Living The Quran
From Issue: 502 [Read full issue]
Al-Sajdah (Prostration)
Chapter 32: Verse 22
Most Unjust Criminals
"And who is more unjust than he who is given good counsel through the Signs of his Lord and yet he turns away from them? Surely we will exact full retribution from such criminals."
"The Signs of the Lord" are quite pervasive and cover a pretty wide range. If one bears in mind the Quranic descriptions of these Signs one will find they fall under the following six categories:
i. The Signs found in the wide expanses of the heavens and the earth and in the overall system underlying the workings of the Universe;
ii. The Signs manifest in man's procreation, his structure, and his existence as a whole;
iii. The Signs found in man's intuition, in his unconscious and subconscious, and in his moral conceptions;
iv. The Signs in the human experience of history;
v. The Signs manifest in the earthly and heavenly calamities that befall man, and
vi. Finally, the Signs that God has sent down through the agency of His Messengers in order to apprise man, in a reasonable and persuasive manner, of the truths that are corroborated by these Signs.
Taken together, these Signs consistently and emphatically impress upon man that he is neither without any God nor is he servant of a multiplicity of gods. Thus, all possible measures have been taken by God to direct man to the Right Way. So if man then turns a blind eye to all these Signs it would be no exaggeration to say that none is more criminal than man himself.
Source:
"Towards Understanding the Quran" - Sayyid Abul Ala Mawdudi, Vol. 8, p. 174