No, here, nimat is quite a different thing from what you are conceiving it to be. Here, nimah is a term of the Holy Quran, which means nabuwat. Inam is nabuwat. That is the culmination of inam. The last stage of nimah, according to the Holy Quran, is nabuwat. So, whenever it says itmam-e-nimah, it always means nabuwat, nothing else. So, here, by nimah, it is nabuwat which is meant. Allah says that whenever we reveal prophethood, or we send prophets, we can say it in other words, then the man turns away and does not listen to them.
But when he stands in his own needs, then he returns to Allah and starts praying whenever he is in difficulty. Now, this is the true meaning of this verse. In another place, this is also repeated. The first part and the second part is different. So, it is nabuwat what is meant here. Yes, and again, in the first verse, the second part, he despairs giving up all hopes. In the second verse, when evil touches him, he starts suffering.
There is no, in fact, contradiction. What happens is that from situation to situation, the behavior of man is different. Now, number one, even if you are despaired, even at the point of extreme despair, you may pray to God. And it so happens, while the boat is sinking, and you have lost all hope. You don’t have any hope at all. Yet to turn to God is so natural that it comes to man at times of peril. Even the atheists begin to pray to God. While they are despaired of, world speaking, they are despaired totally and completely. And they don’t believe in God either. Yet they pray because it is in man to find out some means of escape, some props to help him at the time of difficulty. This is quite natural to man.
So prayer and extreme despondency and hopelessness and despair, they are not contradictory things in the first place. In the second place, two different types of men or people could have been described in these verses. They are pious people, God-fearing, those who believe in Allah. They may offer prayer. Also another type of people may offer prayer when they reject the office of prophethood, and then when calamity takes them over. That is the time for them. Among men there are some who turn to Allah and say, you forgive us and save us and now we’ll believe. This phenomena has been very clearly demonstrated in the Holy Quran in the case of Pharaoh’s reaction to Hazrat Moses and his people’s reaction. When he warned them of calamities from Allah, sign after sign of punishment came as he had predicted. And previously they were completely turning deaf ears to him.
But the Holy Quran tells us that when they were overtaken by punishment, then they turned in all humility to Moses and asked him to pray to Allah. Why? Because they had despaired. So prayer is sometimes the natural result of despair. It is not contradictory. And they repeatedly did it. One sign after another, the Holy Quran tells us, they went on changing their stance and turning to Moses in all humility and saying, now pray for us. And once this crisis is over, then we’ll believe. And that habit of Pharaoh persisted so much that at the moments of death, he did exactly the same thing. But then Allah turned all the tables against him. He said, OK, I’ll save you because all the time you are after your body, not after soul. Had you been after your soul, I mean you had thought of your soul, then you should have repented after the first sign or second or third. But nine signs have passed by and you are not mindful of your soul at all.
So that means you are after your body alone. So we’ll save your body. So that was an irony of fate so beautifully turned against Pharaoh that in one instance it demonstrated the fact that that habit of man does not change. It is so deeply born in him. It is innate in his nature. That right from the start till the end, he goes on repeating the same thing over and over again. And secondly, that Allah knew that ultimately he’ll be caught and fixed. So he was not befooled when he left them alone. He knew ultimately they would come to him and he would teach them a lesson. Now you understand this? There’s no contradiction here.
