Source: al-Kafi: Book 3, Chapter 1, Number 159
Abdullah al-Deesani, an atheist had a dialogue with Hisham Ibn Hakam.
The Atheist: Do you believe in God?
Hisham replied in affirmative.
The Atheist: Is He Almighty?
Hisham: Yes, He is Almighty and All-Powerful.
The Atheist: Can He put the whole world inside an egg without enlarging the size of the egg or diminishing the volume of the world?
Hisham: Give me some time to think over it.
The Atheist: I give you one whole year, and left.
Hisham went to see Imam Jafar as-Sadiq (p) in a hurry and said: O Son of the Prophet Muhammad (p), Deesani has put a challenging question to me and as regards its answer I cannot rely on anyone except God or you.
Imam Jafar as-Sadiq (p) asked: What was the question?
Hisham related the question of Deesani.
The Imam (p): O Hisham! How many sense-organs you have?
Hisham replied: Five.
The Imam (p): Which one is the smallest among them?
Hisham: The pupil of the eye.
The Imam (p): What is the size of the pupil of the eye?
Hisham: About the size of a grain of lentil or a part of it.
The Imam (p): Alright, now look around and tell me what you see.
Hisham: I see the sky, the earth, the houses, the spacious mansions, the mountains and the rivers, etc.
The Imam (p): The One Who can put all you see inside a grain of lentil or a part of the same can also insert the entire world inside an egg without enlarging the size of the egg or diminishing the size of the world.
On hearing this Hisham was overjoyed and fell down on his face performing a prostration and kissed the hands, feet and forehead of the Imam (p) and said: O Son of the Prophet Muhammad (p), this answer will be sufficient for me.
Hisham returned to his place. The very next day Deesani came to see Hisham and said: O Hisham, I have just come to greet you and have not come for an answer to my question.
Hisham: Even so, here is the answer to your question.
Hisham then told him what the Imam Jafar as-Sadiq (p) had said in answer to his question.
Deesani then went to see the Imam (p) and requested an audience with him. The Imam (p) granted his request.
Addressing the Imam (p) Deesani said: O Jafar son of Muhammad! Show me the way to my God.
The Imam (p) asked him his name.
Deesani left abruptly without answering.
His friends asked him: Why did you not tell your name?
Abdullah al-Deesani said: If I had told him my name – Abdullah – he would have said, ‘Who is this One whose servant are you.’ (Note: Abdullah means ‘Servant of Allah’).
His friends said: Go to see the Imam (p) again and request him to guide you to your God without asking your name.
Deesani went to see the Imam (p) again and said: O Jafar son of Muhammad, guide me to my God but do not ask my name.
The Imam (p) asked him to sit down and relax. Deesani did so. Perchance a young boy was playing nearby and had an egg in his hand.
Addressing the young boy the Imam (p) said: Let me have this egg for a while.
The boy handed over the egg to the Imam (p).
Addressing Deesani the Imam (p) said: This is a protected castle. It has a hard covering and beneath the hard covering there is a fine covering and beneath that fine covering there is liquid gold and molten silver. Neither the molten silver intermingles with the liquid gold nor do the liquid gold merges into the molten silver and both remain as they are. Nothing comes out of it to divulge the secret of its precision and nothing enters in it to control the internal balance. No one knows if the final product will be a male or a female. All of a sudden it splits and results in a peacock like multicolored offspring. Do you not see a Supreme power behind all this?
Deesani remained engrossed in deep thought and then exclaimed: I bear witness that there is no god but God and that He is One and has no partners and that Prophet Muhammad (p) is His bondman and His apostle and I also bear witness that you are a divinely ordained Imam and the proof of His existence and I hereby disown all my previous misconceptions.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Bismillah,
Subhallah. Thanks for the hadith brother Qaim. One thing I have noticed at least with the Imam's response is that they seem to be simple arguments. I would assume that is because he was dealing with relatively simple people with not a wide philosophical background. Not to demean these responses, but they are not exactly something you would publish in a paper. However, they have a quality to them that allows someone even today to think about it. It seems the Imams make the people do the thinking.
One must remember that everyone enters Islam in a different manner. Some find Islam through very simple matters, others must study the entire religion, see 1,000 signs, until they are converted. Others see the whole religion and never embrace it.
Abdullah Deesani was an atheist in this 'hadith, and he is looking from a philosophical perspective, namely, can God fit the earth in the egg. Imam Ja'far responded to this philosophical question with a philosophical answer: God has fit the earth in your pupil, which is even smaller than the egg.
For the question posed, this is the perfect answer. Many try to explain what Allah can or cannot do (such as the Mu'tazilah branch of Sunni Islam during the scholarly period), but the reality is, we do not know of His abilities, and the human element cannot fully comprehend His unlimited power.
I think the Imam is equivocating. Deesani wanted to know if Allah could fit the earth itself in an egg. To behold something with the eye is not for that thing to be contained within the eye.
In any event, the final response of Deesani was unwarranted. The fact that omnipotence is not an incoherent concept, at least as far as this issue goes, would not of itself prove that there is a God. And even if the Imam's answer proved the falsity of atheism, it didn't prove that Allah is the true God, that the Qur'an is the Word of God, that Muhammad was a true prophet, or that the Imam was divinely ordained. These are incredible leaps.
I should point out that I am a Christian and hold both atheism and Islam to be false religions. (Yes, I think atheism is a religion.)
Post a Comment