Page 34 - Beauties for Life in the Qur'an

32 BEAUTIES FOR LIFE IN THE QUR'AN

wisdom to solving the problem, and thus enables them to for-
mulate the best decision.

Being Cautious at Night
Although Allah has appointed the night as a time of stillness,
the Qur'an cautions us in the following verse: "Say: 'I seek
refuge with the Lord of Daybreak from the evil of what He
has created, and from the evil of the darkness when it gath-
ers." (Surat al-Falaq: 1-3).
Night, especially pitch darkness, limits certain human abili-
ties and so makes it far more difficult to take security measures.
At night, it is harder to foresee danger, which means that a per-
son becomes more prone to heedlessness. The main factor be-
hind this increased level of risk is the desire of unbelievers to
engage in wickedness under the cover of darkness, which hides
them from the eyes of other people. Indeed, crime statistics for
murder, theft, and many other illegal and harmful activities re-
veal that their perpetrators are more likely to be active from
midnight until dawn.
The Qur'an also states that unbelievers prefer to harm believ-
ers during the night. As we read:
They may hide (their crimes) from the people, but they cannot
hide (them) from Allah, seeing that He is in their midst when
they plot by night, in words that He cannot approve. Allah en-
compasses all that they do. (Surat an-Nisa': 108)
In another verse, Allah informs us about a plot hatched at
nighttime against the Prophet Salih (as) by those unbelievers
who felt an intense hatred for him, and reminds us to be careful
of such plots:
They said: "Let's make an oath to one another that, by Allah, we
will fall upon him and his family during the night and then say