The Third Parable and the Book of Deeds

The third example comes from verse 50, and it is what may be called the account of the angels, of Ādam and of Iblīs — the story of Iblīs and the creation of Ādam.

The angels were told to prostrate; they all did so, except Iblīs; and then came his arrogance. So the third message is arrogance: keep away from arrogance. That is the third example Allah (swt) gives.

Every kind of example, anecdote and story has been given in the Qur'an for men's understanding. Verse 49 always strikes deeply — subḥān Allāh, it calls to mind the well-known nasheed: on the day that deeds are displayed, one thing is certain, there will be fear. What will the Book be? This is what Allah says: the Book will be placed; the records will be brought.

The guilty will be seen in fright, afraid of what is in it. And then, when they begin to read it, they begin to notice everything: mā li hādhā al-kitāb, they say — woe to us, what kind of record is this? It has missed no major event, nor even a small detail, the smallest and most minute detail; it has all of it. Whatever they have done, their deeds, they will find present there; and Allah will wrong no one.

This has always been understood — it has been a verse for fourteen hundred years and more, and well understood. But mā shāʾ Allāh, a way has now been given of understanding it as perhaps never before: the simple instance of Google tracking everything about a man. Google may literally be asked to release what it holds upon someone, in the way of the sounds that have gone into his telephone — every single sound may be retrieved; if a conversation with someone has been forgotten, Google may probably be asked, and it will probably be sent back. Every single sound; everywhere the telephone has been; everyone to whom messages have been sent. And not that alone: every time the telephone has been switched on and off, every application opened and which one it was — everything is tracked; everything, everything.

So Allah is showing us, in this world, that the hard drives and the tracking system He has are far greater than this. And there are several places in which things are tracked. Allah says ḥuṣṣila mā fī al-ṣudūr: so there is a great hard drive in the heart, in the breast, which is to be disclosed. The earth too is tracking everything: the day when it will tell its news. And how is the earth to tell its news? In the same way that a telephone tells its news of a man. That is a miracle of the Qur'an, where Allah (swt) speaks of this. And then, of course, there are the two angels — subḥān Allāh — and now Google as a third, tracking everything, for the wrong reason, for Shayṭān. Allāhu akbar, Allāhu akbar.