He is addressing the body, heart, and spirit and saying, “O totality of the servant! If you want to step into the street of friendship, first detach your heart from life and toss away everything you know about states and deeds, for in the shariah of friendship your life will be taken as retaliation, and everything you know will be the wergild, though more is needed. Such is the shariah of friendship. If you are the man for the work, enter! Otherwise, nothing will get done with self-love and defilement.”
2:178 O you who have faith! Written for you is retaliation in the case of the slain.
Yes, it’s a marvelous work, the work of friendship! It’s a wonderful shariah, the shariah of friendship! Whenever someone is killed in the world, retaliation or wergild is mandatory against the killer. In the shariah of friendship, both retaliation and wergild are mandatory for the person killed.
Thinking! How should I have known that there is retaliation for those killed by friendship? But, when I looked, that was Your transaction with the elect. How should I have known that friendship is the sheer resurrection and that those killed by friendship should ask for wergild? Glory be to God! What work is this, what work!? He burns some people, He kills some people, and no one burned has regrets, no one killed turns away.”
One person is burnt and left unsettled, another slain and perplexed in the field of solitariness. One is hanging on reports, another mixed with face-to-face vision. Who planted these seeds? Who stirred up this tumult? One is in a whirlpool, another wishing for water, but the drowned is not sated, the thirsty has no sleep.
