PROLOGUE

It has never been our object to record our dreams but just
to realize them. Neither we like to tread the trodden path nor go
where path may lead. Instead go where there is no path and leave
a trail behind. We hear the words of Mother Theresa resonating:
“I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish
that He didn’t trust me so much”. We also realize that
life’s greatest accomplishments are those that at first seem
impossible. Nevertheless, “people of accomplishment rarely sat
back and let things happen to them. They went out happened
to things” (Leonardo Da Vinci). “GEMS FOR MANKIND” is the
fourth writing on the sacred verses to unravel the elements of the
spiritual guidance from the “God’s Word”, for the purpose of
discovering “God’s Will”. To invoke God’s mercy in our mission,
we pray the prayer of Sufi Poet of India, Hazrat Bui-ali Qalandar:
“ O Allah! Give me the eye gifted with vision and the craze of
Your love in my head”.

The Holy Quran is indeed a sacred prism through which

one can catch various captivating images of life patterns for the
Muslims as desired by the Great Creator. The guidance comes to
us as easily as the very air we breathe and are as scintillating as
the sunshine itself. The meaning which we thought we had
grasped expands in all its objectivity and dimensions. Then,
thanks to those learned scholars of the Quran who have
laboriously brought to our knowledge each and every angle of
every verse. No wonder, one of the favorite prays of Allama I.I.
Kazi had been: “O God, may I be helped to see things as they
are!” The man then ascends to a level from where he views his
destiny against the total cosmic background we call the Universe.
He takes his stand for offering a survey of it upon the metacosmic
ground that is furnished to him by a religious view of the nature

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of things. This should be the quest of every individual because it
teaches mankind to balance the outer activity with inner one.
Rightly said:

“When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel

bad, and that is my religion”.…… Ibrahim
Lincolin

Thus, it is for the Muslims to follow the guidance of the

Quran and the way of the Prophet, Mohammad (SAW) and to
understand that their vacation in this world is to witness the
divine reality and to guide the people in the name of Allah.
Assiduously, it is for the Muslims to inquire through their Islamic
education what Islam stands for, what phase of human evolution
does it cover. What is the orthogenetic line of evolution, where
does it lead to, how can we progressively walk on it and how can
we reach the destination? Here we must give a caution to the
Muslims. It is ignorance for them to speak that the earlier faiths
were all awry and that they did not stand for truths in their own
times. A Muslim must not say like this, or else he has never
understood the Islam. Quran says that all the Prophets and all the
Books what they taught in their own times were right. The
wrongness only comes when one says he would not budge an inch
from where his ancestors stood. It means all denial of progress
and evolution and negation of life itself. Think of your
conception, your birth, your growth from first year, on, then you
will realize that you could not have eaten the beef when your
teeth had not come out, that your needs in fourth year and twenty-
fourth year were quite different.

However, the object of the authors or shall we say, the

compilers, of this volume is that these few selected holy verses
from the Holy Book, above other virtues, may create a fresh

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reading and a welcome understanding of Islam as a complete
“code of life”. The volume may serve, in some degree to remove
misconceptions as to the meaning and the message of Islam
particularly with reference to general ethical principles, moral,
social, economical values and human fabric of
national/international society. In this age, the crucial significance
of love for all and tolerance for others and the integration of spirit
and matter are the values that need to be promoted. Peace is our
slogan and we dismiss violence as a necessary condition for
imposing the good. It had to be cultivated so as to come from
within the individualself.

Come wander with me, she

said,
Into regions yet untrod;
And read what is still unread
In the Manuscript of God. ………… Longfellow

Earnest and dedicated students of Quran when concentrate on a

verse their spectrum of knowledge widen. The meaning they
grasped earlier goes on expanding with further and further
thought. It is said that Ghous-e-Azam, Hazrat Sheikh Abdul Qadir
Gillani RA, used to explain ayats in more than a dozen different
ways to his disepels (“Ghous-e-Azam”, By: Amanallah Khan
Arman Sarhandi, Taj Co. 1961). This is analogical to a plane flier.
Higher he goes wider area he views. From a literary point of view,
poet John Keats has described his feeling when he discovered
Capman’s Homer – (THE DRAGON BOOK OF VERSE – Book-
II, Oxford University Press, London, 1949):

Then felt I some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific – and all his men

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 Look’d at each other with a wild surmise –
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

What a great joy and wonder when the glorious verses

open our spiritual senses leading the readers to near the Great
Unknown. This an open miracle of the Glorious Book. Picked at
random, a verse of Shah Abdul Latif (translation by: Elsa Kazi) to
this effect reads:

Master the lesson thoroughly

that “Law” doth teach Sohni ……
The contemplate and mediate.
So ‘Truth’ comes to thee;
But Reality’s vision will be
reward of lovers true!

