Page 43 - Prayer in the Qur'an

THE IGNORANT UNDERSTANDING OF PRAYER 41

occurrence of events. They are not aware that everything on earth
happens by Allah's Will. Due to this shallow outlook, they forget
that whatever they hope for is already under Allah's control. When
they get sick, for instance, they think it is the doctors, medicine or
the advanced technology employed by the hospital that will cure
them. They fail to think that it is Allah Who heals every disease, and

Who creates the medicine and the doctors. When the doctors and
medicine on which they rely so much fail, only then do they think
about taking refuge in Allah, something they had never thought of
before. The fact is, it is Allah alone Who heals a person. The people
of ignorance, however, can never grasp this fact. They show un-
gratefulness. One verse explains this ingratitude as follows:
When harm touches man, he calls on Us, lying on his side or
sitting down or standing up. Then when We remove the harm
from him he carries on as if he had never called on Us when the
harm first touched him. In that way We make what they have
done appear good to the profligate. (Surah Yunus: 12)

The fact that a person remembers Allah at his most difficult times
indicates a certain fact: he already knows that Allah is the only One
in whom he can take refuge. When faced with distress, this fact that
has been disregarded until then—since it challenged his personal in-
terests—is recalled. However, when saved from it, he again returns
to ingratitude. The Qur'an relates this situation with an example:
It is He Who conveys you on both land and sea so that when
some of you are on a boat, running before a fair wind, rejoicing

at it, and then a violent squall comes upon them and the waves
come at them from every side and they realize there is no way
of escape, they call on Allah, making their religion sincerely
His: "If You rescue us from this, we will truly be among the