4مالِكِ يَومِ الدّينِMir Ahmed AliMaster1,I of the Day2,II of JudgmentMalike-Yaumidden. Malike can mean Master or the Lord or the King of the ‘Yaumiddeen’ the Day of Faith. The Day is the Day of the Final Judgment but it is termed in the Qur’anic language as the Day of Faith. Firstly, the word ‘Malik’ meaning the Master or the Lord or the King, is used. He who sits at any judgment is commonly known and also called a judge and the Arabic word for it is ‘Qazi’ but the word ‘Qazi’ is not used, but the word used is ‘Malik’. The subtle point to understand here is that a ‘Qazi’ is not the Law-maker or the Law-giver but only an executor of the law, made and enforced by some other authority, and as such the ‘Qazi’ is bound to decide only in accordance with the law. But the Master, the Lord or the King is the law-making authority and can as well be the executor of His Own made Laws. A ‘Qazi’ who sits to judge shall always be within the limits of the law given to him by some higher authority with powers only to strictly apply them in judging persons and matters. Whereas a master or a lord or a king may execute the law applying it in his dealing with the cases, with the unquestionable powers and the supreme authority of a law-maker to use his discretion in judging cases according to their individual merits and to his own personal satisfaction about the acceptability of the excuses given by those alleged to be guilty by the law. When an accused is proved guilty by law, the Qazi who is there only to judge can never grant him pardon or any remission of the award of the punishment due to the convict but if he who sits is the Master, the Lord or the King, at the Judgment, he can grant the Royal Mercy to any petitioner at his own independent and unquestionable discretion. Addressing God as ‘Rab’ implies that He Who nourishes, cherishes and protects a creature of His Own must also necessarily be Beneficent and Merciful and when a Master, or a Lord or a King sits to judge his own created, nourished, cherished and protected ones, he would naturally be Just and at the same time Merciful. The justice done by such a Master even though with the strict application of law to recompense everyone according to one’s own earning, will naturally be tempered with the mercy of a Creator to his creature, of a Lord to his subservient and of a King to his poor subject. Only those who could not receive the benefit of the Benevolence of the Royal Mercy for any reason unpardonable, will naturally receive the punishment. This aspect of the nature of the Master of the Day of the Final Judgement has been revealed through the Holy Name ‘Rab’ to keep man alert and careful against the strict justice, and at the same time keep him hopefully attached to his Nourisher, Cherisher, and the Protector Lord, expectant of the Divine Mercy. Islam invites mankind to flock to the All-Merciful God Whose Mercy is all-enveloping and is always ready to reach anyone who seeks it. Islam bans terrorizing God’s creatures and presenting God as a cruel, merciless despot. Islam wants first to reform and then to chastise. It is with this Merciful Will of God that the Holy Prophet was sent into this world as the Mercy unto the worlds 21:107. The method or means to call mankind to the right path which Qur’an prescribes, is love and goodly exhortation—16:125.“Call unto the way of thy Lord with wisdom and goodly exhortation, and have disputations with them in the best manner; surely thy Lord knoweth best those who go astray from His path, and He knoweth best those who follow the right path” 16:12.And the Holy Prophet has been asked by God to announce to mankind the following divine declaration.“Say O’ My servants! who have acted extravagantly against their own-selves, despair not of the Mercy of God. Verily God forgiveth the sins altogether, verily He is the Oft-forgiving, the all-Merciful” 39:53.Ali, the first Holy Imam, has given mankind, particularly to those who faithfully follow the Prophet, several masterly formulated prayers to be recited to earn the pardon of the All-Merciful Lord and His further bounties desired by any of the faithful ones. One of such masterpieces composed by Ali is the famous ‘Doa-e-Kumail’ through which the supplicant to God, can surely rouse the Divine Mercy to be bestowed on him. This famous prayer has exploited the sources of getting nearer the Lord through invoking His Mercy, by crying to Him addressing Him by His various holy names given to mankind for the first time by the Holy Prophet through the Qur’an. In one of the verses of that prayer the supplicant cries:“O’ my Sustainer Lord! Wilt Thou chastise me who crieth unto Thee with the conscience bound to Thy love with strong ties, and after my true confessions and plaintive prayers to Thee, O’ my Sustainer” Oh! No! for Thou art too Generous to abandon the one whom Thou hast sustained!” (This is only a verse from Doa-e-Kumail)In this famous and the most efficacious prayer, ‘Rab’ the holy name of God has been used to invoke the Divine. Mercy and the appeal endowed in calling God with that name is quite obvious.The actual ‘Malik’ i.e. the Master is the one Who can exercise His authority on anything under His possession and to Whom everything owes its existence and that cannot be but the Absolute. Therefore, the use of the term ‘Master’ for the ‘Maalikiyat’ or the ‘Malakiyat’ or the ‘Mulookiyat’ in the case of God, is true and real and for others, it will be only figurative and unreal, and this is true about all the other attributive excellence, for it is real when used for God and unreal for others. (A.P.)Yaumiddeen. The Day of Judgment has been termed in this chapter of the Qur’an as the Day of Faith, though it will actually be a Day of