Here are parts 5 through 8 of the series,
The Miracle of Milk.
Previous parts are available by scrolling through the archives of this blog and in the Final Call Newspaper.
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The Miracle of Milk, part 5
By Abdul Alim Muhammad
We saw in our last installment that Almighty God Allah in the creation Man in His image and after His likeness, simultaneously created that which would be the satisfaction of the physical needs of Man. He created the cattle, sheep, goats, camels, and cows, all of which are rich sources of nourishment for Man. If Man stayed in his place, the Garden planted by God Himself, then the needs of Man would all be met, and his condition would be heavenly. In that state Man would be able to obey the divine commands to “…be fruitful and multiply, have power and dominion…” Fallen from that state, Man would be in a state of perpetual disobedience, want, poverty, dissatisfaction, ill health, disease, discontent, disorder, disunity and depravity. In other words: Man’s condition would be Hell.
Man’s work – to keep and dress the Garden – would automatically produce fruitfulness, abundance and the geometrical and logarithmic multiplication of himself and all that was within the Garden. Each year, a cow produces a calf; therefore each year is a doubling. One cow becomes 2, two becomes 4, four becomes 8, eight becomes 16, sixteen becomes 32, thirty-two becomes 64 – so on and so forth. In the case of seed produce like corn, one planted kernel produces 7 ears of corn, with 100 kernels on each ear! The multiplication factor is an astounding 700! The Beneficence and Mercy of God is made manifest in the fruitfulness and multiplication of His creation, and is inherent in the nature made by Allah in which He has created all things. The creation reflects perfectly the Beneficence and the Mercy of God and fulfills His promise of Abundance:
The devil threatens you with poverty and enjoins you to be niggardly,
And Allah promises you forgiveness from Himself and abundance.
And Allah is Ample-giving, Knowing.
Holy Qur’an 2:268
We are not given the actual starting dimensions of God’s garden. Some scholars have literally tried to locate it on the earth in what is modern day Iraq between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Even if the Garden was originally the size of a postage stamp, the proper cultivation of it would lead in time to a Garden, the extensiveness of which would be equal to the extensiveness of the Earth. The whole earth would have become God’s Garden of Paradise.
The cultivation of the Garden is the cultivation of Man. Man is cultivated by what he cultivates. Man is made fruitful by the fruit that he produces and Man is multiplied by the natural creative multiplication of the Garden. Man’s skill, knowledge, wisdom and technology keep pace with the natural growth of his Garden. In his struggle to manage increasing abundance is the granting of Allah’s wisdom:
He grants wisdom to whom He pleases. And whoever is granted wisdom,
he indeed has been granted a great good…
Holy Qur’an 2:269
When Man gives up the cultivation his Garden, he brings a halt to his own cultivation. Any improvement that Man makes in what is produced in his Garden produces an improvement in Man. If through the acquisition of scientific knowledge and technology, Man is able to produce better food for himself, that better food makes a better Man. On the other hand, if Man through laziness, ignorance, disobedience or oppression neglects his work in the Garden, or flies the Garden altogether, then an inferior quality food is produced. This inferior quality food degrades Man and he becomes less capable of performing the Work of Man which is to keep and dress the Garden. He falls from Grace and enters into Perdition.
Therefore we see that Man grows as his Garden grows. Everything that grows in Man is directly connected to the growing things of the Garden. A tree grows in the Garden which is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and it represents a possibility of growth in the consciousness of Man. Like a tree, Man’s consciousness is rooted in the soil and puts forth its branches on which may be fruit of it own kind. Apparently God did not want Man’s consciousness to be rooted in Evil mixed with Good. The fruit of such a tree, the fruit of such consciousness, would be a mixture of Good and Evil. A mixture of Good and Evil, is of course, not Good. Only that which is entirely of the Good can produce that which is entirely Good. Apparently, the Will of God was that Man was to follow the example of God in the way of Creation: Create that which is Good. Cultivate in the Garden that which is Good. Cultivate within yourself only that which is Good.
But, you say, What does all of this have to do with milk? It has everything to do with the value of milk to us today, because it is the cultivation in people of a desire for the pure milk of God’s own miraculous design that leads us back to the Heavenly Garden of Allah. Through the milk we have a genuine taste of Paradise. Through the agency of God’ wonderfully created quadrupeds- especially the cow- we have a reliable and capable ally in our struggle against the evil of the Evil One, who has led Man astray. With the help of the cattle through their cultivation, we can recover the boundless and limitless potential that is Man in the image and likeness of God!
