The Light of Faith
by Mostafa Badawi
Light is that which is visible in itself
and makes other things visible.
Physical light is seen with the physi-
cal eye and makes what it falls
upon in the physical world visible.
The light of reason is invisible to
the physical eye but similar to it at
its own level. This is why when
something intelligible becomes
evident through reasoning, we say,
“I see.” At a higher level, still,
there is the light of certainty which
is perceived by the spiritual eye of
the heart. The first thing that God
created was light, for compared to
nothingness, which is total
darkness, being is light.
Ultimately, there is the Divine
Light: “God is the Light of the
heavens and the earth” (24:35).
Mostafa al-Badawi is one of the world’s
premier translators of Islamic spiritual
texts. He is a Consultant Psychiatrist
and member of THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF
PSYCHIATRISTS. He studied under many
shaykhs, foremost among whom is the
late Habib Ahmad Mashhur al-
Haddad. His other translations
include: THE BOOK OF ASSISTANCE, THE LIVES
OF MAN, TWO TREATISES, THE PROPHETIC
INVOCATIONS, and DEGREES OF THE SOUL.
PHOTO: HANNA SAYYIDA / CWDM
He is also the author of MAN AND THE
UNIVERSE: AN ISLAMIC PERSPECTIVE, recently
published by Wakeel Books.
He resides in Medina.
s i n c e c r e at i o n i s but the reflection of
the Divine Names and Attributes, the infinite-
ly repeated reflection of the One Light results
in the variety of lights, visible and intelligible,
that fill the universe.
Revealed scripture, the Word of God, in its
many forms, is light. God – Exalted is He – says
in the Qur’an,
Say: Who sent down the Book which Moses
brought, a light and guidance for the people?
(6:91)
We have sent down the Torah in which there
was guidance and light… . (5:44)
And We sent Moses with Our signs, “Bring
your people out of the shadows, into the light,
and remind them of the days of God… .” (14:5)
The Jews not only altered their Book, but
many became obsessed with the outward
observance of their rituals, forgetting the
reason for them: the purification of the heart.
They thus reached the stage where they were
worshipping the Law, not He who prescribed
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seasons
it. Jesus ∑ was sent not to abrogate the Law,
which in fact he explicitly confirmed, but to
stress its inward spiritual dimension:
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And after them We sent Jesus son of Mary,
confirming the Torah that was before him,
and We gave him the Gospel in which was
guidance and light, confirming the Torah
that was before it, and guidance and counsel
to the godfearring.(Qur’an 5:46)
The “godfearing” are the people of taqw¥,
and taqw¥ is inwardly to be in such awe of God
as to avoid displeasing Him. It is to yearn to
meet Him so much as to be terrified of any- 7
 thing that might become a barrier obstructing
the blissful vision of His Countenance in the
hereafter. Thus, the guidance and counsel in
the verse refer to Jesus confirming the Law and
counseling his people on how to follow it,
while the light in the Gospel refers to the
inward dimension of the Law which leads to
spiritual enlightenment.
In the Qur’an, God addresses the Jews and
the Christians thus:
Those who follow the Messenger, the unlettered
Prophet, whom they find described in their Torah
and Gospel – he will enjoin on them good and for-
bid them evil, he will make lawful for them all good
things and prohibit for them what is foul, and he
will relieve them of their burden and the fetters that
were upon them. Those who believer in him, honor
him, support him, and follow the light which has
been sent down with him, they are the
successful.(7:157)
Here, God calls the Qur’an a light, just as
He had called the Torah and the Gospel lights.
The outward form of this light is called guid-
ance and refers to enjoining good, to
forbidding evil, and to legal injunctions and
prohibitions. The People of the Book are
exhorted to recognize in the Qur’an the same
light that shone forth from previous scriptures
and believe in it, thereby becoming successful
in this world and the next.
In another passage, God calls His Prophet a
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light, again inviting the People of the Book to
recognize him as the same light that shone
forth as previous Divine Messengers:
People of the Book, now there has come to you
Our Messenger, making clear to you many
things you have been concealing of the Book
and effacing many things. There has come to
you from God a light, and a Book Manifest,
whereby God guides whosoever follows His
good pleasure in the ways of peace and brings
them forth from the shadows into the light by
His leave, and He guides them to a straight
path. (5:14,15)
8 out of the shadows of remoteness from God
The light of the Prophet and the light of the
Qur’an, when they receive them acceptingly,
will bring them forth from the shadows of
error and misguidance into the light of faith,
certainty, and proximity to God by His leave,
for ultimately, it is He who will guide them to a
straight path.
The Prophet is also called a radiating light
in the following verses of the Qur’an:
O Prophet! We have sent you as a witness and
a bringer of good news and a warner. And as a
summoner to God by His leave, and as a lamp
radiating light. (33:45,46)
The Qur’an is called ‘a light’ in many more
verses:
So believe in God, His Messenger, and the
light We have sent down. And God is Aware
of what you do. (64:8)
Among people there are those who dispute
about God with neither knowledge, guidance,
nor an illuminating book. (22:8)
O Men! A proof from your Lord has come to
you, and We have sent down a manifest light.
(4:174)
The Qur’an, being the uncreated Word of
God, represents the appearance of the Divine
Light among men. That which is uncreated
is its essence, for its letters, words, and
sounds evidently belong to creation. To
perceive the light within the Qur’an is to
perceive its eternal essence, but, at a lower
level, it is also to perceive the various lights
that branch out from this essence, such as
the light of outward guidance, of knowledge,
of faith in the heart, of certainty, the baraka it
manifests and radiates wherever it is recited,
of inward inspired knowledge, of the Divine
Names and Attributes it mentions, and so on.
These lights bring those who receive them
acceptingly out of the shadows of disbelief and
into the light of faith; out of the shadows of
ignorance and into the light of knowledge;
and into ever increasing proximity, which O God, put light in my heart, light in my
sight, light in my hearing, light to my right,
brings ever intensifying lights:
light to my left, light above me, light below
…so fear god, O people of reason who believe. me, light before me, and light behind me;
and grant me light.6
God has sent you a remembrance: a
Messenger reciting to you the clear verses of
God, to bring those who believe and do good
works out of the shadows, into the light….
(65:10,11)

