Testimony of Women in Islam

Category: SOUND

"O ye who believe! When you acquire a loan for a fixed period, record it in writing, and let a scribe write it down between you with fairness; the scribe should not refuse to write, and just as Allah has taught him to write, he should also write for others; the one who has incurred the debt should have [the document] written and fearing Allah his Lord, he should not make any reduction in it. If the debtor is indiscreet or feeble or unable to have it written, let his guardian do so with justice. And call in two male witnesses from among your men, but if two men cannot be found, then one man and two women from among your likable people so that if one of them gets confused, the other reminds her. And witnesses must not refuse when they are summoned. And whether the loan is big or small, be not negligent in documenting the deal up to its period." (2:282)

this verse literally says you should ask 2 men or 1 man and 2 women to be witnesses.

"ask"... meaning the majority of this verse is not talking about court. its talking about the BUSINESS DEAL happening OUTSIDE of court. and is saying to have those sets of witnesses in case it ever DOES go to court so a fair set of witnesses can be provided to the court/judge. the judge can call whomever he or she wants to testify. this way there's a standard the judge can reasonably expect.

the verse really doesn't have much to do with law or court. its social behaviour.

by the way... technically that also means there's 1 female "witness", the second woman just backs up her account. so to say it means 2 women = 1 man even in testimony is kinda off the mark. if you have 2 male witnesses, they could interact again and talk about what they witnessed and remind each other. what if you had 1 man and 1 woman as witnesses? it might even force the woman to interact alone with a strange guy. this would be unusual in an islamic society and very unlikely. if she had a woman backing her up, she's not alone. on top of that, its not out of the question the woman may marry the male witness... in which case she'd have an emotional attachment (and cultural/societal) and could be influenced by her husband's decisions. that's not fair so another witness is needed to break the 1 man/1 woman possible tie. which would be another woman so as not to require the first woman to have to interact again with a non-mahram man too much. so the preference is for 2 male witnesses, since in islamic society they would interact more. and if only one male witness is found, 2 women can substitute for the second. if a male witness 'forgets', his testimony is rejected, the other can't substitute or remind.

it has nothing to do with the worth of one or the other. its based on environmental factors more than anything. "if one of them gets confused, the other reminds her" is attributed to things like PMS more by guys who haven't been around women too often. PMS is not the concern here. That comes around once a month and the odds she'd be called in to testify that day are not great... especially considering if she's exempt from praying/fastying while menstruating, then it stands to reason she can have the court appearance delayed for personal reasons too. the real reason is environmental. in a perfect islamic society, women aren't used to going out of the house for much of anything since they have no responsibilities there and most likely even have servants for the menial daily affairs... let alone being called up to testify in court.

its an experience thing. it wouldn't matter if most women were working outside of the house and could ably participate in court, the law itself has to account for giving the women the right to NOT have to go outside of the house. to give women and men completely equal treatment would give them equal responsibilities which would then rob them of the right which Islam considers they should have... that is to say, they can stay out of the public eye if they so choose. men do not have this priviledge. some women would appreciate that kinda thing.

and again, that is for WITNESSES. i.e, women NOT INVOLVED in the deal. a woman can run a business, in which case, she can't be witness to her own loans now can she? that makes no sense. but if she were called to testify in court as a party involved in the transaction itself, she alone would suffice. not only that, women can be judges. which defeats the entire idea of 'a woman is worth half a man'.

people tend to think that the 1 man/2 women rule applies to circumstantial evidence as well. this is only for business.

and lastly, this verse doesn't indicate a propensity to forget on the part of women. men and women are equally likely to remember or forget something. adam and eve both forgot equally. had either been better people, they would have reminded the other. one person being better than one another comes down to raw heart and soul, always.

Prophet Muhammad(pbuh) said in his last address that nobody is better than anybody else on the account of race or anything else (including gender) except through "piety and good action".

Tasawuf (Islamic Mysticism)

Category: SOUND

Islamic Mysticism

by Maulana Manzoor Numani


A very special branch of the Faith, through which it is carried to perfection, is Ehsan, as the Prophet's (Peace be upon him) Tradition describe it, or Tasawwuf, as it is known in common parlance. In plain words, It means the creation of a real, living consciousness of God a consciousness so strong and vivid as if one had actually seen him, sweeping aside every trace of doubt and uncertainty. When this consciousness becomes complete, it forges a bond of loyalty with God that fills the heart with his remembrance, his love and an intense awareness of his night ; it becomes the essence, the ruling spirit, of one's existence, of all one's thought and action, in prayer, in morality, in social behaviour, in monetary dealings, and, so forth. All that one does then is inspired, governed and regulated by this all embracing faith and overpowering realization. One's external life gets completely pervaded by this internal feeling.

Ehsan or Tasawwuf, thus, represents the very pinnacle of faith. It is the supreme standard of one's spiritual state. One is perfect in his faith. or not according to the measure with which he is blessed with this wealth. The famous Tradition of the Prophet (Peace be upon him) consisting of the dialogue between him and angel, Gabriel, is a pointer in this direction. The manner in which the term Ehsan occurs in it after Imam and Islam testifies to the truth of the assertion that Ehsan marks the ultimate stage in the evolution of faith.

Briefly, the Tradition says that one day the Prophet (Peace be upon him) was sitting with some of the Companions that Gabriel came in disguised as a traveler from a far-off place. He took his seat close to the Prophet (Peace be upon him) and began to ask him some questions. The first was, "What is Islam (Faith)?" And, the second, "What is Islam?. The Prophet (Peace be upon him) gave suitable replies to his questions. Then he asked, "What is Ehsan" The Prophet (Peace be upon him) answered, "Ehsan means to worship God as if one is actually seeing him or is being seen by him."(In other words, the stage of Ehsan is reached when the awareness of God becomes the greatest reality of one's life and one's every act is performed under a constant sense of his presence for although man cannot see God it is just not possible in this material world God does see him all the time).

This state of sublimity can exist only when faith has worked itself out to the highest degree and become one's life-breath. It was for the attainment of this state that the Prophet (Peace be upon him) would beg fervently to God. "O God! he would say, "Let such be my state that I may fear Thee and revere Thee as if I was seeing Thee constantly till (at last) my time came and I went up to join Thee."

