Page 187 - Allah is Known through Reason

encompasses them round about. Allah announces the state to which the

unbelievers are led as a result of their thick-headedness:
Or do they intend a plot (against you)? But those who defy Allah are them-
selves involved in a plot! (Surat at-Tur: 52)
This is most probably their biggest defeat in history. While growing
arrogant, materialists have been tricked and suffered a serious defeat in the
war they waged against Allah by bringing up something monstrous against
Him. The verse "Thus have We placed leaders in every town, its wicked
men, to plot therein: but they only plot against their own souls, and
they perceive it not" announces how unconscious these people who
revolt against their Creator are, and how they will end up (Surat al- An'am:
123). In another verse the same fact is related as:
Fain would they deceive Allah and those who believe, but they only
deceive themselves, and realise (it) not! (Surat al-Baqarah: 2)
While the unbelievers try to plot, they do not realise a very important
fact which is stressed by the words "they only deceive themselves, and
realise (it) not!" in the verse. This is the fact that everything they experi-
ence is an imagination designed to be perceived by them, and all plots
they devise are simply images formed in their brain just like every other

act they perform. Their folly has made them forget that they are all alone
with Allah and, hence, they are entrapped in their own devious plans.
No less than those unbelievers who lived in the past, those living today
face a reality that will shatter their devious plans at their foundations. With
the verse "…feeble indeed is the cunning of Satan" (Surat al-An'am: 76),
Allah says that these plots were doomed to end in failure the day they
were hatched. He gives good tidings to believers with the verse "…not the
least harm will their cunning do you." (Surat Ali 'Imran: 120)
In another verse Allah says: "But the unbelievers, their deeds are
like a mirage in sandy deserts, which the man parched with thirst mis-
takes for water; until when he comes up to it, he finds it to be nothing."
(Surat an-Nur: 39). Materialism, too, becomes a "mirage" for the rebellious
just as it is stated in this verse; when they have recourse to it, they find it
to be nothing but an illusion. Allah has deceived them with such a mirage,

A Very Different Approach to Matter 187