2nd Chapter 1st Stopping Place 4th Truth Sovereignty

THE FOURTH TRUTH: Sovereignty

Whoever looks at the cosmos with comprehensive attention, will see it to resemble a most prosperous and active kingdom, a city administered most wisely and ruled most firmly; he sees all things and all species obediently engaged in a particular function.

According to the military metaphor contained in the verse,

Allah's are the armies of the heavens and earth, {[*]: Qur'an, 48:4.} the prevailing creative commands, imperious orders, and kingly laws enunciated in those numerous armies, that extend from the hosts of the atom, the battalions of the vegetable kingdom, the brigades of the animal kingdom, to the armies of the stars, and embrace both the lowliest soldier and the loftiest commander - they all indicate self-evidently the existence of an absolute sovereignty and a universal authority.

There is then a truth of absolute sovereignty, and there can be no truth of assigning partners to Allah. For according to the decisive truth of the verse,

وَ لِلّٰهِ جُنُودُ السَّمٰوَاتِ وَالْاَرْضِ

Were there to be in the heavens and earth gods other than Allah, verily they would be corrupted, {[*]: Qur'an, 21:22.} if numerous hands all engage assertively in the same task, the result will be confusion. If there are two kings in one country, or even two headmen in one district, order will disappear, and administration be replaced by anarchy. But on the contrary we see everywhere such order, from the wing of the fly to the lamps of the heavens, from the cells of the body to the signs of the planets, that there is no possibility for the intervention of any partner in Allah's affairs. Sovereignty is, moreover, a station of dignity; to accept a rival would flout the dignity of sovereignty. The fact that man, who needs the assistance of many people on account of his impotence, will kill his brothers and offspring in the cruellest fashion for the sake of some petty, apparent and temporary sovereignty, shows that sovereignty rejects all notion of partnership. If so feeble a one acts thus for the sake of so petty a sovereignty, it follows that the Possessor of Absolute Power, the Master of All Creation, will never permit one other than Himself to participate in His sacred sovereignty, the means to His real and universal dominicality and Divinity.

Since this truth has been established with firm proofs in numerous places throughout the Risale-i Nur and especially the Second Station of the Second Ray, we refer the reader to those pages for further discussion of it.