This condition is known among the sufis(Muslim mystics) as Huzoori (presence) and Yad-Dasht (remembrance) and Nisbat (affinity), and when anyone is described by them as Saheb-i-Nisbat, it denotes that he has arrived at it in a considerable way. When this state of spiritulity is reached, a person gets permanently attuned to God and becomes immune to all kinds of doubts and misgivings concerning his being. Setting forth his own experience in one of his letters, Hazrat Mujaddid Alf-Sani says: "Acting on the postulate: 'Acknowledge publicity the boons conferred by God,'a Dervish of his (Naqshbandi) school narrates about himself that all doubts and fears have totally disappeared from his heart, so much so that even if he lives for a thousand years like the (Hebrew). Prophet, Nooh (Alai-hi-Salam), not a single doubp or temptation can creep into it may, it cannot creep into it even if he himself strives for it for many a long year".

As a natural outcome of this all-pervading effulgence of faith, this all-engulfing sense of Divine presence, all other ties and attachments are merged and lose their identity in the one great allegiance to Almighty, and all internal and external acts, such as, love, friendship, enmity and social and business intercourse begin to be gone through and carried out for his sake alone. A Tradition of the Prophet (Peace be upon him) on the subject of Ehsan tells that " A person whose state may be that when he loves, he loves for the sake of God and when he hates, he hates for the sake of God, and when he gives, he gives for the sake of God and when he withholds his hand from giving, he withholds it for the sake of God he has attained perfection in his faith.

The most exalted position in this respect was that of the Prophet (Peace be upon him). He operated on the highest level to which a man can evolve his destiny from the point of view of faith and Ehsan. In his life there was contained the most ideal blending of knowledge and awareness, and piety and the fear of God. He used often to say of himself, "No one among you fears God more than me, no none reverse him more intensely than me, and no one possesses a greater knowledge and a more complete awareness of him than me."

From the Prophet (Peace be upon him) his Companions had received their share aptitude and circumstances, and the possess-
ion of this very commodity has remained throughout the high merit of the sufi-saints of Islam. All their special spiritual exertions remembrance, meditation and acts of self-purgation have had no other aim than the acquirement of it. As Hazrat Gangohi, a Sufi-saint of the Current century, writes, "This is the ultimate goal of all systems (of Sfism)......... Why had the holy Companions sacrificed all that they had life, family, property and everything? What had they seen? It was simply because of the fact that they had acquired absolute faith in God through their association with the Prophet (Peace be upon him). This was, with them, the measure of all things. How did Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani, Moinuddin Chishti and Bahauddin Bukhari climb to greatness? Through this very faith". A few lines later, the great Sufi goes on to observe: " This forging of link (with God) is called Ehsan. The raising up of the Prophet (Peace be upon him) was for its sake alone and all the Holy Companions were endowed with it in different degrees. The saints of the Ummat than produced it through another way."

The real thing, therefore, is the acquirement of the light of faith and the inner feeling of Ehsan. The holy Companions had realized this state through the fullness of their love for and devotion to the Prophet (Peace be upon him), through the intimateness of their association with him, and through dedicating themselves to life of virtue under his advice and direction, and the making of utmost sacrifices in the case of God. After the death of the Prophet (Peace be upon him), the Companions, both individually and as a body, functioned as his successors and representatives in the line, and as long as they remained in the world the exalted state of Ehsan could be gained by sitting at their feet.

When the Companions, too, were gone and symptoms of moral and spiritual degradation began to make themselves manifest in the Muslim society with the laps of time, a stage came when the high should men in the Ummat, who still cherished in their hearts the heritage of Ehsan and occupied the same elevated position in their branch as the Mujahids in Figh, stirred themselves into activity. Seeing that the inspiring society of the Prophet (Peace be upon him) and the Companions was available no more and the Muslim Millet was moving down steadily from the ideal of righteous-doing to corruption, they evolved certain methods for the kindling of the flame of faith in the hearts and the generation of that feeling of God realisation which is the essence of Ehsan. These methodes included excessive remembrance of God, meditation, and the control and discipline of the desires and impulses of the self. Their utility is selfevident and their is a clear proof also of their correctness and effectiveness in the original sanctions of the Faith and Shariat. The bulk of the Ummat has consistently reposed its trust in the soundneee of these methods and in the integrity of the holy men who had worked them out, and they have, further, received the greatest of sanctions the sanction of time. These last two factors, more than anything else, place the worth and merit of the practices indicated above beyond therealm of controversy.

For a thousand years and more, the finest elements in the community, from the point of view of faith, have affirmed that the system in vogue among the Sufis for spiritual self-evolution and the creation and strengthening of God-consciousness is fundamentally correct and efficacious in practice. Who can deny that hundreds and thousands of men have derived an immense benefit as a result of their spiritual association with each of the leading Sufi-saints like Khwaja Maroof Karkhi, Bishar Hafi. Siri Saqati, Shafiq Balakhi, Bayazeed Bustami, Junaid Baghdadi, Abu Bakr Shibi, Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani, Sheikh Shahabuddin Suhrawardi, Sheikh Amed Rifai, Sheikh Abul Hasan Shazli, Khwaja Osman Harooni, Khawaja Moinuddin Chishti, and Khawaja Bahauddin Naqshband, and the saints of the last three centuries of the present Millennium of the class of Khwaja Baqi Billah, Imam Rabbani, Mujaddid Alf-Sani Sheikh Ahmed Sarhindi and their deputies, and Shah Waliullah Dehlavi and syed Ahmed Shaheed, and countless of other devoted men of God, who like them, were adorned with the virtue of Ehsan and functioned as the leaders of this feild during their time? Anyone who possesses the briefest acquaintance with these luminous links in the chain of Sufistic achievement will agree that what they had attained had come to them through no other channel. How, then, can it be possible to doubt the soundness and efficacy of a system that has produced such exuisite specimens of religious perfection, so many splendid men of faith and conviction, who may justly be described as the spiritual blossom and glory of Islam?

