Arba'in — Page 192
192 over and above possessing the excellences of a spiritual guide— should compete with me in writing an eloquent and fluent com- mentary in Arabic on any chapter of the Holy Quran. Excited by faith in his knowledge, he renewed the fatwa of takf i r against me and, to inflame the masses, he wrote a book in which he accused me of being a liar. In this book, while bragging about his knowledge, he pushed the notion that I lack knowledge of the Hadith and the Quran. In this way he incited the people of the Frontier Region against me, and laid claim to having knowl- edge of the Holy Quran. If this claim of his is true—that he has been given extraordi- nary knowledge of the Book of Allah—then no one should refuse to follow him. And [possessing] knowledge of the Holy Quran is, without doubt, proof of a person being godly and virtuous, because in accordance with the verse: 1 اَّل ۤٗهُّسَمَي اَّلِا َنْوُرَّهَطُمْلا۰۰۠ only the innately pure are granted the knowledge of this revered Book. But merely making a claim is simply not enough. On the contrary, the value of everything can be established only through verification and the best way to verify is through comparison. Light is recog- nized only through comparison to darkness. And because God Almighty has honoured me with this ilh a m [revelation]: َ اَلرَّحْمٰن ُ عَلَّم َ الْقُرْآن that God has taught you the Quran; therefore, this Sign will be adequate for judging truth or falsehood for me that P i r Mehr 1. S u rah al-Waqi‘ah, 56:80 [Publisher]