Replies to the objections about Suspension of Laws

(b) Suspension of Laws

: It is true, as far as common experience and the experiments carried out so far by the scientists are concerned, this long life granted by Allah to the Awaited Saviour appears to be very unusual. But his role of revolutionizing the world order and rebuilding the entire system on the basis of justice and truth is also so extraordinary that neither are the people familiar with it nor has it ever been experienced in history. So, it should not be surprising if at the preparatory stage also, his role is preceded by some unusual and extraordinary events, like his long life. However, unfamiliar these events may be, they are not more unusual than the great role to be performed by the Mahdi on the appointed day. If we can relish that role, having no precedent throughout history, there is no reason why we should not relish his long life unprecedented in our ordinary life.

Similarity between Noah and the Mahdi

We wonder if it is a mere chance that each of the only two persons who undertook to purify the human civilization of all its impurities and to reconstruct the world should have had a very long life span, several times that of a usual one. One of them played this role in the past. He was Noah, about whom the Holy Quran has expressly said that he lived among his people for 950 years. He reconstructed the world after the Deluge. The other is to play his role in the future. He is the Mahdi who has already lived among his people for more than a thousand years and is destined to play his role on the appointed day and build the world anew.

How is it then that we accept the longevity of Noah who lived for at least about a thousand years and deny that of Mahdi?

We have learnt that a long life is scientifically possible but let us suppose that it is not so and the law of senility is inexorable and cannot be defied either today or in future. Then what does this mean??

It means only this that to live for centuries, as is the case with Noah and the Mahdi, is contrary to the natural laws established by science through modern methods of experimentation and investigation.

Miracles / Suspension of natural laws in the Quran

In this case a long life may be accepted as a miracle which suspends a natural law in particular circumstances to preserve the life of a particular person entrusted with a celestial mission. This miracle is not unique in its kind, nor is it alien to the Muslim belief derived from the text of the Quran and the Sunnah.  Some well-known miracles in the Quran, Hadith and apostolic texts)

The law of senility is not any the more relentless than the law of the exchange of heat, according to which heat passes from a body having a higher temperature to a body having a lower temperature. This law was suspended to protect Abraham when he was thrown into the burning fire, for this was the only way to preserve his life. The holy Quran says:

"We said: O fire, be coolness and peace for Abraham". (Surah al-Anbia, 21:69)

Accordingly, he came out of the fire unscathed!

In many other cases also, natural laws were suspended to protect the prophets and other Divinely appointed people. The sea was parted for Moses. It appeared to the Romans that they had captured Jesus whereas they had not. Muhammad got out of his house while it was surrounded by a mob of the tribe of Quraish, waiting for an opportunity to assassinate him. Allah concealed him, so that the Quraishites could not see him when he walked out through their midst. In all these cases, natural laws were suspended for the protection of the people whose lives, the Divine Wisdom wished to preserve. The law of senility too, can be bracketed with these cases of suspension.

From the above discussion, we can arrive at a general conclusion and say: Whenever it is necessary to preserve the life of one of the chosen servants of Allah, to enable him to accomplish his mission, the Divine Grace intervenes to protect him and one of the natural laws is suspended. On the contrary if the period of his appointment comes to an end, and the task entrusted to him by the Almighty is accomplished, he meets death in accordance with the natural laws related to life or is martyred.

Science and Miracles

Question: In this connection, we are usually confronted with the following questions. "How can a natural law be suspended and the compulsory relationship existing between the various phenomena be severed? Will such a suspension not be in contradiction with science which has discovered that law determines the compulsory relationship on the basis of experimentation and investigations?"

Science itself has provided an answer to this question. It has already given up the idea of compulsion in respect of natural laws. It only says that these laws are discovered on the basis of systematic observation and experiment. When it is observed that one phenomenon invariably follows another, this invariability is treated as a natural law. But science does not claim that there exists a binding and compulsory relationship between any two phenomena, because compulsion is a factor which cannot be proved by experiment and scientific methods of investigation. Modern science confirms that a natural law as defined by it, speaks only of an invariable association between two phenomena and is not concerned with any compulsory relationship between them. 

Hence, if a miracle takes place and the natural relationship between two phenomena breaks down, it does not amount to the breaking down of a compulsory relationship.

In fact, a miracle in its religious sense has become more comprehensive in the light of modern scientific theory than it was when the classical view of causal nexus prevailed. According to the old theory, it was presumed that the phenomena invariably associated with each other must have an inevitable relationship between them and this inevitability meant that their separation from each other was inconceivable. According to modern scientific thinking, however, this relationship has been transformed into a law of association or invariable succession.

Thus, a miracle need not come into clash with inevitability any longer. It is only an exceptional state of the invariability of association and succession.

