On the other hand, Allah has bestowed on man a mind: a mind that can think and judge and choose. And with this mind, man has been endowed with a free will: he has the freedom to embrace or deny any faith, the freedom to live by any code of conduct, the freedom to react in any way to the conditions of his life. With this mind, he can choose whether or not to be a Muslim.

How can man’s mind and body be brought in harmony with each other?

Only if his mind consciously submits to Him whom his body already submits to intuitively. Man completes his Islam by surrendering back to Allah the freedom he has been given, by consciously deciding to obey the slightest of Allah’s injunctions.

Now his feelings are in harmony with his heart, his thoughts are in harmony with his brain, his words are in harmony with his tongue. Now his actions are in harmony with his body, and he is in harmony with the universe: he obeys with both his mind and body Him whom the whole universe obeys.

He has finally become a Muslim, in this brief life. And for that he will be rewarded for eternity in the afterlife, with everything his heart desires, with all the joys of Paradise.

20

John Keats speaks: Forgive me that I cannot speak to you definitively on these mighty things.

Is there another life? Shall I awake and find all this a dream? No voice will tell: no God—no demon—deigns to reply, from heaven, or from hell.

You perhaps at one time thought there was such a thing as worldly happiness to be arrived at. I scarcely remember counting upon any. I looked not for it if it not be in the present hour—nothing startled me beyond the moment. If a sparrow came before my window I took part in its existence and picked about the gravel.

Man is a poor forked creature subject to the same mischances as the beasts of the forest, destined to hardships and disquietude. If he improves by degrees his bodily accommodations and comforts, at each stage there are waiting for him a fresh set of annoyances. The whole troubles of life are frittered away in a series of years, and what must it end in but Death?

The most interesting question is: How far, by the persevering endeavors of a seldom appearing prophet or philosopher, may mankind be made happy? Can I imagine mankind’s happiness carried to the extreme?

In truth, I do not believe in this sort of perfectibility. The nature of the world will not admit of it.

This is human life: the war, the deeds, the disappointment, the anxiety; the weariness, the fever, and the fret. All human, bearing in themselves this good: they are still the air, the subtle food, to make us feel existence, and to show us how quiet Death is.

Do you not see how necessary this world is to spirit-creation, to school an intelligence and make it a soul?