Alif, L¥m, R¥. A Book We sent down to you

that you may bring the people out of the
shadows, into the light, by leave of their Lord,
to the path of the August, the Praiseworthy.
(14:1)

He it is Who sends clear verses to His slave,

that He may bring you out of the shadows,
into the light… . (57:9)

“God is the Guardian of the believers, Who

brings them out of the shadows into the light.
The disbelievers, their guardians are the
devils who bring them out of the light into the
Part of the surah of Light from a
shadows. Those are the people of the Fire, to
very early Medinan Qur’an.
remain in it to perpetuity. (2:257)

The universe is a tissue of lights of which we And,

perceive only a minute portion in the physical
world and know only of those we were
informed of by the Qur’an and Sunna. “The
angels,” said the Prophet œ, “were created
from light.”1 The Black Stone and the Station
of Abraham in the Ka¢ba also shone forth with
light before they were brought down to earth.
“The Corner and the Station are two rubies of
“I ask you, O God, O Most-Merciful, by
Your majesty and the light of Your counte-
nance, to enlighten my sight with Your
Book….”7
There will be lights to be seen in the here- seasons
after. The Qur’an says,
For the Horn shall be blown, and all those in the
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heavens and the earth shall be struck down, save

the rubies of paradise, the light of which God
those whom God wills. Then it shall be blown a
has dimmed. Had He not dimmed their two
second time, and they shall stand, gazing. And
lights, they would have illuminated what is
the earth shall shine with the light of its
between the East and the West.” 2
Lord… .(39:68,69)
The Prophet œ also informed us that the
ritual prayer is light,3 that therefore to pray And the Prophet œ said,
one’s supererogatory prayers at home illumi-
nates it,4 and that those who walk in the dark “No companion of mine will die in a land
but that he will be resurrected as the leader
to pray in the mosque shall have complete
of its people and a light for them on the
light on the Day of Arising.5 In his du¢¥’
Day of Arising.” 8
(supplication) he said, 9
 PHOTO: PETER SANDERS FROM IN THE SHADE OF THE TREE
light and shadows in medina
This photograph is intentionally printed upside down
to illustrate the illusion created by shadows.

