Light Upon Light, Mūsā and the Honeybee

What, then, of Sūrat al-Nūr's metaphor of Allah as light upon light?

It says: Allāhu nūru al-samāwāti wa al-arḍ. Many of the mufassirīn explain that as Allāhu munawwiru al-samāwāti wa al-arḍ: Allah is the giver of light; Allah is the illuminator of the heavens and the earth. And the light that is provided here, in the general sense, in the cosmic sense of light, is also true. It is true in the sense of guidance as well, because light is also metaphorically explained as guidance. So for all of the planets, and the entire system of this universe, in their correlation with each other in terms of quantum physics, in terms of the interplay between the various different forces and bodies in this cosmic universe that we have, that guidance is also provided by Allah (swt) to each one of these creations.

Coming to our level, guidance is again provided to us, again at various different levels, so there are different types of light. One is the light of guidance to Islam. Then there is the light of guidance to doing good deeds and abstaining from bad deeds. Then there is a higher form of light, which is given to the awliyāʾ of Allah, by which they are able to be even more scrupulous. And then there are the anbiyāʾ, who have the greatest of light. So Allah (swt) is the provider of both the physical light and the guidance, the direction; and in every sense of the word, Allah (swt) is the provider of light. So He is Allāhu nūru al-samāwāti wa al-arḍ.

Then there is the way in which Allah spoke to Mūsā (peace be upon him), and the question of how He communicates to Iblīs, and so on.

About Mūsā (peace be upon him), and again it is not necessary to insist on either of these, as they are both fine: one group say that Mūsā (peace be upon him) actually heard Allah (swt)'s eternal speech itself, and that is why it is special. Others say that it is special because of the position and the circumstance in which this happened, and then Allah mentioned it; but it actually came from a tree. Either way, it was a very direct kind of experience that Mūsā (peace be upon him) had, and that is why it is called that.

How He speaks could be through angels. With the waḥy of the Prophet (peace be upon him), as the beginning of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī mentions, the Prophet (peace be upon him) would receive revelation in various different forms. One would be through a sound: it sounded like a buzzing sound of a bee^*, and then he would be inspired with that. Sometimes it would be a direct inspiration to the heart. And a lot of the time it was through Jibrīl (peace be upon him) in the form of a human being, much of the time; and on one or two occasions in his original form: the Prophet (peace be upon him) saw Jibrīl in his original form. There is also the direct one during the Ascension: direct communication between Allah (swt) and His Messenger. That gives us some understanding of how Allah (swt) communicates.

Allah (swt) even communicates to the bee, the honeybee: awḥā ilā al-naḥli ani ttakhidhī min al-jibāli buyūtā. So it is inspiration. Allah knows best; these are things which Allah knows best, but there is a direct inspiration to the honeybee as to what to do. It is not a development after living in a certain area, or after having to struggle to find nectar, et cetera. It is actually directly inspired from Allah (swt). So it is not an evolutionary process; it is a direct inspiration from Allah (swt) for this creation that He created, to which He gave, and for which He facilitated, its journey in this world and its life in this world.

The question of where Allah is comes up again and again; it is taken up further on, inshāʾAllāh.