and seeks forgiveness and joins His obedient followers with true sincerity and becomes ready to endure all sorts of hardships and discomforts, then God Almighty forgives his shortcomings because of his sincerity; for, just like when he was about to commit sin under the impulse of sensual desires, so similarly he has undertaken all manner of hardships upon himself to free himself from sin. Thus, this is the recompense of accepting hardships that he has endured under Divine obedience, and we cannot name this as mercy without any recompense. Has man not done any work? Has he been forgiven without making any effort? In fact, he has made a perfect sac- rifice by offering true repentance and taken upon himself every type of pain and suffering even unto death, and the punishment that would otherwise have been meted out to him, he has himself—of his own volition—imposed that punishment upon himself. So to call this mercy without recompense is nothing but a seri- ous mistake. However, the mercy without recompense which Deputy [Abdullah Atham] has presented, which requires that X commits a sin