4. But while these veils screen GOD’s Light in its totality from us, they enable us to survive as beings of limited sight, and thus to observe toned-down or coloured versions of that Light, mixed with darkness in various proportions, according to our varying capacities. The more gifted are better able to differentiate between light and darkness in this twilight realm of ambiguity and its shades of grey. Some, overvaluing their capacity for undiminished Light, insist on whiteness and strict distinctions where they cannot be found. Others, resigned to darkness, undervalue the importance of Light and reject GOD altogether. But the most perceptive turn naturally and easily to what is brightest in their lives without denying the temporary necessity of veils, hues, nuances, and darkness in this world.
يَهْدِي اللَّهُ لِنُورِهِ مَنْ يَشَاءُ وَيَضْرِبُ اللَّهُ الأَمْثَالَ لِلنَّاسِ وَاللَّهُ بِكُلِّ شَيْءٍ عَلِيمٌ
5. The Knowledge of AL-LAH does not only ‘see’, as with human knowledge, but actively draws mere existence out of its dark potentiality into the light of upward Life.
إِنَّ اللَّهَ عَزَّ وَجَلَّ خَلَقَ خَلْقَهُ فِي ظُلْمَةٍ فَأَلْقَى عَلَيْهِمْ مِنْ نُورِهِ فَمَنْ أَصَابَهُ مِنْ ذَلِكَ النُّورِ اهْتَدَى وَمَنْ أَخْطَأَهُ ضَلَّ
Verily AL-LAH the Mighty and Glorious created His creatures in darkness, then He cast His Light upon them. Those on whom that light fell have been guided, and those who missed it have gone astray. (Jami’ut-Tirmidhi, Book 40, Hadith 37)
We might say that Light has two directions – ‘downwards’, from Him to us, as in revelation –
فَآمِنُوا بِاللَّهِ وَرَسُولِهِ وَالنُّورِ الَّذِي أَنزَلْنَا وَاللَّهُ بِمَا تَعْمَلُونَ خَبِيرٌ
So believe in GOD, His Messenger, and the Light that He sent down. And GOD, concerning what you do, is Well Informed. (Q64:8)
and ‘upwards’, from us to Him, as in the guidance that illuminates our hearts –
اللَّهُ وَلِيُّ الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا يُخْرِجُهُمْ مِنْ الظُّلُمَاتِ إِلَى النُّورِ وَالَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا أَوْلِيَاؤُهُمْ الطَّاغُوتُ يُخْرِجُونَهُمْ مِنْ النُّورِ إِلَى الظُّلُمَاتِ
AL-LAH befriends those who have faith; He takes them out of darkness into Light. As for those who have rejected faith, their friends are idols, taking them from Light into the dark. (Q2:257)
One would think that nothing could be mistaken for Light, that its clarity would be proof against deception and misguidance. But at a time when even GOD is considered by some to be a symbol of ignorance, oppression, and almost all the evils of the world, one should not be surprised to find a bewildering host of counterfeits masquerading as Light. In the Western Christian tradition, Lucifer, ‘the light-bearer’, was taken to be the proper name of Satan himself before ‘the fall’. Nowadays, brilliance is considered the property of geniuses, not saints, and the ‘Enlightenment’ is always associated with the loss of faith and religious values and the advent of one particular form of reason.
How, then, can we tell the Light of GOD from other lights? What is Light, and what is Fire?
لاَ تَسْتَضِيئُوا بِنَارِ الْمُشْرِكِينَ
Do not seek light from the fire of the polytheists. (Sunanun-Nasa’i, Book 48, Hadith 170)
Emphasis on one absolute can lead us to neglect the rest, and thus to stay further from the Wholeness that is GOD. We will need other Attributes* of His to help us discern the nature of His Light.
* In speaking of plural qualities or characteristics of GOD I am once again stepping into metaphorical territory. It bears repeating, and should be constantly kept in mind, that the multiplicity of GOD’s Names or Attributes is useful emotionally, as a means to bind our inconstant hearts to the task of remembering Him. These pragmatic instruments of spiritual connection are condoned by GOD Himself in the Qur’an, but they have the limits that all language must have. AL-LAH is fundamentally and absolutely One – a Unity that cannot be reduced to any trace of number, divisibility, or extension. He is not a composite or conglomerate, and even to speak of Divine personalities or aspects, as Christian trinitarians are compelled to do with their talk of Father, Son, and Spirit, consigns us to imminent danger of polytheism. We must never confuse our feeble attempts to imagine His Qualities, however they are named, with His essential Unicity – a Oneness that simultaneously transcends our highest abstractions and is too minutely involved with us to be ignored for even a fraction of a moment.
The GOD You Already Know 