"Hast thou not considered how God sets forth a parable? A good word is as a good tree: its roots firm and its branches in the sky. It brings forth fruit in every season, by the Leave of its Lord, God sets forth parables for mankind, that haply they may remember. And the parable of a bad word is a bad tree: uprooted from the fact of the earth,; it has no stability."
Quran 14:24-26
Here is a passage drawn from the fourteenth surah, Ibrahim, rendered, not surprisingly, as "Abraham." Considering that the divine is, well, ineffable, it's not particularly surprising that all too often the prophets of all faiths resort to metaphors or parables to try and explain the unexplainable. In this instance the parable is more clear cut. Nasr tells us, "A good word is understood to refer here to the formula of the shahadah, 'There is no god but God.' . . . Like the date palm, which if firmly rooted in the earth, so too is the meaning of the shahadah ('There is no god but God') firmly rooted in the hearts of the people of Divine Unity. Al-Razi refers to this same reality by saying that when the tree of knowledge is firmly rooted in the land of one's heart, one becomes stronger and more complete, thereby enabling 'fruit' to issue forth from its 'branches' in abundance." (p. 634)
Quran 14:24-26
Here is a passage drawn from the fourteenth surah, Ibrahim, rendered, not surprisingly, as "Abraham." Considering that the divine is, well, ineffable, it's not particularly surprising that all too often the prophets of all faiths resort to metaphors or parables to try and explain the unexplainable. In this instance the parable is more clear cut. Nasr tells us, "A good word is understood to refer here to the formula of the shahadah, 'There is no god but God.' . . . Like the date palm, which if firmly rooted in the earth, so too is the meaning of the shahadah ('There is no god but God') firmly rooted in the hearts of the people of Divine Unity. Al-Razi refers to this same reality by saying that when the tree of knowledge is firmly rooted in the land of one's heart, one becomes stronger and more complete, thereby enabling 'fruit' to issue forth from its 'branches' in abundance." (p. 634)
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