Ar-Room (The Romans)

53. “Nor can you lead the blind out of their straying. Only those will you make hear who believe in Our signs and so they submit.”

The divine prophet’s duty is to guide people to accept the truth, not to force them to be guided; since having a submissive mood before the truth is a preliminary state for some spiritual apprehensions.

In connection with the former discussion mentioned in the commentary of the previous verse, through this verse and the next one, people are divided into four groups:

1- The dead: That is, those who do not apprehend any fact, though they are apparently alive.

2- The deaf, those who cannot hear the truth.

3- Those people who are deprived from seeing the feature of the truth.

4- The true believers who have aware hearts, hearing ears, and seeing eyes.

At first, the holy verse implies that the words of the Prophet (S) do not affect on those who have dead hearts. It says:

“For verily you can not make the dead listen…”

Then it continues saying:

“…nor can you make the deaf hear the call, when they turn away backward.”

And also, the verse says:

“Nor can you lead the blind out of their straying. Only those will you make hear who believe in Our signs and so they submit.”

As we said formerly, too, besides ‘life’ and ‘death’ of the body, as well as the apparent hearing and sight, the Qur’an considers a superior kind of life and death as well as sight and hearing in which the main root of man’s happiness and wretchedness is found.

The assessment of the Qur’an from these issues is not a material and physical assessment, but it is, in fact, a spiritual and humane assessment.

The first condition for comprehending the reality is to have a ready and receptive heart, a seeing eye and a hearing ear, otherwise if all prophets and saints come and recite all Divine verses to the one who has lost his discriminating sense and apprehension of the facts, as the result of committing many sins, obstinacy, and hostility, there will not appear a change in him.

And that the Qur’an points to only two parts of the apparent senses, added to the innate apprehension, is for the sake that the majority of man’s data are gained either by the means of these two senses (eye and ear) or through sensa and analysis of wisdom.

It is interesting that the three stages, which are mentioned in the above verses, are three different stages of deviation and the lack of understanding the reality which has begun from an intensive case and ended to the mild one.

The first stage is the state of despondency which in the Qur’an has been rendered into /mauta/ (the dead) that there is no way to be possible to penetrate into them.

The second stage is the stage of being deaf when they turn away backward and run away so violently that even the loud shouting, which may affect on them when they are near, are useless in this stage.

This group, of course, are not like the dead. It is sometimes possible that a matter can be conveyed to them by some signs and gesticulations, but we know that many facts can not be made understand by this way, specially when they turn away.

The third stage is the state of blindness. Of course, living with the blind is much easier, because the meanings can orally be explained to them.

However, mere stating the subjects is not enough. Supposing a blind person is told to take the right direction or the left direction, acting this instruction is not so easy and sometimes, because of a slight mistake in measuring, that blind person may fall into a precipice.

When commenting on Surah An-Naml, No. 27, verses 80 and 81 in the explanation of the reality of ‘life’ and ‘death’ in the Qur’an, we pointed to the weak rejection of a group of Wahhabites who, in order to negate the resorting to the holy Prophet (S) and Imams (as) take help from the verses under discussion, and the like, and say that the dead (even the Prophet (S)) never understand anything.

But, in that place, we proved that man, specially the great leaders and the martyr have a kind of life in purgatory after their death. There are many documents from the Qur’an and tradition that testify to it. In this purgatory life they have a kind of perceive and understanding which is vaster than that in the worldly life.

Here we must add that all of the Muslims in their prayers always address the holy Prophet of Islam (S) and send salutation to him by saying:

“As-salamu ‘alayka ’ayyuhannabiyu wa rahmatullah-i-wa barakatuh”

and we know that the real addressee, not the figurative one, is certainly the one who hears and understands. Therefore, addressing and sending salutation to him from far and near distances is an indication to the fact that his holy soul hears all these salutation and it needs not reason that we consider these salutation as figurative ones.