6 Preface ذٰلِكَ بِأَنَّ اللَّهَ هُوَ الحَقُّ وَأَنَّهُ يُحيِي المَوتىٰ وَأَنَّهُ عَلىٰ كُلِّ شَيءٍ قَديرٌYusuf AliThis is so, because God is the Reality: it is He Who gives life to the dead, and it is He Who has power over all things.1All these beautiful and well-articulated pageants of life and nature point to the Reality behind them, i.e., God. They will perish, but He is eternal. They are but shadows; the substance (if such a word may be used) is in Him. They are shifting and illusory, in the sense that they have neither permanency nor independent existence. But they have a sort of secondary reality in the sense in which a shadow is a real reflection from substance. No Power or Existence has any meaning except as a reflection of God’s ineffable Glory.