• If you were to ask: What are nature and the laws and forces that they mutter about and try to console themselves with?

You would be told: Nature is a pattern, not a source; it is a printing-press,

and not the printer; it is a code of laws, and not a power; it is the divine shari'a of creation which imposes an order on the acts of the limbs of the Manifest World's body. Just as the Shari'a is the product and summary of the rules governing voluntary acts, and the system of government is the sum of political principles; so the Shari'a and order are two theoretical matters that exist only in the mind; and so too nature is a theoretical matter that is the summary of Allâh's external practices in creation. The delusion of its external existence is like a savage imagining when he sees a military division performing disciplined drill that the soldiers are tied together with [physical strings that have] external existence. It is people with the consciences of savages, therefore, who imagine that because of its continuance nature has effective external existence.

In Short: Nature is the art of Allâh the Most High and the code of His creational laws. Its laws are the articles of the code, and its forces, the matters of the articles.

Now for the proof of divine unity (dalîl al-tawhîd), indicated by "worship! (u'budû)," that is, 'profess Allâh's unity' (wahhadû). According to the commentary of Ibn 'Abbas it is as follows: the Qur'an of Miraculous Exposition has omitted nothing from its proofs of divine unity. Sufficient evidence is the proof [called] burhan al-tamânu contained in the verse "If there had been in them [the heavens and earth] gods other than Allâh, they would have caused confusion in both "(19:22) it is a shining beacon [proving] that independence is a necessary essential and inherent quality of the Godhead. This verse [also] alludes to a subtle proof of divine unity which is [indicated by the following:] the co-operation of the heavens and earth and their relations in producing the products [to support] the livelihoods of mankind and the animals; the similarity of the works in the world, and all sides of it embracing each other, each taking the other by the hand so to complete the order; the mutual response of its different parts to each other's needs; all of it looking to a single point; and all being in regular motion on the axis of a single order. All this implies, indeed states clearly that the Maker of this single machine is One. So too it recites the lines:

In everything is a sign indicating that He is One.¹

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1.The authorship of these lines is disputed: they are attributed to Ibn al-Mu'taz in Ibn Kathir, i, 24, and to Abu al-Atahhiyya in Bayhaqi, Shu'ab al-îmân, i, 130-1. See, Nursi, Isârâtû'l-İ'caz [Abdûlmecid], 162. In Abu al-Atahhiyya's Diwan they are attributed to Imam 'Ali (ibn Abi Talib), see, Nursi, Ishârât al-I'jâz [Ihsan Qasim], 154.