Malfuzat – Volume III — Page 237
237 from the rest, it is then that it flourishes. ” The Spiritual Ascension of the Holy Prophet sa Someone posed a question about the spiritual ascension (mi’raj) of the Noble Messenger, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, to which the Promised Messiah as said: “All of it is true. The mi’raj did take place, but not in a state of physical wakefulness and with physical things; rather, it took place in a different manner. Gabriel as too would come to the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, and descend from above. The manner in which he would descend was the very manner in which the Holy Prophet sa ascended into heaven. Neither could he who descended be seen by anyone else, nor could anyone see the one who ascended. In a Hadith recorded in Bukhari it is written: َ ثُم َّ اسْتَیْقَظ , which means ‘then he woke up. ’” The Bible and Science There was mention of Noah’s ark. The Promised Messiah as said: “The Bible and science possess such enmity between one another as though they were two wives married to the same husband. It is written in the Bible that the flood covered the entire world, and that the ark was three hundred cubits long and fifty cubits wide, and that Noah as brought into the ark seven pairs of each animal that was pure and two pairs of each animal that was impure; however, both these notions are false. Firstly, Allah the Exalted has never punished a nation until He sends down His message to them through the Messengers, and when did Noah as preach to the entire world so that the whole of it deserved to be drowned? Secondly, how could all the creatures of the world, animals, both beast and bird, seven pairs of each, or two pairs of each, fit in such a small ark which was only three hundred cubits long and fifty cubits wide? This proves that the book has been altered and it is now ridden with many errors. It is astonishing that various scholars of Islam, in their simplicity, have included such tales in their own works as well. It is the Holy Quran alone that is free from such senseless stories. These sorts of allegations cannot be levelled against the Holy Quran; for it neither mentions the length and width of the ark, nor does it state that the flood engulfed the whole world in its entirety. The Holy Quran only uses the Arabic word al-ard , which means ‘the land’ in which Noah as preached his message. The word Ararat , which is the name