We agree with the scientific view that modern scientific methods cannot prove the existence of an inevitable relationship between any two phenomena. Anyhow, we are of the view that there must still be some explanation of the invariability of association and succession. As it can be explained on the basis of the theory of intrinsic inevitability, it can also be explained if we assume that it is the Wisdom of the Organizer of the universe, which requires a particular phenomenon to be invariably related to some other phenomenon and that in certain cases, the same wisdom may require that there should be an exception. Such exceptional cases are called miracles.

But why this extraordinary suspension of laws, for the Mahdi??

Now let us take up the question as to why Allah is so keen to prolong the Mahdi's life that, even natural laws are suspended for his sake. Is it not advisable to leave the leadership of the appointed day to a person to be born in the future and brought up according to the needs of the time?? In other words, what is the justification of this long occultation?

Most of the people who ask this question do not want an answer simply based on belief. It is not enough to say that we believe it be so. What the interrogators really want is a social explanation of the position in the light of the tangible requirements of the great change to be brought about by the Mahdi.

Hence, we leave aside for the time being the qualifications we believe the infallible Imams to have possessed and take up instead the following question:

Is it likely, in the light of the past experience, that such a long life of the leader-designate will contribute to his success and will enable him to play his role better??

Our reply to this question is in the affirmative. Some of the reasons are given below:

The proposed great revolutionary change requires that its leader should possess a unique mental calibre. He should be conscious of his own superiority and the insignificance of the knotty system he has to overthrow. The more conscious he is of the insignificance of the corrupt society he has to fight against, the more psychologically prepared he will be to wage a war till victory is won.

It is evident that the size of his mental calibre should be proportionate to the size of the proposed change and the size of the social system to be eliminated.. The more extensive and deep-seated this system, the greater should be the psychological push required.

The mission being to revolutionize the world, full of injustice and oppression, and to bring about a radical change in all its cultural values and diverse systems, it is but natural that it should be entrusted to a person whose mental calibre is higher than that of anyone in the whole of the existing world and who may not have been born and brought up under the influence of the society required to be demolished and replaced by another culture of justice and righteousness. One brought up under the shadow of a deep-seated and world-dominating culture is naturally impressed and overawed by it, that being the only culture which he has seen and by which he has been influenced from a tender age.

But the case should be different with a person who has a long historical background, who has witnessed several great cultures successively grow and decline, who has seen the big historical changes with his own eyes and has not read about them in books, who has been a contemporary of all the stages of the development of that culture which happens to be the last chapter of the human history before the appointed day and who has seen all its ups and downs. Such a person, who himself has lived through all these stages very carefully and attentively, is competent to look at the culture he has to grapple with, in its historical perspective and is not daunted by its magnitude. His attitude to it will not be like that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) to the French monarchy.

It is reported that Rousseau, in spite of being a great champion of political revolution from an intellectual and philosophical point of view, shuddered at the very thought of there being a France without a king, the reason being that he was born and brought up and had always lived under the shadow of monarchy. But the man having a long historical background and being fully aware of the historical factors, knows perfectly well how and when the prevailing culture and the prevailing system came into being, and developed. He knows that the historical age of the cultures and systems, howsoever long, is very limited.

Have you read the Surah al-Kahf (Chapter 18 of the Holy Quran)? And have you gone through the story of the youths who believed in Allah and were virtuous, but had to face an idolatrous system which was dominant at that time and which ruthlessly crushed every idea of Monotheism? They felt greatly distressed and lost all hope. In utter despair they took refuge in a cave, for they were at their wits' end and did not know what to do. They thought that the then existing unjust system would continue to prevail for ever and would liquidate all those whose hearts throbbed for the truth. Do you know what Allah did? He sent them to sleep in the cave for 309 years. Then He awakened them and sent them back to the scene of life. By then the unjust regime, the power and tyranny which had dazzled them, had completely collapsed and become a part of past history. This arrangement was made to enable those young men to see themselves the downfall of falsehood, the power and grandeur which had overawed them. The people of the cave achieved moral uplift and sublimation through this unique experience which extended their lives for three hundred years. The same privilege will be enjoyed by the Awaited Saviour through his long life which will enable him to see the giant dwindling into a dwarf, a lofty tree shrinking to become a mere seed leaf and a tornado turning into a mere whiff of the wind.

Furthermore, the conscience gained through the direct and close study of so many successive cultures will widen the mental horizon the person designated to lead the revolution and will prepare him better, for the accomplishment of his mission. He will have benefited by the experience of others, knowing their strong and weak points, and will be in a better position to assess social developments correctly in their true historical contexts.

As the revolution to be brought about by the Awaited Saviour is to be ideological and based on the message of Islam, the very nature of his mission requires him to be close to the early Islamic sources and to have a personality built independently of and detached from the influences of the culture he is destined to fight. A person born and brought up under the shadow of a particular culture cannot in all probability, escape its effects totally, even if he leads a campaign against it. To ensure that the leader-designate is not himself influenced by the culture, he is expected to change, his personality must be built fully at a cultural stage closer in its general spirit to the system he wants to establish.