Huzoor, yesterday you were very kindly giving us the details about Aalameen, what is Rabbal Aalameen, and then you said… Not the details, but only I suggested a few points, yes, I have. Regarding that, I was just pondering through the Holy Qur’an, and there’s a verse, Surah Baqarah, Ya bani Isra’i lazguru nimati yallati an’amtu alaykum wa an’i fazaltukum alal aalameen. And yes sir, Allah Ta’ala has said about Hazrat Muhammad Mustafa sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, wa kaana fazlullahi alaika azeema, and then, wa kuntum khaira ummatin ukhrijat linnas.
But no Aalameen are mentioned in these two verses. Sorry? No Aalameen are mentioned in these two verses. Yes, what I want to know is sir, could you kindly explain? Why didn’t you refer to the verse mentioning Huzoor-e-Akram sallallahu alaihi wa sallam as Rahmatullil Aalameen? That would have been a more appropriate verse to quote in this context. I follow your point, please sit down. You perhaps didn’t follow my point, which I was trying to make last night. I said that the word Aalam can mean so many things, billions and billions of things, considering the particular situation where it applies, and also in relationship to the observer.
And I tried to explain that at various stages in history, the concept of the world has been changing, although the world has not been changing. The word Aalam, as applied to the knowledge of man at the time of Adam, was a very different Aalam. It was in fact not even covering the whole earth, not to mention the universe, it didn’t even cover the planet earth on which they were residing. Aalam to them was a very small area where they were populated, where they could hunt and shift for themselves.
But the Aalam, the word Aalam, with regard to the observer, when we apply it to the human evolution, varies from time to time and goes on broadening in concept. Until the time of Galileo, the Aalam was a completely different thing, and a very small affair. But when first Galileo invented the telescope, the concept of Aalam began to expand much vaster and vaster. In fact, Galileo himself, when he became blind in the end, he wrote a very, very interesting sentence on his blindness, in one of his letters to a lord.
He says that the universe which I have worked so hard to expand and throw it out beyond the barriers, the narrow barriers of this earth, after my blindness, it has got squeezed into the very body which I occupy. And it’s no more than that. The comparison was that I labelled to expand the concept of universe, and from the borders of earth, it got expanded into a vast universe, as he understood it. But what was the vastness of universe? Only the concept of universe seen through the eyes. When you lost the eyes, you lost the universe. And it got squeezed into that small body which was occupied at that time by Galileo.
It was a very interesting and a very wise comparison made, and also it indicated the Aalam goes on changing, according to the viewer, according to the observer. But imagine that the telescope which was invented by Galileo in 1610, it was so insignificant as compared to the telescope which was invented in the 60s, that the comparison was one to one million. So at least the universe got expanded one million times more than at the time of Galileo. And that telescope which was invented in the 60s has the same ratio to the telescope which is now prepared in the 80s. The modern telescope which has x-rays and radiation systems, all that, that is one million times stronger than the telescope known to man in the 60s.
So the universe has further expanded to that extent. Is it the same Aalam? Not at all. Aalam without observer is nothing. So when the Holy Quran refers to the Aalam of the Jews, it refers to the Aalam of the Jews of that time. When it refers to the Aalam of Hazrat Muhammad Mustafa ﷺ, it covers the entire Aalam known to man or which would be known to man till the end of the time. There is vast, vast difference, absolutely no comparison whatsoever. The comparison between the Galileo telescope and the telescope of today is perhaps less conspicuous than this comparison, because the time is not finished.
The time of Jews, the sum total of the knowledge of man at the time of the Jews, as compared to the knowledge of the man of future, would be much, much vaster, out of all proportion, vaster than the illustration which I have just made. So the word Aalam should be understood in its perspective. Otherwise you would run into confusion.
