In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent the Merciful?
By the dust scattering winds; then by the heavy laden clouds; then by their swift gliding authority; then by those who distribute the big affair; surely, that which you are being promised is true? By the sky full of orbits, surely you contradict one another in what you say; Only the perverse persons turn away from the truth. Woe to those who judge by conjecture; Those who are engulfed in ignorance and heedlessness. They ask: ?When will the Day of Judgment be?? It will be the Day when they will be punished in the fire, and it will be said: ?Taste your chastisement! This is what you were seeking to hasten.? Quran 51: 1-14
THIS morning, I agonised over what today?s topic should be. Events all around the country were all like those in the labour room: full of apprehensions and anxieties.
Suddenly, I realised how political I could be. I started feeling agitated. I began to pray that ?that candidate? should be elected. I realised that his emergence would speak to my fortune and that of my children! Then there was this soothing breeze, which came through the outside window into my office. It was like a balm. The breeze also functioned in reminding me of my negligence. I have not, at least for once, reflected over the importance of the air, the wind and water in my existence.
The first point of reference for me, therefore, was the Qur?an. The above verse from the Quran is highly instructive and relevant. Even though Aristotle may have coined the word meteorology, which means ?talk about weather?, but he could not have claimed he was the source of ?the dust scattering wind?.
Even though Greek scholars would have us believe he once strolled with his students in the Lyceum gardens in the 4th century B.C and then mused about the causes of thunder and lightning, of wind and storm and consequently put his conclusions on paper in Meterologica, my reading of his opinion on this important aspect of cosmology reveals his acute awareness of his limitation.
Though he is said to have published the first work on the subject, his perspective on the wind remains important only because it is perhaps the first to be attempted by any human being. The knowledge that the air and the wind vouchsafe of the cosmos and events in our phenomena are so sublime such that it is the perspective of Allah, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, which can encompass its inimitable possibilities.
The wind or the air, known as al-Rih in Arabic, is one of the signs of Allah in Creation. Scientists do not have to tell me that the air, like water, is essential for the existence of the cosmos. They do not have to theorise that where air is found water can be found. Yet the scientists would carry on ? ?there is no air that does not contain water; air takes part in the streaming movements of water, just as, in the play of clouds, water vapour join in the movement of the air.? Thus in nature ?the elements of air and water mingle in manifold interplay. Every system of rivers, every lake, every sea, is an organic totality with its own circulation and to each of these belongs the air space above it?.
But the core of today?s sermon does not lie in the necessity to plumb the chemical properties of the air or the wind. Rather it lies in the way we have become so enamoured by its presence such that we now take it for granted. We seem to have glossed over the truth in our existence ? that what the plants quietly breathes out, we animals breathe in; the air we breathe out, the animals breathe in. The air ensures we live in the presence of our ignorance. We are so full of ourselves that we conveniently forget the nothingness of our existence in the symmetry of creation. We forget that from the wind, which blows in the atmosphere, our existence derives its sustenance.
But why is the air that we breathe so invisible yet the human in us desires to be visible, particularly at a time when our visibility is oftentimes for the negative purpose?
In order to perpetrate his evil, the evil genius among us depend on the air to survive; he is completely oblivious of the day he would breathe out but would not be able to breathe in; the day the wind would blow over his body but he would have become a cadaver fit only for experiments in the laboratory or as supper for the termites in the grave!
In other words, dear brethren in faith, do you know how many times we breathe in a minute? Are you conscious of the fact that each breath we take is counted while we are busy counting what does not worth being counted?
Brethren, imagine what would happen if water and wind, which represent one of the most important necessities of life were to be found only in certain parts of the world, say in the Delta or in the Sahara! Imagine what would happen if water and wind were to be a resource under the control of the current government in Nigeria the same way it holds authority over energy and petroleum.
Imagine what would have happened if water and wind were to be unavailable in Nigeria such that government would have to intervene by contracting it out as it has done with diesel and petrol or import them from overseas.
Brethren, imagine what would happen if water and wind were to be like our national ?cake? which would have to be appropriated at the beginning of every fiscal year by our ?legislators.? It would have meant that to be a legislator is to have the opportunity to achieve eternity; our members of parliament would definitely appropriate more ?air? and wind unto themselves as they have done with our wealth.
While thanking Allah for ensuring that this important resource is under His control, I am humbled by the fact that the air that we breathe, the air which constitutes an important element in our life, could equally become an instrument of punishment in the hands of our Creator. Remember the people of ?Ad. The wind started that day in its usual manner: cool, gentle and soothing. Then gradually it became violent. It became tempestuous. It became a typhoon, a tornado.
A different type of wind is blowing in our village presently; a ?dust scattering wind?. The wind is blowing away some individuals who have held sway over the governance of their respective states, individuals who have turned their states to their personal estates. The wind is replacing them. The wind is blowing; a dust scattering wind is blowing away persons under whose suzerainty cities in our country have become wastelands. It is blowing away individuals who want people to praise them for occupying the government house and for presiding over arrested development. I am on prostration supplicating!
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