and following their forefathers without any light from Allah Most High.

“Darknesses” is the plural of “darkness”: the darkness of ignorance; the darkness of disbelief; the darkness of wronging oneself through blind imitation and following desires; the darkness of doubt and uncertainty; and the darkness of turning away from the truth with which Allah Most High sent His messengers—may Allah’s blessings and peace be upon them—and from the light He sent down with them to bring people out of darkness into light.

Whoever turns away from the guidance and the religion of truth with which Allah sent His servant and Messenger Muhammad ﷺ moves through five kinds of darkness: his speech is darkness, his deeds are darkness, his entry is darkness, his departure is darkness, and his destination is darkness. His heart is dark, his face is dark, his words are dark, and his condition is dark. When his bat-like inner sight encounters the light with which Allah sent Muhammad ﷺ, he hastens to flee from it, for its light almost blinds him. He flees instead to the darkness of opinions, which suits him better. As has been said:

Bats blinded by the daylight’s glare,
Find the dark stretch of night to their liking.

When he comes upon the refuse of speculation and the shavings of human minds, he struts and swaggers, expounds and repeats himself, rattles and blusters. But when the light of revelation and the sun of the prophetic message rise, he retreats into the burrows of vermin.

In His words, “in a deep sea,” lujjī means “deep” and is derived from lujjah, the main body of the sea.

His words, Most High, “a wave covers it, above which is another wave, above which are clouds,” depict the condition of this person who turns away from His revelation. He likens the surging waves of doubts and falsehood within his breast to the surging waves of that sea: waves piled one upon another.

The first pronoun, in “covers it,” refers to the sea. The second pronoun, in “above it,” refers to the wave.