An Answer to the Men of Science

The objection might be raised that this is an age of science, and that to claim lifeless things make dhikr of Allah risks the verdict that one has lost one's senses — fit only, some might say, for a mental institution. Yet this is precisely what Allah states in the Qur'an: the seven heavens declare His glory, and the earth too, and everything within them; there is not a single thing that does not glorify Him with His praise, though it cannot be understood — and He is Forbearing, Forgiving.

The commentators and ḥadīth scholars who address this āyah explain that, general as it is, it applies in particular to those among mankind, "the one endowed with speech" — as when Allah refers, in Sūrat al-Aḥqāf, verse 25, to a people entirely destroyed. One who has visited the place in Yemen for the first time describes being struck with a tremor at the sight of it — Allah is said to have shown him, there, two things never to be forgotten: the qawm of ʿĀd and Thamūd where the destruction occurred, in al-Aḥqāf, and Abraha's church, al-Kanīsah, in Ṣanʿāʾ, kept to this day as a reminder — recalling the occasion recounted in Sūrat al-Fīl, which is recited there at nearly every Maghrib and ʿIshāʾ. Allah (swt) says of that destroyed people:

They were entirely destroyed by morning for their transgression and disobedience, and yet their dwellings stood untouched, exactly as they had left them — destruction reaching every thing by the command of its Lord, leaving nothing to be seen but their houses; thus is the guilty people rewarded.

It is said, too, that verse 44 of Sūrat al-Isrāʾ, already cited, carries a universal meaning: that whatever is endowed with speech glorifies Allah by word, while whatever is silent and cannot speak glorifies Him in a state, bi-l-ḥāl — each created thing making dhikr in the manner proper to it. On this understanding, there is no cause to strike a servant over a broken plate or cup, for every created thing has an appointed measure of tasbīḥ, and when that measure is complete, it dies.