Allah Is Present Everywhere

The signs of Allah's presence are in everything wherever we may be. Think about how society develops into economic orders and political orders and eventually becomes what we call modern civilization. The life of society starts as simple life with people living on the land and living from the fruits of the land. Early society does not have to cultivate the land because the people have not advanced to the point where they know that the land needs cultivating. They just move along on the earth as animals, picking up all types of food that they find and then they move on.

Finally  they find a place  that  has enough food to enable them to stop moving and settle down soon, when people find that they have time on their hands, they begin to use that time to see what else they can do. In time they begin to study and they discover that they can do some things for themselves that nature did not do for them. Eventually, man becomes master of his environment. Soon he forgets that he was once just like the bird, the cat, the dog, and other animals that had to roam about in the wilderness. Time was the essence that enabled him to think, to learn from his environment, and to come up with new tools that enabled him to become a master in his environment.

We see that man should be grateful to the someone or to the something that made the advancement of his society possible. If modern man has discovered something so unique that he can claim all of his achievements for himself, we should listen to modern man and forget about the G'd Who has supposed to have made all things possible for us. As I travel in different parts of the world and listen to different ideas about how life should be lived and how society should be run, I have been convinced over and over again that Allah is G'd and that Allah is the One Who deserves all of the credit for everything that man and society have been able to achieve.

As you know, it did not take the primitive man long to discover religion. He recognized that he was helpless before the mighty forces of nature. When the thunder rang out with its loud clap and when the lightning flashed and lit the dark forest or brightened the dark doorway of the cave, the savage man trembled in fear. This fear forced him to cry out to some kind of g'd. Because religion has this kind of primitive beginning in the earth, some modern men acquire the knowledge of modern man's society and look back on the beginning of the spiritual movement in the earth (religion) as also being primitive. We, as Muslims, know that religion is the most advanced thing on the earth; in fact, it has always been the most advanced thing on the earth. Religion is really the invisible thing that is moving and guiding man all of the time. Although man does not know it.

We should consider our simple beginnings in the earth and weigh them with our achievements. We should also be asking ourselves the question, "By what way have all of the ideas for our advancement reached the minds of men?" Everything that we see in human society that has been made by modern man has its original image (pattern, essence or substance) in the creation itself. What we have is just an opening of a flower that was already complete.

Once the rosebud sprouts from the plant, the petals have already formed and the structure of the beautiful flower is already designed. Even after the flower bud opens up and we see what is on the inside, we might think that the flower had been fully open all the time if we did not have knowledge of what happened before the bud opened. The Holy Quran speaks of the wonders of the natural creation as "signs" that pass knowledge on to the mind of man. This precious knowledge from Almighty G'd enables man to create himself after the pattern of the things that Allah has designed in creation.

In various caves that I have visited in China and in Jamaica, I have seen how man was given a knowledge of building with cement perhaps a million or more years ago before he came into the knowledge of how to use it. By the wonders of creation the cave drips a limestone water substance from the roof and it piles up on the ground in columns. Over periods of hundreds and thousands of years, the dripping of limestone from the roof of the cave and the piling up of limestone on the floor of the cave form stalagmites and stalactites that function as great columns. If such columns had not been built up in time, perhaps the weight pressing down on the top of the cave would have caved in the structure and simple man would not have had a place to live. But the Designer of creation had designed early man's home so that it would naturally make its own strong columns to hold up its roof.

Not only in the natural formation of columns, but in many other things that you can see in caves are ideas of how to construct things in the world. I could give you example upon example of things that I have seen in natural formation (things that grow naturally out of the earth or things that happen naturally in the earth) that are clear patterns for man to copy so that he can build great structures for himself.

The techniques and the principles of construction are also seen in the growing of certain trees. Their limbs stretch out over great distances and drop vines which grow and become big like the trunks of big trees. These trees with their huge branches stretching out would break if the Great Designer had not caused them to drop down vines that take root and become strong as support columns to hold up the mighty beams that are going out from the trunk. Man makes a lot of "to do" over his accomplishments, but the righteous servants of G'd who have given their hearts and their minds completely to the Maker of the creation can see and understand that man has nothing to brag about. Almighty G'd, the Great Architect of creation, suggests everything to man's mind before man comes into the knowledge of the thing.