Page 171 - The Truth of the Life of This World

least harm will their cunning do to you." (Surah Al 'Imran: 120)
In another verse Allah states: "But the unbelievers, their deeds are
like a mirage in sandy deserts, which the man parched with thirst

mistakes for water; until when he comes up to it, he finds it to be
nothing." (Surat an-Nur: 39) Materialism, too, offers a mirage for the rebel-
lious; when they have recourse to materialism, they find its philosophy to
be nothing but deceptive. Allah has deceived them with such a mirage, and
beguiled them into perceiving matter as an absolute. All those eminent
professors, astronomers, biologists, physicists and all others, regardless of
their rank and post, are simply deceived and humiliated because they took
matter as their god. Assuming matter, whose essence they can never reach,
to be absolute, they based their philosophy and ideology on it, grew
involved in serious discussions, adopting a so-called "intellectual" dis-
course. They deemed themselves wise enough to argue about the truth of
the universe and, more seriously to interpret Allah with their limited intel-
ligence. Allah explains their situation in the following verse:
And [the unbelievers] plotted and planned, and Allah too planned, and the
best of planners is Allah. (Surat Ali 'Imran: 54)
One may possibly escape from some plots in the world; but Allah's plan
against the unbelievers is so firm that there is no avoiding it. No matter
what they do or to whom they appeal, never can they find any helper

other than Allah. As Allah informs in the Qur'an, "they shall not find for
them other than Allah a patron or a help." (Surat an-Nisa': 173)
Materialists never expected to fall into such a trap. Having all the means
of the twenty-first century at their disposal, they believed they could grow
obstinate in their denial and drag others into disbelief. This ever-lasting men-
tality of unbelievers and their end are described as follows in the Qur'an:
They plotted and planned, but We too planned, even while they perceived it
not. Then see what was the end of their plot! - this, that We destroyed them and
their people, all [of them]. (Surat an-Naml: 50-51)
This, in another sense, is what the fact stated in the verses comes to
mean: Materialists are now told that everything they own is actually in their
brains, and therefore, everything they possess has been rendered valueless.

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