Of course, some sections of the Ummat have been guilty of error and folly in varying measures and both of a conceptual and a practical nature in the feild of Tasawwuf, as in the other fields of the Faith. But just as the process of the caution and correction has been kept in operation steadily in the other fields through the Ulema and the Mujahids, in this field, too, it has been the same way with Sufis of deep learning and penetrating vision coming up from time to time from God to straighten its curves and to remove its impurities. Furthermore, it does not become any one to reject a whole structure of belief and practice simply because some sections of its followers have some mistakes.

such in brief, is the meaning of Ehsan and the place it holds in Islam. The path by which it is reached is known popularly as Sulook or Tareeq. It is an accepted fact that to undertake a journey along this path one must place oneself in the hands of an expert guide who can show the way and furnish lead at each step in the correct direction. One cannot start treating oneself (or others) for physical ailments by reading books of medicine. The same is true of the feild of spiritual well-being. For spiritual treatment it is necessary to go to spiritual physician, i.e., to a man who has attained the goal by going all the way himself and knows all its ups and downs, and follow his directions faithfully. The first duty of the pilgrim should, therefore. be to seek out a guide and a leader who in addition to his religious and spiritual accomplishments. must also be suited to his natural disposition and to commit himself to his charge ungrudgingly. This is called Iradat.

Tragically true, as it is, that such accomplished men of God are becoming scarce day by day, the world is not quite empty of them. There do exist men about whom it can be said, subject to the limitations of human judgement and understanding, of course, that to their lot has fallen the heritage of God-consciousness which is the goal and destination of Ehsan and under their guidance and with requisite enthusiasm and perseverance one can successfully traverse the path of Sulook.

It is, surely, not that any one who flourishes himself as a peer is worthy of being taken as a guide and a mentor. The world knows that there are both fake and genuine among religious teachers and spiritual masters, as among political leaders and physicians, and so forth. We admit that the proportion of imposters in the religious, and so forth. We admit that the proportion of imposters in the religious and spiritual sphere is far greater than elsewhere. But, as elsewhere, the true can be distinguished from the false here as well without much difficulty. The experts who are blessed also with a keen understanding of the Shariat, like Shah Waliullah and Kazi Sanaullah of recent times, have laid down in the light of the Quran and Sunnah and their own knowledge and experience, certain suggestions for recognizing men with an awakened heart and an evolved soul who can be looked up to for spiritual guidance. the elementary test is that besides piety and a strict observance of the Shariat their state should be such that in their company people may be remineded of God. The hold of material aspirations may weaken, and the love of God, and the solicitude for the Hereafter may grow stronger as a result of associating with them, and these qualities may also be clearly manifest in their adherents and disciples.

The seek after Ehsan should, therefore, provide himself first of all with a guide of the above calibre, and if he cannot do so on his own, he may take the advice of those who are expected to be helpful in the making of the choice. If after listening to their advice he finds himself drawn to a saint and this feeling increases further when he comes to know him personally, he ought to turn towards him with faith and confidence, seek guidance from him and carry out his instructions loyally as a wise patient does the instructions of his physician. In such a case there will arise no occasion for disappointment and God will surely reward him in some degree or another with the radiance of faith and the feeling of Ehsan by means of which one's religious state is brought to perfection, faith in the unseen becomes as clear and firm as faith in the visible phenomena, and obtaining full riddance from all manner of spiritual doubts and misgivings, one's existence truly becomes a saga of undivided love and devotion to God.

But, the path of Tasawwuf is a hard path. One who treads it has to pay dearly in terms of suffering and sacrifice. Only a devotee who can make it the sole object and mission of his life and is ready to forgo his desires, his comfort and even his life for the sake of it can hope to do it successfully. No wonder, therefore, that the travelers along this path have always been few.

There is however, a lesser grade of Ehsan which lies in the endeavour that on conjunction with loyalty to the fundamental articles of faith, one's worship and remembrance of God may attain a standard so no impart a real heavenly joy to the heart, the moral and practical spheres of one's life may become reasonably clean at the least, and repugmamce to evil and the longing for good deeds may come to one almost habitually. They yearning for these ends is present in a fair amount in our religious circles and most of the devotees now a days go to spiritual masters with the promotion of these ideals as their object.

The present writer is not at all competent to tender advice towards the realisation of the higher ideal embodying the true concept of Ehsan. For that one will have to go to an enlightened teacher, and a real saint. There, however, seems no harmand taking the liberty here of advancing some suggestions regarding the lesser grade of that spiritual state, specially when they do not contain anything apart from what he has learnt from the masters and are representative solely of the general principles of the Divine faith and the holy law. The writer is further persuaded by the hope that should the reader be encouraged to put the suggestions to his advantage by acting on them, he will become entitled to as much share in the Divine reward as the latter for it is a merciful law with the providence that " A person who guides another to virtue will be recompensed equally with him". It is in this hope and in this spirit alone that the following suggestions being offered.

(1) The most important thing is the soundness and integrity of faith. If there is a defect in the basic structure of a person's faith, for example, if there is a trace of polytheism in his spiritual outlook, all his endeavors will come to nothing. Even if he fasted during the day devoted his nights to prayer throughout the year, it would avail him nothing. Hence, the initial condition is doctrinal purity and wholesomeness. What has been said in this connection in the preceding chapters of the book should be enough by way of general guidance.

(2) Care should be taken to learn the teachings and postulates of the religion, whether they appertain to matters like Namaz and Roza, which are obligatory for every one, or to the general conduct of life. The course that may be best suited to one's peculiar needs and circumstances should be adopted for this purpose.

(3) It is necessary to offer earnest repentance for sins of omission and commission committed in the way of God and for the life spent thus far in neglect and folly. It should also be resolved with all one's heart and the strength of will to carry out in future the Divine Commands scrupulously and lead a life of loyalty and devotion to God.

It should be remembered that God demands of his servants only what lies within them to do, and that, too, without involving themselves in any great difficulty. He never calls upon man to do a thing that may be beyond his capacity or endurance. There is, in fact, so much regard for convenience in religion that if it may be hard for a person to stand up for prayer due to illness, he is permited to offer it up in the sitting posture or even while lying in bed. In the same way, he is allowed to forego the fasts Ramzan if he be ill or in a journey. The same is the case with the other duties of religion also.........It is, as such, totally wrong to suppose that to live upto the requirements of the faith is a highly taxing business. This belief is due wholly to lack of will and absence of habit. If a person makes up his mind and lets the observance of religious postulates sink into himself as a settled tendency, he will soon see that there will be no peace for him otherwise.

