Malfuzat – Volume II — Page 157
157 1 ْ اَلْيَوْمَ اَكْمَلْتُ لَكُمْ دِيْنَكُمْ وَ اَتْمَمْتُ عَلَيْكُمْ نِعْمَتِي This day have I perfected your religion for you and completed My favour upon you. When he read out this verse, Hazrat Abu Bakr ra began to weep. Such was his insight into the Holy Quran. Someone asked: ‘Why does this old man weep?’ Hazrat Abu Bakr ra said: ‘I can sense from this verse that the demise of the Prophet of God, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, is imminent. ’ The Prophets of God are like officials. When a surveyor of land boundaries finishes their work at a certain place, they move on. In the same way, when the Prophets complete the task for which they are sent into the world, they take their leave. Therefore, when the announcement اَكْمَلْتُ لَكُمْ دِيْنَكُم (I have perfected your religion for you) was heard, Hazrat Abu Bakr Siddiq, may Allah be pleased with him, understood that this is the final call. This evidently demonstrates that the insight of Hazrat Abu Bakr ra was immensely deep. It is also narrated in a Hadith: ‘Close all the gates that lead to the moque, but the window of Abu Bakr shall remain open. ’ The hidden message in this is that since the mosque is where divine secrets are manifested, the entrance that opens towards Abu Bakr Siddiq ra will not be closed. The Prophets make use of meta- phors and symbols. An individual who, like a dull Muslim cleric, says that eve- rything must be literal, is gravely mistaken. For example, Abraham, on whom be peace, telling his son to ‘change the threshold of his gate’ or the Holy Prophet, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, seeing gold bangles etc. are all things that were not taken literally; they were metaphors and allegories, and encom- passed a deeper reality. In short, the point is that from all the companions, Hazrat Abu Bakr ra was blessed with the deepest understanding of the Quran. Now when Abu Bakr, may Allah be pleased with him, derived this argument from the verse mentioned ear- lier, it is my belief that even if his interpretation was apparently at odds with what we observe, righteousness and honesty would demand that we agree with Abu Bakr ra. But in this case, there is not a single word in the Holy Quran that opposes the interpretation of Hazrat Abu Bakr ra. Now the Muslim clergy ought to be asked: was Abu Bakr ra a wise man or not? Is this Abu Bakr ra not the same person who was given the title Siddiq (the Truth- 1 al-Ma’idah, 5:4