reason?”

“And among them are those who look at you. Can you then guide the blind, even if they do not see?”

And His words:

“And among them are those who listen to you, but We have placed coverings over their hearts so that they cannot understand it, and deafness in their ears.”

Now, if the heart’s proper task is to know the truth, Allah is indeed the Manifest Truth:

“That is Allah, your true Lord. What is there beyond the truth except error?”

For everything that meets a passing glance or crosses the mind in a fleeting thought has Allah as its Lord, its Maker, its Creator and its Originator. One can encompass in knowledge only what belongs to His manifest signs in His earth and His heavens.

The truest words ever spoken by a poet were those of Labīd:

“Indeed, everything apart from Allah is vain.”

That is, whenever you consider anything in itself, you find it tending towards nonexistence, and it is not dependent on the Ever-Living, the Sustainer of all. But when you consider it as something embraced by providential care, through the decree of Him who gave everything its form and then guided it, you then see it existing, clothed in robes of bounty and beneficence.

It has thus become clear that the heart was created only for the remembrance of Allah, glorified be He. Hence one of the early sages of Syria—I think it was Sulaymān al-Khawwās, may Allah have mercy on him—said:

“Remembrance is to the heart what food is to the body. Just as the body finds no pleasure in food when it is ill, so the heart finds no sweetness in remembrance when it harbours love of this world.”

Or words to that effect. Thus, when the heart is occupied with Allah, comprehending the truth and reflecting on knowledge, then it has