Sublime impressiveness of the verses of the Glorious

Quran is the beauty in their content and meaning. As a matter of
fact, the interrelation between beauty and truth is also similar. ‘I
never can feel certain of any Truth but from a clear perception of
its Beauty’, said John Keats. Remember Plato’s famous dictum:
“Beauty is the splendor of Truth”. It shall be unfortunate if one
can not see the beauty and the underlying truth in the contents of
the verses. Such people constitute a host of animals without any
sight, without ears, without tongue, insensible, untouched by any
sight or sound, incapable of reacting or expressing anything –
whether they are called kings, ministers, governors – it makes not
the slightest difference, they have not reached human hood; their
minds are blank, unevolved, in infancy, or degenerated and dead.
The Persian poet Hafiz said: “Start early to build the life of your
mind, because this destructive world is only thinking to make
bricks from your dust”. This truth is similar as:

“And nothing can we call our own but death,

And that small model of the baren earth

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 Which serves as paste and cover to our bones”.

….. (William Shakespeare – RICHARD II’s DESPAIR)

Let us mention at the onset that with the titles of the topics
the matters covered therein are also mentioned. However, it has
been left on the reader to explore the entire verse and select the
matter of his/her choice.

The name, “Shah Abdul Latif”, is mentioned at number of

places in this volume. For our foreign readers, let us very briefly
introduce him. He was a mystic poet of Sindhi language. Born in
the year 1689 near a village “Bhit” some 50 km from Hyderabad
(Sindh). He died in the year 1752 and was buried there. He was a
poet born not made. As a matter of fact, he never wrote a single
line of his utterances himself. He is never known to have sat
down to compose a verse. It was always the people who
surrounded him that immediately took down his verses while he
was in an ecstatic condition, hardly conscious of his own being.
His verses were recorded by the people who were with him.
However, at some time after his death those were published and
name as “Shah Jo Risalo”, i.e. Message of Shah. Let us conclude
this discussion with a verse from his Message:

Those who forbear, have happiness

in their houses.
But the aggressors miss it.
Those who return an insult
aggravate the hostilities.
They gain nothing their by. ………. Shah

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

It is with deepest sense of gratitude to the Almighty Allah

that He chose some of his blessed servants to help the authors in
their endeavor. Leading the authors was (Late) Allama Ghulam
Mustafa Qasmi Sahib, former, Head, Department of Arabic,
University of Sindh and Chairman, Shah Waliullah Academy,
Hyderabad. Death comes to all, but great achievements build a
monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.

“Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend”.

…… William Shakespeare

The authors were blessed with the honourary services of our

family friends, Mr. Khalid Hussain Bhatti and Mrs. Farzana
Khalid, to e-type the manuscript. Blessed be the youth, for their
energy and determination. “Where others flinch, rash youth
will dare!” ……..Abdullah Yusuf Ali

The authors cherish the blessings of Dr. Professor Abdul

Qadeer Khan Rajput, Sitara-i-Imtiaz, Vice-Chancellor, Mehran
University of Engineering & Technology, Jamshoro. As a matter
of fact, the intellectuals at Mehran have contributed to this
volume in more than one way. God bless them.

Finally, the authors are deeply indebted to their children –

Advocate Ghazala, Dr. Fariha, Engr. Masroor and Mrs Moomal
Masroor – for their perusal of the book in manuscript, for many
valuable suggestions and elucidation of points of difficulty. It is;

vi
however, fair to add that they are the authors alone who assume
responsibility for the contents of this book.

The authors’ thanks are also due to M/S Royal Book Co.
Karachi, for careful and painstaking publishing the book in its
present form. We hope all interested will sign the Publisher’s
subscription order in advance.

Lastly, but by no means the least, thanks are due to the

many kind friends, who, for purposes of publicity, must remain
nameless, but whose constant and appreciative encouragement
has made this book possible.

A.K, G.J

Civil Lines,
Tando Jehanian,
Hyderabad (Cantt.),
Sindh, Pakistan
March, 2008 A.D.
Safar 1429 A.H.

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