(4) Mere mortals that we are, we are a prey to numerous weaknesses. There is the Devil, always on the look out to lure us into sin, and there is our own sensual self. It is, therefore not inconceivable that in spite of our sincere desire to observe the Divine ordinances and refrain from civil deeds, we may fail into error in a situation like this our attitude should be to seek the forgiveness of God as soon as we become morally aware of the infringement and resolve not to be guilty of it again Repentance at the commission of a sin. Provided that it is genuine, not only erases its efects altogather but also wins for one the love and pleasure of God. As the Quran says. "God loves those who seek forgiveness after committing a sin."

If the infringement be of a nature as to involve a sin against man also, like cruelty; injustice, back-biting. violation of or encroachment upon the rights of others it will be necessary to make appropriate amends to the aggrieved for the misdeed in addition to seeking the forgiveness of God. We have already referred in the chapter on Monetary dealings and social conduct, to the Prophet's (Peace be upon him) Tradition that on the last day there will be people with a huge stock of Namaz, Roza, Zakat, and Haj to their credit, but, side by side with it, they will also be carrying heavy load of wrongs perpetrated on their fellowmen. The good acts of such people will then be allotted to those against whom they had transgressed, and, if the claims of the latter will still remain unsatisfied, the transgressors will be thrown into the Hell, all their praying and worshipping notwithstanding.

(5) The significance good morals command in faith and the crucial role they play in the spiritual evolution of man have been amply discussed in a previous chepter It should be a primary concern with all the votaries of God and religion to adorn themselves with the best of morals. But since moral behaviour is closely related to one's innat disposition and personality, its cleansing and reformation is more difficult than that of the other sphers of our activity. As a general rule, one is to exert oneself to the utmost and assume deliberately even though one might not be actually in possession of them the moral virtues, such as, humility, mildness, affability, love, compassion, patience, contentment, generosity, selfnegation and sicerity and good will towards others, and avoide the opposite qualities like vanity, passion, stinginess, greed, jealousy, rejoicing at the misfortunes of others, and selfishness. Insha Allah, in due course. one's personality will get cast into the new mould. A Tradition of the Prophet (Peace be upon him) assures that, "He who will assume chastity an effort. God will make him contented; he who will assume forbearance with an effort. God will make him forbearing." It is said that once a Companion complained to the Prophet (Peace be upon him) of his own hard-heartedness upon which the Prophet (Peace be upon him) advised him to make a habit of stroking gently the heads of the orphans. It was a remedial measure of identical style. Other moral healers have also attested to the efficacy of this method.

(6) Care should be taken to observe the prescribed modes of worship, specially the Namaz, in as ideal a way as possible, and also to keep up the Nafl Prayers. Among the supererogatory prayers the Tahajjud is the most valuable. Worship, whether it takes the physical or the financial form or be it a mixed one and whether it is compulsory or super erogatory, is definitely the greatest source of spiritual progress and access to God.

(7) The next thing is to make the recitation of the Quran and Zikr a part of one's daily routine.

It is suggested that the confession, Subhan Allah wa Alhamd-o-Lillah wa La-Ilah-a-Ilallah wa Allah-o-Akbar, and the Istighfar and Durood Shareef be recited a hundred times each, morning and evening. During the recitation, attention should be focussed on the meanings of the words and phrases occurring in them, and the heart should also be made to participate in the task. It should also be confidently hoped during the act that, a part from the Divine recompense and reward that would accrue from the deed, one's soul might as well permeated with the radiance of God's name as a result of the auspiciousness of the phrases recited.

Moreover, what is popularly known as Tasbeeh-i-Fatima (Subhan Allah, 33 times; Al-Hamd-o-Lillah, 33 times; Allah-o-Akbar, 34 times) may be recited, as for as possible, regularly after each Namaz. It does not take more than two minutes, and with a little care, every one can it. On retiring to bed for the night the above Tasbeeh may be said out once again, and three times the Kalima-i-Istighfar,viz., Astaghfirullah-il-Lazi La-Ilaha-Illa Hual Hayul Qaiyum wa Atoob-o-Ilaih.

Asuitable time may be fixed for the daily recitation of the Quran. The length of the recitation is not important; it may only be a section or two. What really matters is the regularity and the correctness of the recitation and the feelings of earnestness and reverence with it is done.

The aspirants are further advised to cultivate the habit of bringing the name of God on their tongues, in one from or another, at brief intervals during their hours of occupation, as for instance, by uttering Ya Allah, La Ilah-a-Illallah, or the full Kalima or Istighfar every little while. After the period of conscious finding a place in the select circle of those who have been spoken of in the Quran in these words: Men whom neither traffic nor merchandise can divert from the remembrance of God. (Nur , 5)

(8) After the Isha prayers in the night or at any other convenient hour, four or five minutes may be reserved for what among the Sufis is called 'meditation of death' . During these moments, a person should contemplate on what will occur to him when death will strike him down, which is an absolute certainly ; then what will his condition be when he will be buried in the grave after the necessary rituals of bathing and shrouding have been gone through and the funeral service has been said; what will he do in that dark, lonely call of the grave? How is he to pass the long period of suspense and agony intervening between his death and the day of final judgement if he does not prove worthy of Divine favour and forgiveness? And, finally, on the Last Day, what will his state be when the balance sheet of his conduct on the earth will be presented to God and He will pass His judgement? (These events should be visualized mentally as if one was actually going through them at the time.) Afterwards, he should pray to God with urgent solicitation for forgiveness, for death in a state of faith, and mercy in the life beyond.

(9) In worship, in Zikr and in all other acts of virtue, the eye should be solely on Divine approbation and recompense, in the earning of which full trust should be reposed. This, in religious terminology, is called, Iman-o-Ehtisab (i.e.Faith and Censorship). Two Rakats of Namaz offered up in this spirit are more precious than a hundred without it. With this as the permanent attitude of the mind, even the minutest trifles of life, like eating and drinking and the carrying out of the every day social and family obligations, get elevated to an act of prayer.

(10) The making of sulemn entreaties to God for one's spiritual as well as legitimate woldly needs and aspirations is not only an effective means to their realization, but also a high act of worship by itself. A Tradition reads "Dua is the essence and marrow of worship. And another says." Upon whom the doors of Dua have opened. upon him the doors of mercy have opened. A votary should make it a point to supplicate to God with special care and ardency after each Namaz and at other suitable times believing in it to be a most efficacious means of earning Divine pleasure and gaining access unto him. Among the innumerable bounties conferred upon the Prophet (Peace be upon him) by God, a most exclusive was the endowment of his prayers with unique depth and fevor. Hundreds of his prayers are preserved in the books of Traditions and they are imbued with an extraordinary effulgence and auspiciousness . These Prayers have been assembled togather by the scholars to make a separate volume. The volumes compiled by Mulla Ali Qari, called Al-Hizbul Azam, and Hazrat Thanvi,under the title of Maqbool, have the special advantage of containing the Urdu Translation of the prayers and can be obtained casily. Both of them have been divided into seven sections to provide one section for each day of the week. A section from one of these volumes may be read every day.

