I’ve always imagined Allah (swt – the Exalted) as a huge figure up beyond the clouds somewhere – a shift in my perspective happened this morning.
I was recalling a very touching scene from an Iranian movie ‘The Colour of Paradise’ I watched last night. Mohammed, a blind boy, had said:
Our teacher says that God loves the blind more because they can’t see…but I told him, if it was so, He would not make us blind so that we can’t see Him. He answered, “God is not visible. He is everywhere. You can feel him. You see him through your fingertips.”
Now I reach out everywhere for God till the day my hands touch Him and tell Him everything, even the secrets in my heart.
The scene was memorable and keeps repeating in my head. The philosophy (albeit, an English translation) was thought provoking and developed my understanding of how God may be. For me, this explanation goes a long way to explain why Allah (swt) uses the pronoun ‘we’ a lot in the Qur’an, as opposed to ‘I’.
If Allah (swt) was to be EVERYWHERE in order to watch over EVERYTHING, as is my understanding, then imagining Allah’s presence as many particles rather than a whole being makes more sense. I know it’s not in our human capacity to grapple with the image of God, but wondering about Him comes naturally doesn’t it? I wait for a time when I no longer guess what form Allah (swt) exists in – a time beyond this fleeting life.
© Rabia Bashir 24th November 2013 All Rights Reserved
Image: Scene from ‘The Colour of Paradise’ written & directed by Majid Majidi