(more to follow)
The Miracle of Milk, part 6
By Abdul Alim Muhammad
Of what use would owning an automobile be if there were no gasoline or diesel fuels to make it go? Those inventors of the automobile and other mechanical devices would have been poor planners and miserable failures had they not, at the same time that they were inventing what they invented, also worked out the means to power their invention. Imagine if each car owner had been given no fuel for his vehicle, and then resorted to pouring into the tank, anything he could come up with, as though it did not matter, as though everything was the equal to every other thing. What would have been the result if anything at all could have been called ‘fuel’ and then poured in, with no thought what so ever of the engineered specifications of the car? Under such circumstances would the performance of the car on the road equal the intention of the inventor?
Think of the bitterly disappointed motorist, broken down on the side of the road, cursing what seemed to them to be bad luck and misfortune, and kicking viciously at a deeply flawed and inadequate piece of junk called an automobile. The anger toward the manufacturer would be fierce, and the mind would tend toward thoughts such as, “We were better off before all these new fangled gadgets!”
Wouldn’t the automotive engineer also be upset and angry at the bad reputation of his supreme invention? He designed it to be swift, efficient and reliable, to carry its passengers safely and in comfort to any destination, without breaking down, creating trouble, frustration and disappointment. Even from a distance the engineer would know that the operator of the car did not understand its workings properly and therefore did not give the car what the car was designed to run on – gasoline of the right grade and type. Such an engineer might even consider the motorist to be an idiot of the worst kind who deserves to be broken down in the middle of nowhere for being so stupid.
Wouldn’t the disgusted motorist be surprised and elated to learn from someone who happened to stop by to render aid, that the whole problem was solved just by putting the right type of fuel in the tank! And suddenly that which was broken down and useless is roaring down the road performing exactly to the engineering specifications of its inventor. Of course, any common sense person would not be amazed, because, any common sense person knows that you cannot expect a car or any mechanical devise to function properly to specifications if you do not fuel it as it should be fueled, as per the owner’s manual.
The above example, applied to Man, shows that Man was created by the greatest of Creators, the Originator of the Heavens and the Earth. He created Man in His own image and likeness. These are the engineering specifications. Man is like God, Man is a god, and has the same specifications as God Himself. Talk about high performance!
And all that Man needs to achieve high performance is within the Garden! So therefore the problem with Man today is now obvious. He is broken down on the side of the road to Heavenly Life in Abundance precisely because he has been lured out of the Garden, away from that which can satisfy his needs. He has been following in “the footsteps of the devil” and is far away, broken down in the middle of nowhere. He finds himself far removed from what he needs to get back in motion towards the Goal. If he does not realize what has happened to him, and then take the needed steps in the right direction to correct the problem, Man will die in his broken down state by the side of the road.
(more to follow)
The Miracle of Milk, part 7
When Man took his exit from the Garden none of the seed bearing plants could follow him. But the cattle could and did. They followed Man wherever Man wandered under the enchantment of the rebellious devil. The cow and the other cattle mentioned constitute something of a “movable feast” from the Garden - food to go, if you will.
Even if the rest of the Garden is lost and inaccessible from where we happen to be broken down at the moment, the cow and the other cattle created for the satisfaction of Man’s needs has traveled the road of history with us all the way. While some would give the credit to the dog, in actuality it is the cow that is Man’s best friend, created to be that for Man by the Creator.
Where ever Man has cultivated cattle, civilization has sprung up in that place. Wherever Man did not cultivate cattle, Man remained in a savage, wild state. With the cultivation of cattle came peace, stability and wealth. Cattle brought the possibility of permanent settlement and the establishment of cities and a stable society, well organized to meet the needs of a population that was growing. The increase in cattle means an increase in human population as well. As a hunter and a gatherer, the population of Man was strictly limited, and the life of Man was harsh, brutish and short. Only through cattle raising is it possible for Man to fulfill the divine commandment: Be fruitful and multiply.
With increasing herds of cattle, wealth and abundance also increased. With no shortage of food the number of humans who could dwell on the Earth multiplied in natural obedience to the Divine command. Where no such cultivation of cattle occurred life was fraught with hunger, poverty, war and violence. There could be no stability and life was characterized by feast or famine based on the luck of the hunt. Insecurity and unpredictability led to fear and anxiety ridden populations who could be ruled by superstition and manipulated by the threat of scarcity into acts of violence and crime.
The cultivation of cattle gave birth to civilization. The cow is the necessary companion for Man in the image and likeness of God. Without the cow, the image of Man is the image of a beast, out to kill and devour whatever he can track down and subdue by force and violence. Not only is the number of cows possessed by a people the measure of their wealth, it is also a measure of their health and degree of civilization.
Encounter an individual Man with no cattle, or a society of Men who have not embraced the cultivation of the cow and you are looking at hunter-predators with a propensity for violence and war. Only in settled communities established upon the herding of cattle can the higher attributes of God and Man be made manifest in society. The hunter-predator can never know security, for he never knows when his prey will disappear, and he becomes the prey of hunger and starvation. For such a man, the hunt and the spoils of war are synonymous. One eats what one can catch and kill. For such a one, there is no such thing as equality. It is either dominate or be dominated. The peaceful parables of the prophets have little or no meaning. His is the law of nature – tooth and claw- not the law of God. His ethic is the ethic of the hunt: One must die in order for another to live. A higher ethic, in which all can live, is unimaginable.