Accounting i.e. Requital, but it will pre-eminently be the Day of Faith, for what man today in this life believes and disbelieves, will on that day be laid bare before the eyes of the believers and the disbelievers. The believers in the truth, by their faith, will see the truth manifested before their own eyes and those who disbelieved in God, His reward to the righteous and His chastisement to the disbelievers and the wicked, will be made to witness those factors with their own eyes and experience the recompense for their own evils. By saying that there is a Day of Judgment or Requital, it does not mean that God is not the Judge at present. There is no part of time when His Judgment does not take place and the reward and the punishment for the time being, is not meted out but it is also one of the aspects of the infinite mercy that the Judgment is continuous and it is nothing but warning and admonition to keep the individuals on the right track or to get them to return to it, if they have already left it and gone astray. But the Day of Judgment is the Day of the Final Requital at the end of the present world. The present life is the life of earning good or evil and the life after death is the continuation of the present life. It will be the reaping of what one sows here in the present life until the Day of Final Judgment. At every stage of existence the Divine Judgment is continued. Hence the Holy Prophet advised his followers, saying:— “Reckon yourself before ye are taken to the Reckoning, and weigh your own deeds before they are weighed in Judgment”. It behoves every wise man to reckon and weigh his own deeds in this life itself when there is time still to amend, to seek pardon before the Day which will be a Day of Judgment and Requital and not of amendment and seeking any pardon.Yaum or Day mentioned in the Qur’an is not always in one and the same sense of the limited time from sunrise to sunset as is commonly taken on earth in this world. But it has been applied according to the context from one moment to any period or extent of time (55:24) and (70:4) a day extending even to a period of fifty thousand years. Therefore the word indicates according to the context in which it is used, an indefinitely small or an indefinitely huge span of time. (AP.)A thorough study of the Qur’an shows that whenever reference is made to an evolutionary development, the downward course is referred to as ‘Night’ and the upward move is referred to as ‘Day’ i.e. things descending down from God to the terrestial realm are termed as Night and then the things taking an ascending course towards Him, are termed as Day. The descending course is termed as revelation i.e. ‘Nuzool’ and that the period of descent is termed as Night and the Ascent has been termed as Day. The Day and the Night of the Qur’an may be of the ordinary duration and may also be of lengthy periods. To judge which of these meanings is meant in any particular case, it needs reference to the context. (A.P.)Referring to the ‘Yaumiddeen’, Deen is a state when the creatures as a whole take their final shape or form i.e. when the last blow of forms takes place ‘Nafkh-e-Soor-e-Thani’ and the distances of time and space which separate one creature from the other, are removed and all will be brought together, each taking its ultimate place and position in the order of existence by merit, thus the things return to Him from Whom they had proceeded. Thus the Rububiyat or the Mastership assumes complete manifestation. This is the Day when people stand for God the Lord Cherisher of the worlds (84:6). This is the Day when no soul shall possess any things neither for itself nor for anyone else but the Command and Authority in all, will be His (83:19-20). This Day cannot be taken as the day of any duration. This shall be a day which will not have any Night to follow it. This proves that the First and the Final cause of creation is One and the Same, from Whom the creation proceeded and to Whom it has to return by the agency of His grace and guidance of His Rububiyat. Thus it proves that He is the Ultimate, Absolute and the Real Authority over the universe and its every part and particle. All the other authorities are nothing but unreal, relative and imaginary. Having this in view the attention is naturally turned from the descriptive state to the normal course to be adopted by man. (A.P.)Unless a man knows that he is to be judged by an All-Just Authority he would naturally be care-free about evils and would never think of any virtue, for he is not going to get any reward for his goodness from anybody. He would rather be the most immoral and the biggest tyrant committing the worst and the most heinous crimes, for there is none to question, judge or punish him and with such characters inhabiting the earth, it would never be possible for any kind of life to continue in it with the least peace and safety for the fellow creatures on the globe. Therefore faith in the life after death and the Day of Judgment is an essential part of Islam (45:21-22, 23:116). Things needed more are kept readily available in greater quantity. Take for instance, air and water which are indispensable for life of the animate objects, Hence such things are in immeasurable abundance. Things less needed are rare, and rarer still are those commodities the need for which is further less. Besides, the different individual things, if one casts a thoughtful glance upon the wonderfully harmonious working of the Universe, it gets obvious that there is One single Owner, Leader or Master who has ordered everything in the Universe to allow life to be created in it and to enable it to realize the fulfilment of the object of its advent into existence. Take for instance, the