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AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
SUFI INTERPRETATION OF THE QURAN

exhaustible reality; every colour, for instance, is both
evident and unfathomable in its essential uniqueness, a
uniqueness which reveals the Unique Being, “Lord of
the worlds ™.

Being Itself is effaced before the Infinite and the
Infinite is manifested by Being through the two “ dimen-
sions’’ described above, the ‘“static” plenitude of
ar-Rahman and the “dynamically” redemptive and
immanent plenitude of ar-Rahim. Or again, the Bliss-
and-Mercy (ar-Rahmah) opens up and completes the
creature, whereas Rigour (al-Jalal) which is an expres-
sion of the Divine ‘“Majesty”” or Transcendence, cons-
tricts the creature and makes him powerless.

In the order of the categories of individual existence
it is time which manifests the Divine Rigour. Con-
suming this world and all the beings in it, it recalls to
them their “debt” to the Principle of their existence.
The totality of time, its full cycle is “ the day (for pay-
ment) of the debt,” (yawm-ad-din) the words equally
signifying ““ the day of religion ”, for religion is like the
recognition of a debt.! The same expression also
means “ the day of judgment ”’, which is nothing other
than the final reintegration of the cycle of time into the
timeless. This reintegration can be conceived on differ-
ent scales according to whether we envisage the end of
a man, the end of this world or the end of the whole
manifested universe—for ‘“all things perish save His
Face’’ as the Quran says.

In the timeless the freedom which is but loaned to

1. “Debt” is also one of the meanings of the Latin word religio,

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