Let me start with a confession. Today is probably one of the more intimidating sessions for me to begin with you, because what we are walking into is the pinnacle. The height of all the parables in the Quran. In some respects it is the most spiritual place in the entire Quran. It is the parable of light, where Allah describes Himself as the light of the skies and the earth. 

It is one long parable made up of multiple images, not just one. Allah describes light in two different ways and then He talks in detail about darkness. 

Every one of those pieces needs contemplation. I want to separate these concepts in time, so you get to absorb one piece before you move on to the next. 

So tonight I am only talking to you about Allahu nuru as-samawati wal-ard¹

۞ٱللَّهُ نُورُ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضِۚ

Allah is the light of the skies and the earth. That is all. The next bit is tomorrow, insha’Allah. 

Light is a powerful and recurring theme in the Quran. Allah uses the word well over thirty times. 

He Gave You a Light to Walk Around With 

As for someone who used to be dead, then We gave them life and We gave them a light with which they walk among people.² 

Here Allah says He furnishes human beings with a light they can walk among people with. Allah endowed us with something. Muslims usually call it the fitra, the soul that was blown inside of us. There is a light inside every human being. Allah is saying, I furnish that light and with it you walk among people. Which is His way of saying that even without revelation, every human being has a moral compass. A sense of right and wrong. 

You know the idea in modern sociology and anthropology that there is no such thing as right and wrong, that you have just been conditioned to believe some things are right and some are wrong? 

The Quran is making a very different kind of claim. 

Morality Is Just as Firm as Physics 

The skies and the earth are governed by laws and universals. We are only able to make sense of this world and operate in it because chemistry makes sense, physics makes sense, gravity makes sense, energy makes sense. We leverage those governing principles. 

If fire did not burn, or only burned sometimes, we would not have a functioning society. If gravity only worked some of the time, we could not function. These are universals. We depend on them to exist. 

By the way, when you break them, there are consequences. So you say, you know what, today I do not believe in gravity that much. My iman is a little low. I am going to jump off the third floor. 

Your leg is going to break whether your iman was weak or strong. 

If you are going to drink poison, you are going to get poisoned. You are going to die. It does not matter what the state of your iman was. 

These governing principles do not care about your intention. Apply them and benefit. Play with them and find out. 

Allah is saying the same thing about morality. There are moral governing principles. 

But When You Lie, Nothing Burns 

Here is the difference. The cause and effect is not the same as physical cause and effect. 

If I put my hand in fire, it is going to burn. If I lie, my tongue is not going to burn. If I cheat, my hand is not going to become paralyzed. If I steal food from somebody and eat it, I am not going to throw it up. 

When I break the physical laws, I see the consequence immediately. When I break the moral laws, I do not see a consequence. 

So what happens? Some people think, well, nothing happened, so they must not be there. Others think, even if they are there, I do not always see a consequence. There are plenty of bad people living a good life. There are plenty of good people living a miserable life. Since I do not see a direct cause and effect, maybe I can take this a little more loosely. 

The entire purpose of revelation is to say there is one cause and effect you can see with physical light and another you can only recognize with spiritual light. 

There are two kinds of light. 

The light Allah is talking about in these ayat is not the light of photons that carries energy and drives photosynthesis. 

Allah is borrowing the light we study in physics as an analogy, to talk about a spiritual light. Just like you cannot gauge morality, but you know it exists inside you. There is a conscience inside you. 

No scan will show you your conscience. 

It exists on a different plane, in an unseen realm. There is something unseen inside of us that is true and because it is unseen, we start thinking it is not real. 

The same way we need light to find our way physically, Allah uses that analogy for revelation. Because morally you are not going to know where to go, what to do or how to make it. 

My ultimate destination is Allah Himself. Since Allah is nuru as-samawati wal-ard (نُورُ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضِۚ), I cannot reach Him without light. So the light He has given leads me back to the source of that light. 

The thing about light is that it travels in a straight line. Follow the light and you end up back at the source. Follow Allah’s light and you end up in the company of Allah. 

So What Is Light Actually For? 

Now with that background, let us look at what Allah is doing in this phrase. 

What is the purpose of light? Light is what allows us to see. Without light I cannot identify where I am going. I do not know where I am. I do not know what something is. I can feel it. I can touch it. But I cannot know the reality of it. Vision is entirely dependent on light. 

There is more, though. If the sun, our primary source of light on this planet, did not exist, we do not just lose light. We get immediate and sudden death. The source of light is the source of life for us, of plants existing, of heat existing on this earth. 

What Allah has done is take physical light as an analogy and use it to help us understand something about Himself. 

I cannot see the actual reality of the skies or the reality of the earth without Allah. Without Allah, vision is missing. I may have one kind of vision, physical vision. But the true vision, what really lies behind the skies, what really lies behind the earth, what really lies behind myself, that will be missing. 

۞ٱللَّهُ نُورُ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضِۚ 

Allahu nuru as-samawati wal-ard

He Said Skies, Not Sky 

From the perspective of the pagan back then, he is looking at the sky above him. You can only see one sky. But Allah keeps saying skies. More than one. Then the earth. 

His light takes over the entire sky and everywhere that man can see. But Allah is saying there is more to this than your sky. There are multiple other skies you cannot even imagine. 

When Allah gives light, nobody should dare think that light is limited to some things and not others. 

There are people who believe in God, but their concept of God is incomplete. Limited. They reduce Him to one aspect of their life or another. They take something away from His perfection. They shrink that light down to one area and keep the other areas in the dark. 

Allah is saying with this parable that there is no part of existence untouched by His light. My personal life. My family life. My professional life. Every part of it. It is not limited to one sphere. 

Human beings now live in compartmentalization. You have your professional career. You have your religious life. 

With that one phrase, Allah is saying His light illuminates all things. Nothing escapes it. 

Because of that light, I can see the reality of things for what they are. The clouds. The birds. The snake. The ditch when I am walking: this is a ditch, do not step in it. This is the edge of a cliff, do not go near it. 

How would I know that? Because I have light. 

Allah is telling us the manifestation of that famous du’aa of the Prophet ﷺ. Allah, show us the truth as truth and give us the ability to follow it and show us falsehood as falsehood and give us the ability to stay away from it. 

Nur Also Means Order 

Two things I want to share with you from other scholars as I wrap up. 

The first is from Imam Razi. He said the Arabs before Islam used the word nur in a phrase like: I do not see any nur in this matter. In this decision. They used the word not just for light, but for order. For system. For organization. I do not see any organization in this decision. 

So when Allah says He is the nur of the skies and the earth, one of the embedded meanings is that Allah has brought order to the skies and the earth. Allah is the reason there is order and mechanism and governing principles. 

Just as there are physical principles that govern, there are spiritual principles that govern. The problem is that without Allah you might see the physical ones, but you will never see the spiritual ones. You will violate them and not even know. In physics the consequences are immediate. With the revealed principles of Allah, the consequences come later, in a way you will not see right away. You can only know that by the light Allah has given. 

Do Not Light a Candle When the Sun Is Already Out 

With that in mind, I want you to appreciate what Ibn Ashur (rahimahullah) said and we will close. 

Allah is the one who gave us physical light, by means of which we see physical things. He made that a means by which we can understand spiritual light. Spiritual light is above our comprehension, so He is using the physical as a parable to get us somewhere beyond our comprehension. 

Then he says this. When the world goes dark, meaning nighttime, every one of us turns on whatever lights we can afford. The moment the sun comes up and Allah illuminates all existence, every one of us turns our lights off, because the light of Allah is enough. 

Just as the light of Allah is enough every morning in the physical sense, the light He has revealed, the rules He has revealed, are enough for us in the spiritual sense. 

So when Allah reveals a rule that organizes social life in any way, do not come up with some other version of light from yourselves. Watch out for that. It is as if you are trying to light a candle when Allah has already brought out the sun. 

Then Ibn Ashur says something remarkable. The ayah did not introduce us to Allah’s own reality. It introduced us to the impact Allah has within us. He is the one who illuminates the skies and the earth and they are the most vast things we can imagine. Because when the sun illuminates, everything becomes clear. Nothing remains hidden. 

Nothing that Allah’s light touches remains in the dark, the same way there is nothing you can do to bring better light to your life than the light Allah has already brought to it. 

Study Striking Examples in the Quran with Ustadh Nouman Ali Khan on Bayyinah TV: Bayyinah TV 

Notes 

This post is adapted from session 37 of Striking Examples in the Quran on Bayyinah TV and is written in the voice of that session. Every teaching claim, example and aside in it is taken from the session itself. The references below locate the ayat it quotes or works on. 

[1] Al-Quran, Surah An-Nur, 24:35, https://quran.com/24/35 

[2] Al-Quran, Surah Al-An’am, 6:122, https://quran.com/6/122