The question is this, that she has been reading Tafseer-e-Kabir from Tafseer-e-Sagheer. It has been dealt with at length in Tafseer-e-Kabir, the same issue. So I thought you got it from there. But anyway, in Tafseer-e-Sagheer, Hazrat Musa-e-Mauz has mentioned that the ropes which were thrown by the magicians did not turn into real snakes, but they used some magician’s tricks. And Hazrat Sahib suggests that it is possible that in those ropes there was some material like quicksilver, which made them appear to move and people thought perhaps they were snakes. That is just an explanation. There could be others.
But he never mentioned that the staff of Hazrat Musa-e-Mauz did not turn into a snake or did not really appear to be a snake without a trickery. That is which he never mentioned anywhere in the Holy Quran, in the translation or in any Tafseer. So there the raid is mistaken. And the question was, at other places the Holy Quran tells that Hazrat Musa’s staff did turn into a python or a big snake. While in this place, Hazrat Musa-e-Mauz seems to say that it did not turn into anything else actually.
So first of all, I have explained that this is a wrong expression, wrong impression she has drawn. And number two, I will now explain why Hazrat Musa-e-Mauz suggested this trickery. The reason is that the Holy Quran makes a very fine distinction between what happened to the staff and what happened to the ropes which were thrown by the magicians of Pharaoh’s court. The Holy Quran says, what they did, they deceived the eyes of the people and nothing actually happened to the ropes they threw. So the Holy Quran implies that because they had no power over Allah’s laws of nature, they could not change the ropes in reality to anything and they remained ropes. What they achieved, the only thing they achieved was, they deceived the eyes of the people.
So that deception was interpreted by Hazrat Musa-e-Mauz as a conjurer’s trick. Like these things happen today. Ropes were made in the form of snakes for example or very similar to them and they were made to move through some mechanical devices or chemical devices. But personally I think of another explanation. The Holy Quran says, which should be interpreted first as this, that there is some truth in mesmerism or the power of mind to deceive others. This I have personally experienced that a powerful mind can convey things to the other mind without the use of the mediums known to man.
Somehow there is some radiation, some type of machinery by Allah which carries the strong mind’s thought to another person’s mind. And this is a form of hypnotism. Although hypnotism is not exactly that, but hypnotism is also a form of this thing. Nowadays in parapsychology, great researches are being made very seriously by various universities in the world. And as far as I am aware, I have been in touch throughout with this subject. I have bought quite a few books as well as I used to receive the journal of parapsychology published by Durham University, North Carolina. And there I came to learn from that, that these experiments are almost proving beyond doubt. Quite but almost. That this power of mind is a very fundamental power and it does show results.
So when the Holy Quran says, personally I am inclined to interpret it as this, that they deceive the eyes of the people by their power of application of mind. While the ropes remain the ropes. Now, why I choose this interpretation? The reason is that if the ropes were not in the shape of snakes, then just by their moving people could not take them to be snakes at all. Just by adding some movement through some device, those ropes could not appear to be snakes to anybody. They had to be in the shape of snakes. And if they were in the shape of snakes, then people could not conceive ropes turning into snakes. So that is the reason why I prefer the other interpretation. That through some mesmerism, they deceived the eyes of the people and they thought they were snakes, but they were not.
Now why did they prostrate immediately and why did they accept defeat immediately? Because they knew only of mesmerism, deception of the eye. But when they saw some staff really endowering them and making them disappear, that was something completely beyond the power of man. And they accepted it as a mojaza or a miracle. Now how that took place, we don’t know. But the Holy Quran positively mentions it and nobody uses the word saharu sahara ayunakaas. To every onlooker it did appear like this. Now that is again possible. That through Allah’s greater, I mean much greater out of all proportion, control over mind, a very forceful phenomena was created by Allah and the staff did not change into anything. That can happen. But to all purposes, that appeared very much like a snake and behaved like a snake. And if that can happen, everything can happen. Allah can do anything. I mean Allah can really change anything to any other form.
But as I have read the Holy Quran and the traditions of the Holy Prophet, I think, I know, not think, but I know that this is not the general behavior of Allah to go against his own creative powers and find himself in a helpless position where laws of nature have to be broken by the maker of the laws. This is something which I can’t digest because this is against the very nature of God’s plans. So this is why I am inclined to believe that nothing happened beyond the nature which was created by Allah himself. All we can find is this, as Hussain Maudah has explained, that there are certain tiers of laws, hidden laws and apparent laws. Sometimes apparent laws are broken, but a hidden law which is a more powerful law comes into action of which people don’t know. That is conceivable. But for Allah to break his own laws is inconceivable because it will be a very poor reflection of Allah who makes laws, yet at times he is compelled to break them himself.
While Allah in the Holy Quran says, He will never find Allah to be changing his own traditions and his own laws. Sunnatullah means an established law of nature which Allah has established or an established behavior of law in the realm of religion. Both these are Sunnatullah. So from that I can infer very safely that no law of nature was broken at any time nor it can be broken by Allah himself in any form. It can be, but it will be a poor reflection of Allah if Allah has to break and against the injunctions of the Holy Quran. So other explanations have to be sought which compromise the situation and I mean which will offer a better compromise. So from that I infer that perhaps there was a stronger power from Allah working on the mind of and later on on the minds of all present which made them visualize or see the staff as a powerful snake and the same made them lose sight of the ropes which were there.
But because Allah’s powers are greater and if he wants to make them last longer he can do that so I mean it’s just nothing without breaking the law. This is also a law of nature created by Allah. So something in that direction might have happened. But as far as people are concerned, as far as men are concerned, the Holy Quran makes it categorically clear that it was not Musa’s mind or the mind of any human being which was responsible for that change which they observed in that staff.
