What About Miracles In Islam?
My well-educated friend said: I don't pretend to understand how the Merciful God — whom you describe as the Ruthful, the Benevolent, the Bounteous, the Oft-Pardoning, and the Remitter can command His Prophet and 'close friend' (Khalil), Abraham, to slaughter his son? Don't you concur with me that this is rather difficult to believe?
- It is evident from the context and events of the story that God's wish was not for Abraham to slaughter his son. The proof is that no such thing happened. Divine desire was that Abraham should 'slaughter' his excessive fondness and love for his son and deep attachment to him. It is impermissible that there should be any clinging in the heart of a prophet for anything other than God: neither world nor son, splendor or person. A prophet's heart should not be attached to any of these things. As is known, Ismail was born to Abraham in his old age and senility. He was, therefore, excessively fond of and attached to him. Hence, God's trial of His prophet was necessary. What the story narrates supports this interpretation. When Abraham succumbed to God's command and drew his knife to slaughter his son, the commandment came from heaven with the sacrificial lamb.
- What do you think, then, of Abraham's wonderful miracles such as his entry into fire and exit without being burnt? What have you also to say about the miracles that occurred to Moses when he transformed his staff into a serpent, or when he used the same staff to part the sea, or when he drew out his hand from under his armpit white as a lily? Don't all these 'miracles' appear to you as a juggler's show in a circus? How can God go about proving His Omnipotence and Greatness by such acrobatics, which are, in essence, instances of the irrational and the infringement of the natural order? Don't you say, in effect, that the most substantial proof of God's Greatness is the order, reason, control, and laws which govern throughout the universe without being violated?
- Your understanding and conception of miracles are erroneous. You see them as juggler's tricks and irrational violations of the law. The truth about them, however, is something else.
Allow me to use an illustration to clarify the matter for you.
Suppose you were destined to travel three thousand years back in time and enter upon Pharaoh in that bygone age with a transistor radio the size of a matchbox in your hand which sings and talks' all on its own. Wouldn't he and his entire entourage be stupefied and damn the thing as a miracle, a work of magic, an irrational absurdity, or violation of all laws. However, we know now that there are no such things in the innocent radio set. What happens in the transistors is governed by and unfolds according to the laws of electronics.
It is, in fact, quite reasonable. It would be more impressive if you were to enter upon the king of Babylon with a TV in your hand showing pictures from Rome, and the Assyrian king would indeed clap his hands in wonder if you turned a plastic disc before his eyes and it started to talk.
Indeed, history records that when some colonialists arrived in Africa in a plane landing in the jungle among a crowd of primitives, the naked negroes fell prostrate on their faces, beat their drums, and sacrificed offerings thinking that God has descended from his heavens and that what had happened is a violation of all laws. On the other hand, we know that an airplane flies and lands according to specific laws and is designed according to particular engineering laws. Its flight in the air is an efficient matter; it does not contravene the law of gravity. It transcends that law by another, namely, action and reaction. We are dealing with a case of a hierarchy of laws and not with one where laws are violated. To give an example, we know that water climbs up inside the palm tree's trunk in an apparent violation of the law of gravity. It does not, in truth, contravene that law but acts by a group of laws that overrule gravity in that particular instance. These are the laws of the water column's integrity, capillarity, and osmotic pressure. All of them act to draw the water up the palm-treetrunk.
Thus, we are never outside the pale of reason or the rational. What occurred in miracles was not an acrobatic show. The stupefaction of the primitive negroes was due to their ignorance of such laws as governed the plane's flight. Your wonder at Moses's parting of the sea or turning the staff into a serpent, or at Jesus's raising of the dead, or Abraham's harmless stay in the fire is all of the same order as the primitives' amazement. You imagined that such miracles were irrational juggler's tricks and violations of law, while they all occurred in harmony with divine law, which overrules the laws we are familiar with. Hence, they represent order and rational species, but above our understanding. By such miracles, God is not demolishing order but giving us a glimpse of higher-order and laws and of the workings of a Mind too vast for us to comprehend.
Followers of the Baha'i sect have fallen into the same error you committed when they rejected miracles, thinking that their acceptance is contempt and degradation of reason.
They resorted, consequently, to reinterpreting the Quran by inventing other meanings for its words than those apparent.
According to this view, Moses did not part the sea with his staff but the staff mentioned in the law, which parted or distinguished the true from the false. Similarly, his' spotlessly white hand is the symbol of benevolence; Jesus resurrected spirits, not bodies, and opened minds, not sightless eyes. In this way, those people played the trick of veering off the literal meanings of the Quran to allegorical and symbolic interpretations and explanations whenever they met with anything they found inconceivable.
They took that course of action because they misunderstood the nature of miracles believing them to be, as you also saw them, irrational violations of law and contraventions of order.
We live now in an age in which miracles would no longer be found inconceivable if they occurred. We have seen science leading us to the surface of the moon. If human science gave us all this power, surely divine knowledge can grant us infinitely more.
Listen to this lovely verse:
"Mankind and jinn: if you have the power to penetrate the confines of heaven and earth, then penetrate them! But this you shall not do except by our authority." The Beneficent, 33
Authority here or 'power' is divine knowledge that is infinitely greater than that of man.
I’m inviting you to listen to the below part of the Holy Quran, and then you judge by yourself: