the messengers. Allah, Exalted is He, says (1): “Allah’s promise—Allah never fails His promise—but most people do not know. They know only the outward appearance of this worldly life, while of the Hereafter they are heedless.” [al-Rum: 5-6]

One of the early Muslims remarked, “A man’s knowledge of worldly affairs may reach the point that he taps a silver coin with his fingernail and can tell its weight, yet he knows nothing at all of his religion.” (2)

Concerning the knowledge possessed by such people and their self-conceit regarding it, Allah, Most High, says: “When their messengers came to them with clear proofs, they rejoiced in the knowledge they already had, but that which they had been mocking encompassed them.” [Ghafir: 82] (3)

Allah, glorified be He, has set vast differences among His servants in what their minds and intellects can attain. The intellect grants its owner benefit in the very field to which he binds himself, busies himself, and confines his attention—benefit it will not grant him in another field, even though the latter may be far easier. In the same way, a person’s ambition and native talent in the craft to which he devotes himself and on which he concentrates confer on him what they will not confer in any other craft.

It is often the case that a man excels in the subtle, minute branches of knowledge and speculation, yet falls short in the weighty ones (4); he may master the most obscure and intricate matters, yet err in the greatest and clearest. This is a reality plain to the eye. How, then, when the sciences and insights of the prophets lie beyond the very range of human intellect? Although the intellect cannot, by itself, comprehend them, it does not pronounce them impossible; rather, once they are presented to it, it acknowledges (5) their truth, hastens to accept them, and submits.