The Words | GLEAMS | 738
(724-779)

Representation Is of Various Sorts

The image in a mirror may be of four sorts: either the identity alone; or the identity together with its particularities; or both the identity and the rays of the thing's nature; or both its true nature and its identity.

The images in the mirrors of luminous spirits are living and connected; expansive lights which even if not the same as the spirits, are not other than them.

If the sun had been living and its heat light, and its colours consciousness, it would have possessed the above qualities of the image in the mirror.

The key to this mystery is this: Gabriel is both at "the Lote-tree," and in the form of Dihya, and in the Prophet's company, and who knows in how many other places!

While God knows how many places Azra'il is present simultaneously, seizing the spirits of the dying.

At the same time, the Prophet appears to his community both in the visions of the saints, and in true dreams.

And at the resurrection of the dead he will meet with all through his intercession.

The 'substitutes' (abdal) of saints appear and are seen in numerous places at the same time.

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All Those Qualified May Interpret the Law, But They May Not Be Lawgivers

Everyone capable who is qualified to practise ijtihad, may interpret matters for himself which are not incontestable; and they are binding on himself, but not on others.

He cannot make laws and call on the Umma to conform to them. His ideas are from the Shari'a, but they are not the Shari'a. He may be a mujtahid, but he cannot be the Lawmaker.

The Shari'a is ratified through the consensus of the majority of scholars. The first condition for calling on others to accept an idea is the surmised acceptance of the majority.14

Such a call is otherwise innovation; it gets stuck in the gullet, never again to emerge!

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14. Zann-ı kabûl-u cumhur: "The surmised acceptance of the majority of mujtahids and learned authorities of the correctness of a judgement, that is, the strong possibility of their accepting it." [See, Abdullah Yeğin, Yeni Lügat, Istanbul 1975,782], [Tr.]

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