He also said, “There shall come on the Day
of Arising people whose light is like the
light of the sun.”
Ab‰ Bakr asked, “Are those us, O
Messenger of God?”
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And those who believe in God and His
Messengers, they are the siddiq‰n. And the
martyrs are with their Lord; they have their
reward and their light… . (57:19)
To return to the light of faith, God says,

The reply was, “No, yours will be much

good, but those are the poor.” 9
The Qur’an again says,
On the day when you will see believing men
and women, their light shining forth before
them and on their right hand: “Rejoice this
day for gardens beneath which rivers flow, in
which you will abide perpetually.” That is the
immense success. On that day, hypocrite men
and women will say to the believers, “Wait for
us that we may borrow of your light!” But it
will be said, “Go back and seek some other
10 light!” (57:12,13)
The blind is not equal with he who sees; nor the
shadows with light; nor the shade with intense
heat; nor are the living equal with the dead;
God causes whom He will to hear, but you can
never make hear those who are in the graves.
(35:19-22)
The physical light which the blind cannot
see, the contrast between the coolness of the
shade and the pain of intense heat, and the
light of life with the darkness of death are all
here given as metaphors for the light of faith
and the shadows of disbelief. Those whose
hearts are dead are unable to receive the light
of Revelation. In reality they are dead,
entombed in the graves, which are their mate-
rial bodies; although the latter seem to live
and move, real life is the life of spirit, the light
of nearness to the eternal light of God.
We find the same meaning in another
verse:
Is he who was dead and whom We raised to
life, and made as a light for him to walk
among people, the same as he who is in the
shadows, out of which he will not come? Thus
is what they do made to seem fair for the
disbelievers. (6:122)
When the disbeliever accepts Islam, the
light of faith infuses his heart with life. God
asks,
Is he whose breast God has enlarged to Islam,
so he walks in a light from his Lord [equal
with he who remains in darkness]? So, woe to
those whose hearts are hardened against the
remembrance of God. They are in evident
error.(39:22)
But those whose hearts are dark – and,
here, darkness equals hardness – those who
are entrenched in their shadows wish to
extinguish the light in others, for this is the
ongoing battle between good and evil:
“They seek to extinguish the light of God with
their mouths, but God will complete His light,
much as the disbelievers may hate it” (61:8).
In the light of all the above, we may under-
stand the “Verse of Light” (Qur’an 24:35) as
referring to the light of faith in the heart of
sincere believers in the following manner:
“God is the Light of the heavens and the
earth.” One of the obvious meanings of this
verse, and there are many, is that God has
created the secondary causes that illuminate
the heavens and the earth, such as the sun and
moon for the terrestrial world; Scriptures,
Prophets, and scholars for the hearts of men;
angels for the seven heavens; and so on. “The
likeness of His light,” as the verse continues, is
the reflection of His light in the created
universe. Now, the most complete and perfect
reflection of His light in the universe is the
Prophet œ as stated by Ibn ¢Abb¥s and
others.10 The “Verse of Light” continues,
The likeness of His light is that of a niche in
which is a lamp. The lamp is in a glass; the
glass is as a glittering star; [the lamp is]
lighted from a blessed tree, an olive, neither
of the East, nor of the West, whose oil would
almost glow forth, even if no fire touched it,
light upon light.
The niche is his breast œ. It has two
surfaces, one that receives the lights of God –
“God and His angels bless the Prophet”
(35:36) – and another that radiates it to
mankind. His breast was twice enlarged to
receive these lights, once during his child-
hood and a second time before his ascension
(mi¢r¥j). In the niche is a lamp, which is the
light of prophethood. Within his breast the
lamp is enclosed in a glass, which is his heart.
The glass is so pure and sheer as to be like a
glittering star. The oil of the lamp comes from
an olive tree, the tree of Abraham ∑ which is