In many cultures, wealth and social status are measured in terms of cattle. In some cultures a man with no cattle can not marry. A man with cattle has demonstrated an ability to cultivate, manage and take responsibility. In so doing, he has demonstrated his ability to maintain a wife and family. With cattle they will not starve. The bride’s family can rest assured that a man with cattle to tend will not run off and abandon his wife any more than he will abandon his cattle.
In the founding of the colonies of America, it was the cow that was the margin of survival for newly established settlements along the East coast. Many colonies perished in the hard winters of North America, with widespread starvation, disease and death. Those were the colonies established by the ‘get rich quick’ fortune hunters who were interested in finding treasures of gold and who did not have the time or the inclination to tend cattle. These fortune hunters died in the harsh wilderness conditions for which they were ill prepared.
The colonies that survived and prospered were those where cattle were raised. It was the milk, butter and cheese from these animals that made the crucial difference in survival. One cow could provide the daily sustenance for 8 to 10 people, and with proper breeding a natural yearly increase could be counted on. Colonies with growing dairy herds prospered and grew rich, and soon were in trade with other such colonies. The soldiers of fortune perished.
During these pioneering days in the American wilderness, it was said that a man needed but three things: a piece of land, a cow and a wife. But the wife was considered optional.
(More later)
The Miracle of Milk, part 8
In the founding and building of the great nation, the United States of America, the domestication of cattle was an absolute necessity and was the foundation of national wealth and food security. The American bison, or buffalo, was wild and not amenable to domestication and was therefore replaced by its more civilized cousin who had a long established relationship with human kind. The fearsome lethal force of cattlemen decimated the unruly herds of wild and untamable bison, carving out more territory for both men and cattle. The civilizing power generated out of the synergistic relationship of man and cow was overwhelming and irresistible.
The wild Native American tribes had no domesticated cattle and eked out a precarious survival by chasing the great herds of bison across the vast plains of the West. These hunter gathers and their prey were no match for the ranchers and their domesticated cattle. Both the hunter and the prey were obliterated almost to extinction to make way for those who were more competent to survive: man and his cattle.
Wild men, noble savages to some, and wild animals, though in innumerable thundering herds have virtually disappeared in the competition for survival. Romantic notions aside, a cattle culture is superior in power and resources to one based on the restless vagaries of the hunt. The meat eaters who raised no corn or cattle could not sustain themselves in the face of the tillers of the soil with their herds of cattle. The fragile relationship between the hunter and his prey was easily disrupted by the herder and his cattle. The future survival of the people of the plains depends upon how quickly they adopt the culture of the cow.
When one flies over the vast, mostly empty stretches of Africa in the 21rst century, one knows that there is hunger and poverty among the human populations below, because one does not see herds of cattle roaming the land. Huge herds of zebra, wildebeest, Cape buffalo and antelope may be great for attracting tourists, but contribute nothing to the building of a great and rich nation state. The rich tourists who arrive by the plane-load to admire the wild herds of undomesticated ‘cattle’ have the means to travel globally precisely because they come from prosperous well-fed nations whose wealth is based on the cultivation of cattle.
Africa can never sufficiently feed herself and grow rich and prosperous until she learns the lessons demonstrated in story of ‘How the West Was Won’ in America. Environmentalism and animal preservation movements can thus be viewed as Romantic interventions that are counter to the scientific, reality based natural development of the African nation. If the Western environmentalists and nature worshippers love the wilderness so much, and then let them convert England, Europe and America back to a savage state. Of course, it is true, some of them are insane enough to want to do just that and thereby reduce the human populations from the present 6.5 billions to no more than 1 to 2 billion.
The root of evil, its definition and image, is Man’s refusal to ‘keep and dress’ the Garden, blocking the commanded fruitfulness and multiplication desired by God. When Man knows cultivation and yet refuses to practice it and teach it to others, he is committing an act of evil and earns the wrath of God. To not cultivate the Garden is to invite infanticide, abortion, genocide, slavery, war, oppression and all the other evil depravities of which Man in his fallen state is capable. These evils are justified on the basis of alleged scarcity: “There’s not enough to go around”.
Man’s divinely mandated destiny is to leave his wild uncultivated state behind, and move to a cultivated progressive civilized future. He does this by understanding that his duty is the transformation of his environment into the Garden, the cultivation of which will cultivate that which is best in Man. This is the Heaven of which Man is capable of attaining, through his own efforts and the Guidance of Allah. This is how we fulfill the divine command given to us today: Set yourself in Heaven!
(More later)
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