These ten suggestions will. Insha Allah, suffice for the seekers of religious and spiritual correction and reform, subject, of course, to the condition that they are acted upon diligently and honestly. But there are people who are temperamentally incapable of being profited by the mere reading of a book. For them the advice, again, is to give themselves the benefit of the company of a living guide.

The story of Paul from Stephen Baxter's novel 'Vacuum Diagrams'

These are excerpts, even the seemingly continuous portions are just bits copied and pasted.

He was - discorporeal; It was as if the jewel of consciousness which had lain behind his eyes had been plucked out of his body and flung into space.

Driven by curiosity he began to experiment with his awareness. Physically he was composed of a tight knot of quantum wave functions; now, cautiously, he began to unravel that knot, to allow the focus of his consciousness to slide over spacetime. Soon it was as if he was flying over the arch of the cosmos, unbound by limits of space or time.

Paul saw how the great star system rotated as one, as if solid. The Galaxy's visible matter was no more than a fraction of its total bulk; a vast, invisible halo of dark matter swathed the bright spiral, so that the light matter lay at the bottom of a deep gravity pit, turning like an oil drop in a puddle. Now Paul climbed out of that huge, deep gravity well and passed through the halo of dark matter. The ghostly stuff barely impinged on his awareness. Photinos - the dark matter particles - interacted with normal matter only through the gravitational force, so that even to Paul the halo was like the faintest mist.

Cautiously, clinging to his wave-function ropes, Paul sank into the dark matter ocean.

Currents of photinos swept past him. The moving masses distorted spacetime, and the density was high enough for him to perceive vast structures gliding through his focus of awareness. Gradually he came to understand the structure of his Universe.

At this point I'll have to summarize what's going on in the story. It goes into dark matter vs. (baryonic) matter. Life (disembodied bird-like creatures made of photinos) evolved in dark matter around the turbulence patterns created by the gravity wells of scattered stars. These creatures settled into the stars where they could subsist. But when stars exploded (all the time) they were in danger. So they went on a program of purposely leeching energy out of the universe's stars to put the entire thing into a stable "twilight" phase.

The top dogs of the baryonic world, the Xeelee, figured out what was up and started to fight back. Though they could pick out key areas (stars) to attack (explode them with "starbreaker" weapons), the dark matter life (the photino birds) could just go right past all their defenses undetected (the only interaction between their world and ours being gravity, a really weakly manifested force by our standards).

There's lots of time travel here (antiparticles going backwards through time, key part of the story). The Xeelee created a disembodied hivemind version of themselves ("anti-Xeelee") which began their new plan to colonize the entire early universe in one giant causal loop. They altered their own evolution and equipped themselves for the fight before the war ever started. They also began construction of a giant escape route from the universe in case they lost the war. Meanwhile the other baryonic life, like humans, targeted the Xeelee having no clue what was really going on. They were driven by more petty goals of trying to be "top dog" among baryonic life. Humans made a lot of progress, they even evolved versions of themselves that could subsist in stars and eventually they started chucking entire stars at the huge Xeelee contraption being built throughout the universe's history (a huge ring, the escape route). They upheaved a big chunk of the universe and progressed to the point of becoming a thorn in the Xeelee's side. This forced the Xeelee to deal with humanity. They wiped them out, imprisoned a few in a "phantom zone" like tesseract in the location of where Earth once was. And then there was Paul. He was a human who had evolved the ability to perceive things on the quantum mechanical level (spacelike separated events). The anti-Xelee thought it was cute and took him. Then woke him up before it left, collapsing back into the vacuum.

So this all above is after Paul wakes up as this disembodied consciousness subsisting on turbulent convection currents of matter wave functions. In fact, it's kind of like the star child at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. In fact, the entire story is very obviously a homage to that influential work.

At first Paul described to himself the places he visited, the relics he found, in human terms; but as time passed and his confidence grew he removed this barrier of words. He allowed his consciousness to soften further, to dilute the narrow human perception to which he had clung. All about him were quantum wave functions. They spread from stars and planets, sheets of probability that linked matter and time. They were like spider-webs scattered over the ageing galaxies; they mingled, reinforced and cancelled each other, all bound by the implacable logic of the governing wave equations.

The functions filled spacetime and they pierced his soul. Exhilarated, he rode their gaudy brilliance through the hearts of ageing stars.

He relaxed his sense of scale, so that there seemed no real difference between the width of an electron and the broad sink of a star's gravity well. His sense of time telescoped, so that he could watch the insect-like, fluttering decay of free neutrons - or step back and watch the grand, slow decomposition of protons themselves...

Soon there was little of the human left in him. Then, at last, he was ready for the final step.

After all, he reflected, human consciousness itself was an artificial thing. He recalled Green, on the Sugar Lump, glee-fully describing tests which proved beyond doubt that the motor impulses initiating human actions could often precede the willing of those actions by significant fractions of a second. Humans had always been adrift in the Universe, creatures of impulse and a causality, explaining their behaviour to each other with ever more complex models of awareness. Once they had believed that gods animated their souls, fighting their battles through human form. Later they had evolved the idea of the self-aware, self-directed consciousness. Now Paul saw that it had all been no more than an idea, a model, an illusion behind which to hide. Why should he, perhaps the last human, cling to such outmoded comforts?

There was no cognition, he realized. There was only perception.

With the equivalent of a smile he relaxed. His awareness sparkled and subsided.

He was beyond time and space. The great quantum functions which encompassed the Universe slid past him like a vast, turbulent river, and his eyes were filled with the grey light which lay behind all phenomena.

Space had never been empty.

Within the fight spacetime limits of the Uncertainty Principle, 'empty' vacuum was filled with Virtual particle sets which blossomed from nothing, flew apart, recombined and vanished as if they had never been - all too rapidly for the laws of mass-energy conservation to notice.

Once, human scientists had called it the seething vacuum. And now it was inhabited.

