feeling of materialism, from which it cannot easily be saved.
Again, that unmannerly literature, both sedative and narcotic, can provide no beneficial salve for the distress of the spirit which arises from the misguidance resulting from the above.
It has found a single remedy, and that is its novels and fiction. Books with their dead living, the cinema with its animated corpses. The dead cannot bestow life!
And the theatre with its reincarnations and ghosts from the vast grave known as the past. – It is completely unashamed at these three sorts of its fiction.
It has put a mendacious tongue in mankind’s mouth, attached a lustful eye to its face, dressed the world in a scarlet petticoat, and does not recognize sheer beauty.
If it points to the sun, it puts in the reader’s mind a beautiful blonde actress. It apparently says: “Vice is bad, it is not fitting for man.”
It points out its harmful consequences. But its depictions so incite vice that they make the mouth water and the reason cannot remain in control.
They whet the appetite, excite desire, so the emotions no longer heed anything. The literature of the Qur’an, however, does not stir up desire;
It imparts a sense of love of the truth, a passion for sheer loveliness, an appreciation and taste for beauty, a desire for reality. And it does not deceive.
It does not look at the universe from the point of view of Nature; it speaks of it from the point of view of Divine art, with the colouring of the Most Merciful. It does not confuse the mind.
It instils the light of knowledge of the Maker. It points out His signs in all things. Both produce a touching sorrow, but they do not resemble each other.
The literature born of Europe excites a pathetic sorrow arising from the lack of friends, from being ownerless; not an elevated sorrow.
For it is a woebegone sadness inspired by deaf Nature and blind force. It shows the world as desolate, not in any other way.
It depicts it in this way, holds the sorrowing man there, places him ownerless among strangers, leaving him without hope.
Due to this feeling of consternation it has given him, he gradually sinks into misguidance; it opens up the way to atheism, from whence it is difficult to return. Perhaps he never will return.
Qur’anic literature produces a sorrow, but it is the sorrow of love, not of orphans. It arises from separation from friends, not from the lack of them.
Its view of the universe, in place of blind Nature, is as conscious, merciful Divine art; it does not speak of Nature.
Instead of blind force, it describes wise and purposeful Divine power. The universe, therefore, does not take on the form of a desolate wasteland.