The Light of Truth — Page 91
REFUTING OBJECTIONS of Islam was in danger of being trampled underfoot. Reports of the calamities that befell the Muslims lead the eyes to shed tears and the hearts to burn with the fire of agony. So is there a fair-minded person who sees this and fears the subduing of the Omniscient Lord—or has the sense of fairness completely disappeared from the hearts of our opponents? This is the truth-I neither hide it nor conceal it. Hypocrisy, in my view, is the greatest of sins, and duplicity is the most dangerous of states, and it is a practice of the unjust disbelievers. The gist of my statement is that the issue of war and Jihad is not the focal point or encapsulation of Islam, in the way it is understood by ignorant opponents or those Muslims who feign ignorance. Indeed, the Book of Allah provides clarifications to dispel such notions, as you have just read in the verses revealed by the Lord of all the worlds. As for the widely held belief—by which I mean the statement of certain ulama, that the Promised Messiah shall descend from heaven and wage war against the disbelievers, and that he will not accept the Jizyah from them, but rather, give them a choice of Islam or death-know that this is false and overflowing with various types of errors and causes for stumbling. Such beliefs contradict the text of the Holy Quran and are nothing more than the lies of fabricators. Woe unto them! They aggrandized Jesus unfairly, to the point that some of them assert that he is not a man but an angel; while others say he is naught but the Word of Allah and His Spirit, and that he is altogether unique in this status. Some of them imposed other traits upon him, saying that he is a creation nearer to Allah and greater than the angels, because the angels cannot ascend to the Throne, but since he has been raised to Allah, he has ascended to the Throne. Therefore, he is greater than 91