to time at the King’s command a group of the soldiers is discharged. Their rifles, horses and gear belonging to the state are taken from them and they are given their leave papers. They are apparently sad to hand over their familiar rifles and horses, but in reality are happy to be discharged and extremely pleased to visit the Monarch and return to his court.
Sometimes the demobilization officials encounter a raw recruit who does not recognize them. “Surrender your rifle!,” they say. The soldier replies: “I am a soldier of the King and I am in his service. I shall go to him later. Who are you? If you come with His permission and consent, I greet you with pleasure, show me His orders. Otherwise go away and stay far from me. Even if I remain on my own and there are thousands of you, I shall still fight you, and it would not for myself, because I do not own myself; I belong to my King. Indeed, my self and the rifle I have now are in trust from my owner. I shall not submit to you because I have to safeguard the trust and defend my King’s honour and dignity!”
This situation then is one of thousands on the second way which are the cause of joy and happiness. You can think of the others for yourself. Throughout the journey there is the mobilization and despatch of troops with joy and celebrations under the name of birth, and the discharge of troops with cheer and military bands under the name of death. This road has been bestowed on mankind by the All-Wise Qur’an. Whoever accepts the gift wholeheartedly travels down it to happiness in this world and the next. He feels neither grief at the things of the past nor fear at those of the future.
O second corrupted Europe! A number of your rotten and baseless foundations are as follows. You say: “Every living being from the greatest angel to the tiniest fish owns itself and works for itself and struggles for its own pleasure. It has the right to life. Its aim and purpose and all its endeavour is to live and continue its life.” And you declare idiotically: “Life is conflict,” because you suppose to be conflict the compassionate, munificent manifestations of the universal law of the All-Generous Creator which is manifested through plants hastening to the assistance of animals and animals hastening to the assistance of man through a principle of mutual assistance, which is conformed to in perfect obedience by all the principal beings of the universe.
How can particles of food hastening with total eagerness to nourish the cells of the body – a manifestation of the principle of mutual assistance – be conflict? How can it be a clash and struggle? It is, rather, mutual help at the command of a Munificent Sustainer.
Another of your rotten foundations is, as you say: “Everything owns