The Qax was a creature of turbulent space, its 'cells' a shifting succession of Virtual particle sets. Physically its structure extended over many yards - a rough sphere gigantic in subatomic terms containing a complex of Virtual particle sets which stored terabits of data: of understanding, of memory stretching back over millions of years.

Like the shadow of a cloud the Qax cruised over turbulent space, seeking humans...

Note, the Qax got into a war with humans (and are probably more approximative of what we believe djinn are than Paul himself or the anti-Xeelee or the photino birds). They Humans won. Qax held a grudge until the end of time.

A long time later after the Xeelee had left and the universe was waning, the humans left in the little spacetime fold, the "phantom zone" like prison the Xeelee had made, stumbled out of their "cave". They had become primitive stone-age types but knew stories about the Xeelee war and stars and all that. Most of it was gibberish to them. So they stumbled out into empty space with stars and the Xeelee had left a ship for them which woke up when it detected what happened.

But I get ahead of myself. The little phantom zone thing is referred to as the "Room" or "Eighth Room" (four dimensional hypersphere with a bunch of rooms, one of which opened into space).

There was a transparent box, half as tall again as a man. It hung in space, in orbit around a cooling white dwarf star, apparently forgotten and purposeless. It would have had no conceivable significance in the long twilight of the Universe

... if it had not occupied the site of Earth, the long-vanished original home of man, long consumed by its own sun.

A Qax had once visited the site. It was puzzled. The box was evidently one three-dimensional facet of a hypercube, extending into folded space. Perhaps it was a gateway, an interface to some pocket Universe. Such things had been constructed by the Xeelee elsewhere in the Galaxy. But why here, in the ruined cradle of humanity? The Qax had placed quantum-inseparability markers around the box. The Qax were linked to the markers by single quantum wave functions, ghostly threads that stretched across light years, and they had scattered millions of markers over the spaces once inhabited by humans.

At last the human called Teal walked into the box. He stared, open-mouthed, at the stars. He was gaunt, filthy, and dressed in treated tree-bark; a rope tied to his waist snaked around a corner and into another Universe. After some time the rope grew taut and Teal's limp form was hauled away.

The inseparability markers blared their warnings. A Qax hauled itself like a spider along the quantum web to the box - but it arrived too late; the box was empty. The Qax hissed, settling into space like condensing mist.

With a patience born of millions of years it prepared to wait a little longer.

The event spread like a soft blue dye through the linked quantum phenomena which comprised Paul's being. At the site of Earth there was a human once more: but a human alone, weak, tired, close to dissolution. Paul, godlike, pondered the implications for an unimaginable interval.

Then he came to a decision. He reconstructed his awareness; a quantum jewel danced against the clear walls of the Eighth Room. History had resumed.

It is not true to say that Paul waited beside the Eighth Room after the brief appearance of the first human. Rather, he assigned a sub-component of his personality to monitor events within the Room, while he turned the rest of his multiplexed attention elsewhere. And it could not be said that Paul's patience was tested by the subsequent delay. After all he was largely independent of the constraints of time and space; and the galaxies were available for his study. And yet ...

And yet, when humans reappeared in the Eighth Room, it seemed to Paul that he had waited a very, very long time.

The humans stared at the star-strewn Universe and retreated in alarm. Paul was fascinated by their angular movements, their obviously limited viewpoints. How unimaginably constraining to have one's awareness bound into a box on a stalk of bone!

But as Paul continued to observe, memories of his own brief corporeal sojourn on the Sugar Lump stirred, oddly sharp.

Godlike, uncertain of his own reaction, he watched men, women and children talk, touch each other, laugh.

He noticed the ragged, filthy clothes, the protruding ribs, the ice-damaged skin. He pondered the meaning of these things.

Eventually a grey-haired woman entered the Room. Her behaviour seemed different; she walked slowly to the crystal wall and stared out steadily at the stars.

Paul focused his attention so that it was as if he were gazing into her eyes.

The face was fine-boned, the skin drawn tight over the bones, and age had brought webs of wrinkles around the eyes and mouth. The skin was scarred, the lips cracked and bleeding. This was a tired face. But the head was held erect, the eyes locked on a Universe which must be utterly baffling.

And behind those eyes a quantum grain of consciousness lay like an unripened seed, shaped by millions of years. The woman left the Room; Paul, oddly shaken, reflected. Over the next few days the humans investigated their crystal box. They touched the walls, staring through them with blank incomprehension. They were clearly aware of the spacecraft which lay waiting just beyond the Room's walls: they pointed, knelt so they could see under it, and occasionally one of them would paw at the walls; but there was no pattern to their searches, no system; they deployed no tools beyond fingertips and tongues. But they showed no frustration. They were like children in an adult world; they simply did not expect to be able to make things work.

At length there was a flurry of activity at the brightly-lit doorway. The humans were goading some sort of animal into the Room: here came a barrel-like head, a broad, solid body covered by shaggy fur. The humans punched the beast's flanks, tugged at the hair above its trembling eyes; the creature, obviously terrified, was almost immovable. But at last it stood in the centre of the Room, surrounded by sweating, triumphant humans. It looked to left, right, and finally down at its feet. Paul imagined its terror as it found itself standing on apparent emptiness light years deep. The great head rotated like a piece of machinery and the beast scurried backward through the door, bowling some of the humans over. The people ran after it, shouting and waving their arms. Paul, bemused, withdrew for some time. These people were clearly helpless.

Crushed by uncounted generations in their four-dimensional cage, they had lost not only understanding but, it seemed to him, also the means by which to acquire a greater understanding. The Eight Rooms and the waiting ship were obviously intended to be found and used by the humans. But these ragged remnants were incapable of working this out.

This rabble was the relic of a race which had once had the audacity to challenge the Xeelee themselves. The strands of Paul's persona sang with contempt and he considered abandoning the humans, returning to his contemplation.

... But then he remembered the grey woman, the quantum jewel which had sparkled even within its battered setting of bone and dirt, and his contempt was stilled. Even fallen, these were still humans. Slowly, almost hesitantly, he returned to the Eighth Room.

Now we pick up with the humans.

She studied the craft beyond the wall. It was some thirty feet long - nearly three times the size of the Room - and shaped like a fat, rounded disc. It was utterly black, showing only by starshine highlights. It was completely beyond her experience ... but she knew what it was. Teal had told her what to expect, with his strange tales of men travelling among the stars.

