and lightning, with no share in what lies beyond them—the rainstorm’s intended purpose of bringing life to lands and people, trees and animals. The darkness within it, its thunder and lightning, serve a further purpose: they are a means to deriving the fullest benefit from that rainstorm.

The ignorant person, in his profound ignorance, perceives only the darkness, thunder, and lightning in the rainstorm, and their attendant effects: bitter cold, travellers prevented from travelling, and craftsmen kept from their work. He lacks the insight to see the life and widespread benefit that the rainstorm ultimately brings. Such is everyone whose vision is narrow and whose understanding is weak: he sees only the outwardly disagreeable thing, never looking beyond it to the good that follows. This is the condition of most people, except those whose insight has become clear.

When someone of weak insight sees the toil and hardships involved in jihad, the risk of losing his life or suffering severe wounds, the reproaches of those who find fault, and the enmity of those whose hostility he fears, he will not undertake it. For he does not perceive its praiseworthy outcomes and the ends towards which people race and for which they compete. Likewise, someone intent on travelling to the Sacred House for Hajj, who sees in that journey nothing but the hardship of travel, separation from family and homeland, the endurance of difficulties, and parting from familiar comforts, and whose vision and insight do not reach its conclusion, outcome, and consequences, will neither set out nor resolve to undertake it.

Their condition is like that of someone weak in insight and faith who sees in the Quran its promises and warnings, its deterrents and prohibitions, and the commands that weigh heavily upon souls, weaning them from the breast of familiar habits and desires. Yet nothing is harder or more distressing to an infant than weaning.

All people are children in understanding, except those who have attained the maturity of sensible, discerning men and grasped the truth through knowledge, practice, and understanding. Such a person looks beyond the rainstorm and its thunder, lightning, and thunderbolts, knowing that it brings life to the world.

Al-Zamakhsharī said: “One might say that the religion of Islam is likened to a rainstorm because hearts come to life through it just as the earth comes to life through rain; associated with this are the comparisons of disbelief to darkness, of the promises and warnings it contains to thunder and lightning, and of the terrors that befall the disbelievers through calamities