primordial, neither of the East like that of the
Christians, nor of the West like that of the
Jews, for it is none other than the central tree
of primordial prophethood. The light of the
oil of this blessed tree seems to be about to
shine forth even before it is touched by the fire seasons
of the Qur’an. When the light of the prophetic
nature of the Messenger of God received the
light of the Qur’an, it became, “Light upon
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light.” To these lights, which lead to His Light,
does God lead those whom He chooses for
eternal bliss: “God guides whom He wills to His
light and strikes similitudes for the people. And God
has knowledge of everything” (24:35).
Now, since each Muslim is a more or less an
imperfect reflection of the perfect prototype
that is the Messenger of God œ the same
similitude should apply, albeit in a much
more limited and conditioned manner.
Therefore, we may say that the niche refers to 11
 the breast of the believer. It has two faces: one
turned to the Prophet, the Qur’an, and the
higher Worlds, receiving the influx of divine
mercies; the other turned toward his fellow
Muslims, radiating these lights among them.
In the believer, the glass will be sheer and glit-
tery to the extent that he is sincere in obeying
his Lord, following his Prophet, and purifying
his heart. In the glass is a lamp, which is the
light of faith, fed by the same oil of the knowl-
edge of prophethood, but according to its
limited capacity, to be lighted by the fire of the
Qur’an so that it too will become light upon
light. The Prophet œ said that there are four
kinds of hearts:
… a heart that is smooth, containing the
likeness of a lamp, radiant; a heart that is
enveloped in an envelope that is tied up; a
heart that is upside down; and a heart made
of layers. As for the heart that is smooth, it is
the heart of the believer; its lamp is the light
in it. As for the heart that is enveloped, it is
the heart of the disbelievers. As for the
heart that is upside down, it is the heart of
the hypocrite who has recognized [the
truth] then denied it. As for the heart made
of layers, it is a heart containing both faith
and hypocrisy….11
Now, the blessed tree in the verse is neither
of the East nor of the West to the extent of his
keeping to the middle path, not following sects
or heresies. At a higher level, it refers to God’s
elect who have lost all inclination for the
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pleasures of both this world and the next but
yearn only for the Proximity of God – Majestic
is He.
That the similitude refers to the light of
faith in sincere believers is evidenced by the
next verse:
In houses that God has permitted to be raised up
and for His Name to be remembered therein. In
these, He is glorified morning and evening by
those whom neither commerce nor sale distracts
from the remembrance of God, the performance of
the ritual prayer, or paying the Zak¥h. They fear
a day when hearts and eyes will be overturned.
(24:36,37)
12
The ones described here are those who
allow nothing to distract them from the
constant remembrance of God and conformi-
ty with the injunctions of SharÏ ¢a, which is the
very definition of sincerity. Constant remem-
brance, which is unbroken awareness of God,
is that which allows a Muslim to catch up with
such sincere believers as are described above.
The way to achieve unbroken awareness is to
strengthen the light in one’s heart by abun-
dant invocations and acts of worship,
following the Sunna in its smallest details,
strengthening the virtues, thinking well of all
Muslims, keeping company with those who
are near to God, and so on. Under such condi-
tions, verbal remembrance, if practiced in
abundance and with concentration, is bound
to lead to remembrance of the heart whereby
one’s awareness of God remains unbroken
even when engaged in necessary worldly
pursuits. At this stage, the person becomes
subject to the unbroken divine effulgence of
graces so that God becomes his WalÏ and he
becomes the walÏ of God. ✺
references
1
Muslim, Zuhd, 60; A^mad, 6:153, 168.
2
TirmidhÏ, (878).
3
Muslim, >ah¥ra, 1; TirmidhÏ, (3517)
4
Ibn M¥ja, (1375)
5
Ab‰ D¥w‰d, (561); TirmidhÏ, (223)
6
Bukh¥rÏ, (6316).
7
TirmidhÏ, (3570).
8
TirmidhÏ, (3865)
9
HaytamÏ, Majmac az-Zaw¥’id, 10:258
10
Al‰sÏ, tafsÏr, vol. 18 pp 168, 169, 170.
11
A^mad, (11145)