This was the ship. It was a vessel to take them ... somewhere else. (Here her imagination failed.) The Eight Rooms were merely a way station. But if they were to go on they had to find a way through these walls! She laid her palms flat and passed them over the warm, crystalline stuff. But this was not a teepee; there were no flaps to open. She slapped the wall in exasperation.

The grey-haired woman was frustrated! She wanted to explore! Paul exulted. He slid quantum tendrils into her skull.

... She spread her hand wide and folded the fingers forward so that they formed a kind of cylinder; then she pressed her fingertips against the wall, just - here ...

Erwal gasped and staggered away from the wall. She stared at her hands, flexing them and turning them over, as if to reassure herself that they were still under her control. It had been like a waking dream.

So with this series of posessions, Paul showed her what to do to open the box and enter the Xeelee ship. It was kind of like a vision he put in her head. She goes back, gets the rest, they enter the ship. They gawk at everything like children.

The humans stepped cautiously through the circular opening and stood, incongruous in their furs and leggings, at the centre of the ship's single chamber. Chairs of some dark, soft material lay scattered over the deck. The chairs were fixed in place but the humans quickly discovered that they would, with a judicious rock backwards, convert into couches. Soon the children were swarming over the devices, rocking back and forth.

Paul, watching, considered this. These chairs were so clearly designed for humans; in fact, of course, the whole life-system was human-based. And yet the rest of the ship showed few of the characteristics of human technology. Paul's attention foci prowled. The chamber occupied by the humans was a flat cylinder which, Paul realized, filled most of the ship's volume; its drive units, life support and other equipment must be embedded in the hull. And when he studied the paper-thin hull itself he found space-wings furled into tight coils within the body; and he discovered how it would be possible to expand collapsed compartments in the hull to accommodate hundreds, thousands of people. Sadly this wasn't necessary. Slowly the humans colonized the comparatively spacious environs of the ship. They spread their foul blankets over the floor, argued over occupancy of the couches, and even tried to goad the poor animal through the Eighth Room and into the ship. Soon they were hanging up their blankets to separate the chamber into a series of private cells.

The ship meant no more to them than would a comfortable shack, Paul realized, amused and irritated.

Only the grey-haired woman showed any continuing curiosity in the ship itself. She prowled the walls, touching, staring, studying. There were panels which showed scenes of stars, but they were not simple windows; they showed images which were magnified, inverted, or distorted, as if seen sideways in a reflecting sheet of ice. Other panels, larger in area, coated the lower walls like silver paint. And to a table fixed beneath an array of panels were attached devices which Paul instantly recognized as waldoes, tailored for human hands. Obviously this was the ship's control system. With a mixture of fascination and dread Paul watched the woman approach the strange, mitten-like objects; she poked at them tentatively, and once even appeared to be contemplating slipping her hands inside. But she backed away nervously and moved on.

Paul, with the wave-function equivalent of a sigh, resigned himself to waiting a little longer.

Paul gives her another little posession-vision of how to operate the ship. Little bits and pieces here and there over the following days. They learned how to heal themselves, get food, etc from the ship (experimenting by sticking their hands into random slots).

The woman labels this presence the "Friend" and Paul increases the urgency of the visions which tell her to get the ship moving.

Terrified, she resisted the dreams, but they battered at her awareness like snowflakes. Even sleep was no escape. She sensed an urgency behind the dreams, an anxiety; but there was also tolerance and kindness. Obviously the Friend badly wanted her to slide her hands into the mittens, to submit to this awful falling sensation. But she felt that if she failed to overcome her terror the Friend would stay and help her care for her people, here in the Eight Rooms and the ship, as long as they lived.

She finally listens.

Arke came bursting into the chamber. He stared around wildly, sweat sparkling on his bald scalp. 'Erwal! What are you doing to the ship?' She turned. 'What are you talking about?' He gestured, swinging his arms through wide arcs. 'You can see it from the Eighth Room. The ship has grown wings! They must be a hundred miles long and they're as black as night...'

They're still too afraid to go anywhere.

Unsophisticated the humans might be, but they were not primitive, Paul saw clearly. They had been shaped by the habitation of a Galaxy, over millions of years. The woman, for all her fear and tentativeness, had no difficulty with grasping the essential concepts - that the object she sat in was a ship, which could be directed through immense spaces - despite the fact that such things were so far beyond her own experience. It was as if humans had evolved for spaceflight, as if the imaginative concepts required were embedded in deep mental muscles in the woman's brain - atrophied perhaps, but now stirring anew.

Paul tried to analyse his own reactions. Not long ago he had been near the peak of his sophistication, his awareness multiplexed and his senses sweeping across the Galaxy ... Now he was spending so much time locked into a crude single-viewpoint self-awareness model in order to communicate with the pilot woman that he was in danger of degenerating.

Why was he doing this? Why did he care? He shook off his introspection. There were greater issues to resolve. He had focused so long on the question of teaching the humans to fly the ship that he had neglected to consider where they were meant to take it. Already he sensed the most advanced one, the woman pilot, was beginning to frame such questions. He must consider.

He withdrew from the woman. (There was a sharp, bittersweet sense of loss.) Then his awareness multiplied, fragmented, and spread like the wings of the ship, and the small pain vanished.

The watching Qax had become aware of the quantum-function creature through its interaction with the primitives, and had only slowly come to recognize it as an advanced-form human. Now the evolved human had gone. The Qax considered. The primitive humans were helpless. There would be time to collect them later. The Qax departed, following the evolved human.

Paul brooded over the wreckage of the Solar System.

Since the retreat of the Xeelee the Universe had been lost to baryonic life forms. The photino birds had not yet completed their vast conversion programmes - stars were still shining, the Ring not yet closed - but at last, in a time not very distant, the final light would be extinguished and the baryonic Universe would grow uniform and cold, a stable home for the photino birds.

A shipful of primitive humans had no possibility of survival in a Universe occupied by such a force.

Therefore the humans would have to follow the Xeelee. Perhaps this escape had been the intention of the Xeelee all along, Paul mused. Perhaps they had provided many other junior baryonic races with similar lifeboats', so they could follow the Xeelee to a place where baryonic life was still possible.

He saw it now. His humans would have to use their ship to cross space and pass through Bolder's Ring.

And Paul would have to guide them there. He felt a surge of determination, of anticipation... And of fear.

