Masterpiece Image

Imagine that you are an artist, and employing all your skills as an artist you paint a picture. This picture is the masterful product of your entire life's efforts. After completing the picture, when you look at it, you yourself fall in love with it. You also desire that when others look at that picture, they praise it.

You may have seen such living images that looking at them one gets the impression that at any moment the image will step out of the paper it is on and start to talk.

It wasn’t too long ago—twelve years perhaps have passed since then—that I was free of all thoughts. I had achieved focus to the level where a person can concentrate on a single point and becomes oblivious of his surroundings.

My thought took a turn as features of a very beautiful picture printed in four colours in the newspaper entered [the mind] through consciousness and reached onwards to the computer of subconscious mind. As soon as thought took this turn, will was activated, and the will desired that the features of the picture adorning the pages of the newspaper—the beautiful eyes, lips that were as beautiful as flower petals, the charming face, a delicate nose with hues of red sunset, in short captivating head to toe— that the person through whose mind all this transferred onto the paper, nature has bestowed creative powers within that person.

This thought activated the creative abilities in me given by Allah the Exalted, and the picture walked out of the paper and stood in front of me.

And just as it had come out of the domain of the paper, [the picture] walked on its feet and dissolved back into it.

This observation reveals the fact that drawings on paper, be they facial features, decorative designs, beauty, attraction, of charm are all, living. And when creative powers focus on a point and turn into will, these artistic sketches take shape and form and become a body.

When an artist creates a masterful painting, in reality, it is the creative formulas within him that have been activated and manifested. This artistry has been performed by an artist who himself is a creation.

Allah the Exalted is also a Musavvir ['the Fashioner']. He fashions are such as invite His own praise. Allah the Exalted states

"Allah is He, Who has created a picture in the
mother's womb; Holy is He, what a picture He
has created!"

If an artist is asked to break apart his painting, to destroy its features, or to tear up the paper or canvas on which has made the painting, nothing will be more heartbreaking and painful for the artist than this. He will never allow his masterpiece to be ruined, and he will never like it if his masterpiece is vandalized and destroyed.

Allah has created a picture—a picture that is matchless and unique in its balanced proportions, its colours, its attraction and its beauty. This picture can see, and hear, and speak, and feel, and lighten the burdens of others. If a person intends to blemish this picture and wants to ruin it with his injustice and ignorance, then indeed this act would be displeasing to the greatest of all artists, Allah.

It has been stated in all heavenly scriptures that Allah the Exalted does not forgive [transgressions against] huqoo-ul-ibaad ['rights of the people/servants of Allah']. When we mention huqoo-ul-ibaad, firstly the individual has a duty towards himself, as he is firstly himself a servant of Allah.

In today's advanced age, which according to heavenly knowledge can indeed be called the age of decline, and which is fostering insecurity, lack of peace, anxiety, and complex problems, each individual is disregarding his own rights and is destroying his body and spirit in order to collect more and more wealth. As greed of this world and lust for wealth continues to increase within man, so do contentment, joy and peace of mind continue to decrease. This deprivation of contentment and peace of mind forewarns of mental chaos, agitation and stress. Mental stress produces a prevailing sense of fear within man. The presence of grief and fear in life makes the image of man grotesque, making it disfigured and unseemly.

How unfortunate it is and how foolish that man is destroying and wasting the beautiful image made by Allah the Exalted. God has not made gold and silver in order for these precious metals to consume the entire being of man. Gold and silver is made for he purpose that man may utilize it and add beauty to the picture painted by Allah. But the misfortune of present times is that man is bent upon proving that it is not the gold and silver which has been created for the use of man, but that man has been created to be sacrificed at the altar of gold and silver. It is the way of thinking which the Holy Quran denounces:

"And those people who collect gold and silver and do not spend it in the way of Allah are given the tiding of a painful punishment for them."

[Holy Quran ch9: v34]”

Is it not punishment enough that Allah the Exalted desires that man may live for hundreds of years and play a role In the beauty of nature, yet man spends his night and day In work, going after the acquisition of futile worldly pursuing, tired and exhausted due to his own will and intent, bent upon reducing his age to the shortest possible span, whereas this progeny of Adam and Eve is aware that all the wealth that has been accumulated by burning one's own life as fuel will one' day be taken away by death!