And He it is who has given freedom of movement to the two great bodies of water — the one sweet and thirst-allaying, and the other salty and bitter — and yet has wrought between them a barrier and a forbidding ban. And He it is who out of this very water has created man...
Al-Furqan, 25:53-54
If all the sea were ink for my Sustainer’s words, the sea would indeed be exhausted ere my Sustainer’s words are exhausted! And thus it would be if we were to add to it sea upon sea.
Al-Kahf, 18:109
Sea added upon sea, both contain ink for the Sustainer’s words: one the ink of divine revelation, intuition, understanding and benevolence; the other the ink of human experience, the gift of reason, intelligence, speech, and conscience. And the sea is never exhausted.
Peterborough, New Hampshire
6-8 October 2000
Note: Qur’an passages and commentary are taken from The Message of the Qur’an, translated by Muhammad Asad. I have subsequently taken the poetic liberty of modernizing some pronouns and verb forms from KJV English to contemporary usage, and changing the word "God" to "Allah" in all instances. Green text is used for citations from the Qur’an and the Bible, grey for hadith and other quotes.
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