LAILAT-UL-QADR:
MYSTIC NIGHT OF POWER
By
Dr. Ghazala
Munir
"Blessed indeed is the Night of Power! ....When
the Mercy of God's Revelation breaks through the darkness of the human soul!
—All the Powers, of the world divine, speed on their mystic Message of Mercy,
by God's command, and bless every nook and corner of the heart! All jars are
stilled in the reign supreme of Peace, until this mortal night gives place to
the glorious day of an immortal world!."
The Sura al-Qadr was a late
Makkan Sura. Its theme is to acquaint man with the value, worth and importance
of the Holy Qur'an. Its being placed just after Surah Al-Alaq in the
arrangement of the Holy Qur'an by itself explains that the Holy Book, the
revelation of which began with the first five verses of
Surah Al-Alaq, was sent down in a destiny-making night. It is a
glorious Book and its revelation for mankind is full of blessings.
At the outset, Allah says:
"We have sent it down". That is, it is not a
composition of Muhammad (ﷺ) himself, but We Ourselves have revealed it.
Then, it is said that
"We sent it down in the Night of Destiny." Night of
Destiny has two meanings and both are implied here. First, that it is the night
during which destinies are decided; or, in other words, it is not an ordinary
night like the other nights, but a night in which destinies are made or marred.
The revelation of this Book in this night is not merely the revelation of a
book but an event which will change the destiny of not only the Quraish, or of
Arabia, but of the entire world. The same thing has been said in Surah
Ad-Dukhan.
The other meaning is that this is a
night of unique honour, dignity and glory; so much so that it is better than a
thousand months. Thus, the disbelievers of Makkah have been told; "You, on
account of your ignorance, regard this book, which Muhammad (ﷺ) has presented, as a calamity for
yourselves and complain that a disaster has befallen you, whereas the night in
which it was decreed to be sent down was such a blessed night that a task was
accomplished in it for the well-being of mankind, which has never been
accomplished even during a thousand months of history. This also has been said
in Verse-3 of Al-Dukhan in another way... The night that a Message descends
from God is indeed a blessed night, like a day of rain for a parched land.
It is stated that in this night the
angels and Gabriel descend, with every decree (which in Verse-4 of
Surah Ad-Dukhan has been described as amr-hakim, wise decree) by
the leave of their Lord, and it is ail peace from evening till morning; that
is, there is no interference of evil in it, for all decrees of Allah are
intended to promote good and not evil. So much so that even if a decision to
destroy a nation is taken, it is taken for the sake of ultimate good, not evil.
Such an occasion is one on which Divine Wisdom places before us through
Revelation the solution of spiritual problems of the highest import to mankind.
Sura
al-Qadr (1-5)
"We
have sent down this Holy Qur'an in the Night of Glory. And what do you know
what the Night of Glory is? The Night of Glory is better than a thousand
months. The angels and the Spirit descend in it with every decree on every
errand, by the permission of their Lord. That Night is peace until the rising
of the dawn."
NIGHT OF DESTINY:
Here it has been said; "We
have sent down the Holy Qur'an in the "Night of Destiny", and in
al-Baqarah; 185 "Ramazan is the month in which the Holy Qur'an "was
sent down." This shows that the night in which the Angel of God has
brought down Revelation for the first time to the Holy Prophet (ﷺ) in the cave of Hira, was a night of the month of Ramazan. This
night has been described as 'Lailat- ul-Qadr'.
There can be two meanings of
sending down the Holy Qur'an in this night; first, that in this night the
entire Qur'an was entrusted to the bearers (angels) of revelation and then
Gabriel continued to reveal its Verses and Surahs, from time to time, to the
Holy Prophet (ﷺ) during 23
years as the occasion and conditions of the Qur'an began in this night. Anyhow,
in both cases, the meaning is the same that the revelation of the Holy Qur'an
to the Holy Prophet (&) began in this very night, and this was the night in
which the five opening Verses of Surah al-Alaq were
revealed.
The fact, however, is that Allah
did not compose the Verses and the Surahs of the Holy Qur'an right at the time
guidance was needed by the Holy Prophet (&) for his message of Islam in
respect of an occasion or affair, but even before the creation of the universe,
in the very beginning, Allah had a full plan of the creation of mankind on the
earth, of raising the Prophets in it, of sending down the Books to the
Prophets, of raising the Holy Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) at the end of the line of the Prophets
and of sending down the Holy Qur'an to him. In the Night of Destiny only the
execution of the final phase of the plan began. No wonder, if at that very
time, the entire Holy Qur'an was entrusted to the bearers of Revelation.
DECREES OF DESTINY:
Some commentators have interpreted
'Qadr' to mean destiny, "taqdir", i.e. it is the night in which Allah
entrusts the decrees of destiny to the angels to be enforced. This is supported
by verses-3 of Surah Ad-Dukhan. "This is a night in which
every matter is decided wisely by Our Command". On the
contrary, Imam Zuhri says that "Qadr" means
glory and honour, thereby implying that it is a Night of Destiny. This meaning
is supported by the words 'Lailat-ul-Qadr' which is
better than a thousand months of this Surah itself.
As for the
question as to which night it was, a great majority of scholars hold the
opinion that one of the odd nights of the last ten nights of the month of
Ramazan is "Lailat-ul-Qadr", and among
these also most scholars think that it is the 27th night. Probably Allah and
His Messenger have not specified any one night for the reason so that the
people, in their zeal to benefit from the virtues of
'Lailat-ul-Qadr', should spend more and more nights in worship
and devotion and should not remain content with only one night.
The commentators
in general have understood this to mean that the good acts performed in this
Night are superior in value to the good acts of a thousand months in which
Lailat-ul-Qadr" is not included. There is not doubt that
this is in itself correct that the Holy Prophet (ﷺ) has described
great excellencies and virtues of the good acts and devotions-of this Night.
The subject-matter is the mystic
Night of Power (or honour) in which Revelation comes down to a benighted world,
it may be to the wonderful Cosmos of an individual ....and transforms the
conflict of wrong doing into Peace and Harmony ... through the agency of the
angelic host, representing the spiritual powers of the Mercy of God.
It is because God is the Friend of
the friendless and Help of the helpless that He bears all sincere prayers, and
as His Knowledge embraces all things, He grants to us whatever is best for us,
not as we see it, but as He knows it in His perfect knowledge.
When the Night
of spiritual darkness is dissipated by the glory of God, a wonderful Peace and
a sense of Security arise in the soul. And this lasts on until this life
closes, and the glorious Day of the new spiritual world dawns, when everything
will be on a different plane, and the chequered nights and days of this world
will be even less than a dream.
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