Sun serves as a lamp as well as an oven to lift water by evaporation, to be stored in the heavens in the clouds, to be sent down through rain, to serve the need for it on the earth. The wind has not only to conceal the vapour sent into the heavens, into rolling clouds, but also to distribute them by driving them over the various parts of the earth as the demand may be for it. The Sun again heats the clouds to allow the water stored in them to be melted to descend upon the earth. The earth receives the water and allows it to flow on its surface and in its bosom and by its help brings forth the treasures of the herbage and the cultivated corn to serve mankind. It seems that the Sun, the Moon, the Heavens, the winds, all are in attendance only to serve life on earth. Every being finds that even before its birth, everything necessary for it, is ready, duly arranged in the required quantity, form and manner. Take for instance the milk for a baby prepared before-hand in its mother’s breast, sufficiently in advance of its birth. One of the greatest marvels of the All-Merciful Almighty’s bounties provided for the life and happiness of the innumerable kinds of the incomprehensibly huge number of the members of each of the various species in His universe, is the wonderfully perfect harmony and the undisturbable control in the continuous working of the nature’s organization with the inherent capacity in each creature to utilize and be profited by the various means of sustenance provided for one and all of those in His creation. Every being in the Universe is so perfectly fashioned and so fully equipped that, it by itself and by its own individual fulfilment, is supplying its own needs which are quite different from each other, from one and the same environment. This wonderful adjustment is caused to be effected by two means which the Qur’an informs mankind viz. ‘Taqdeer’ or Destiny and ‘Hidayat’ or Guidance. Taqdeer meaning the appropriate assignment of a prescribed or a certain fixed state or predetermined condition of life in the Universe, of each and every individual creature bound by the fixed laws of a kind of Community-life of all the members of each individual specie. The binding of the law of 'Taqdeer’ or Destiny are hard and fast that none other than the Omnipotent God, Lord of the Universe, can ever move even an atom outside its destined course of owning its own individual or personal properties or changing the law controlling its movements or actions. For instance, none of the heavenly bodies can ever leave their respective orbits or positions. None can ever make any of the oceans leave their beds. The fish can never be made to live outside the water. The birds can never live underneath the sea. Mountains cannot be made to move from their respective places. The plants of one climate cannot be made to grow or even survive in any opposite climate. The animals of a tropical land can never be made to live in a polar region. The various elements can never do otherwise than as they have been destined, as made inherent in their respective individual nature. The law of cause and effect can never be made to stop its inevitable functioning. In short, the whole Universe has been so mercifully planned and wisely made to function that every creature in it, is equally and fully served to realize by itself the completion, which the nature of its specie has destined for it. The whole wonderful organization of the immeasurable vast universe is so successfully worked with perfect harmony between the individuals inhabiting it and the environment provided for them that no one else, in spite of all his imaginary claims to false godhead can ever even think of an attempt to cause the least change in the predestined nature. The whole universe, no doubt has been created and controlled by the laws of destiny but the question arises as to how the various kinds of members inhabiting the Universe come to know their adjustment in their respective environments and how they know what is profitable to their individual selves and what is harmful, and tow to acquire the profitable and avoid the harmful? Who teaches the just born babe to suck his mother’s breast, what makes the roots of the various trees and plants to suck from the one and the same earth, only those ingredients necessary and profitable to their respective produce and avoid the other matters which are also present in the same soil? Who teaches the young one of a fish just born to swim immediately as it is born? There are innumerable such actions on the part of the creatures which function automatically without any external education or training imparted by any one. It is nothing but the Guidance from God bestowed upon each and every being from the ‘Rabbul-Aalameen’ The Lord Nourisher, Sustainer and Protector, with which there is life and without which it is naught. Thus guidance, be that external or internal, be that through instinct or through any other means, all is through the Beneficence and the Mercy of the All-Merciful Lord. It is referring to this truth that Prophet Moses had declared (20:25, 87:2-3). The universality and the perfect harmony in the organisation of the Universe being always equally ready and useful to one and all kinds of the creatures, be that belonging to the human, animal, vegetable or the mineral world, eloquently declares that the whole universe has been designed, created and made to function by One and the same single Authority, who is not only Eternal in its existence, Almighty in its strength, All-Knowing in its knowledge and Wisdom, All-Just in its perfect equity but also pre-eminently in love, benevolent and bounteous to its creation as a whole.Arabic ‘Maalik’, Owner.Arabic ‘Yaumideen’.