Around his decision the diffuse cloud that comprised Paul's awareness coalesced. He prepared to return to the ship -But there was something in the way. Paul stopped. He assembled awareness foci to consider the new barrier, confused. The wave-function guides he was following had been distorted, even terminated, and -He was being watched.

Paul froze, shocked; his sub-personalities condensed into something almost as coherent and limited as his old corporeal self.

There was something here: something aware and able to study him ... and to stop him.

As if trembling, he tried to respond. The data that formed his being was stored in a lattice of quantum wave functions; now he distorted that lattice deliberately to indicate an omission. A lack. A question. - Who are you? -

The answer was imposed directly on his awareness; it was like being exposed to a raw, vicious dream, to a million years of venom.

- Qax -

While this was going on, two of the humans figured out how to use the ship. They figured out the diagram of the solar system and visited some of the other planets or what was left of them (the thing was pretty much on autopilot).

A box had closed around Paul.

Of course it was not possible for Paul to be subjected to a simple physical confinement; nevertheless the wave-function world lines which constituted his being - and his link to Sol - were bent to the point of breaking by the immaterial walls around him. He couldn't move.

Shock and surprise surged through him. Of all the strange things he had seen in his travels this was the first to endanger him directly. With a startling shift of perspective he realized that he had come to think of himself as a god, an observer, invulnerable, above interference. Now he felt an overpowering urge to retreat into the cave of a simple quasi-human self-model ... but if he went that way, madness and terror would surely follow.

Striving for order he set up limited sub-personalities to study his prison. Data began to reach him, and slowly he came to understand.

He was trapped in the focal zone of a radiation of an enormously high frequency. The zone was a sphere only a few feet across; nonlinear effects causing energy to cascade into lower frequencies must have made the zone glow like a jewel. Individual photons darted through the focus like birds, their wavelength a hundred billion billion times smaller than the radius of an electron; the short wavelength implied immense energy, so that each photon was a potent little bullet of energy mass .. . in fact, so massive that each photon was almost a quantum black hole. And it was this that was confining him. Black holes cut the world lines of which he was composed; it was as if a corporeal human were confined by a web of a billion burning threads. So it was an effective cage. The Qax had taken him. That left one question: why?

Calm now, he rearranged the data strung along his wave-function components so that the omissions represented by the question were clear and sharp. He waited. He did not trouble to measure the time.

... The Qax returned.

Paul rapidly assembled a set of multiple attention foci. There was a more coherent feel to the sleet of singularity radiation now; in a systematic fashion the frequencies, phases and paths of the powerful quanta were being modified by their passage through his being. He was being interrogated, he realized: each photon was taking a few more bits of data from him, no doubt for study by his captor. It was a data dump; he was being read as if he were some crude storage device.

He felt no resentment; nor did he try to hide. What was the point? His captor had to be aware already of the little band of humans skimming their crude ship around Sol's gravity well. His best hope was to let the Qax learn, wait for some kind of feedback.

But he kept his question representations in place. Slowly he discerned a further evolution in the hail of photons. He spread his awareness as wide as he dared, and, like a man straining to hear distant fragments of conversation, he listened. He caught glimpses of the Qax itself, elusive impressions of something fast, quick-thinking, physically compact; the radiation cage imprisoning him implied a command of the deepest structure of the physical Universe... . And he heard hatred.

The brutal fact of it was shocking, overpowering. The Qax hated him; it hated him because he was human, and that loathing warped the path of every photon that tore through him. The hatred dominated his captor's existence and was harnessed to a determination to expunge every trace of humanity from the Universe.

Paul felt awe at the crime that had caused such enmity across a desert of time.

The unequal flow of data continued for an immeasurable period. Then -

A change. The boundary conditions of his photon cage were being altered, so that the region of spacetime which restrained him was translated ... He was being moved.

Now there was another component to the complex rain of photons. Paul strained. There was another individual out there; something huge, vast, stately, with thought processes on timescales of hours, so that its slow speculations rang like gongs . .. And yet it too was a Qax; there was such a similarity to the structure of Paul's captor that the giant surely belonged to, or at least originated from, the same species. And still the drizzle of inferred data was not resolved; there were unattributed overtones, like higher harmonics on a violin string.

There were more of them out there, he realized, too many for him to discriminate as individuals, a vast hierarchy of Qax looming over him, inspecting him like immense biologists over some splayed insect. They existed on every imaginable scale of space and time, and yet they remained a single species - scattered, multiply evolved, but still essentially united. And they all hated him. The photon cage disappeared.

Freed, Paul felt like a spider whose web has been cut. Rapidly he assessed the few quantum strands which still linked him to Sol, the Ring. Spider-like, he set to work to build on those threads.

With a small part of him he looked around. He was no longer in the Solar System. He saw a brown dwarf, a Jovian world ten times the size of Jupiter; it circled a shrunken white star. His focus of awareness orbited a few hundred miles above the planet's cloud tops. Studying the clouds he saw turbulent cells on all scales, feeding off each other in a great fractal cascade of whirling energy. A massive brown-red spot, a self-organizing island of stability, sailed through the roiling storms.

He mused over the spectacle, puzzled as to why he had been brought here. The energy for all that weather must come from the planet's interior and its rotation, rather than the wizened star. This monster world was self-contained and complete in itself: it didn't need the rest of the Universe. In fact, Paul reflected wryly, this world should be safe even from the depredations of the photino birds. While the dark matter foe turned stars to dust this world and billions like it would spin on, a container of massive but purposeless motion, until the energy dissipated by its huge weather systems caused its core to cool, its rotation to grind slowly down. Then at last it would come to rest, its only function being to serve as a gravitational seedbed for a photino bird Ghost world. The planet was harmless, dull and old; even that cloud spot might be older than mankind, he realized -Again he was being watched. A vast speculation thrilled through him. The huge Qax he had detected earlier, with thoughts like hours ...

It was here. In the spot system. The whole self-organizing complex contained the awareness of a Qax, and it was studying him. He opened himself. New data trickled into his awareness

-

During his studies on the Sugar Lump Paul had learned of the history of the Qax. Paul's captor, constructed of the Virtual particle sets of the seething vacuum, resembled its forebears - the odd, vast creatures who had spawned as constructs of convection cells in a boiling ocean - as a laser rifle resembles a piece of chipped stone. But it could trace its consciousness back to that boiling sea.

And it remembered the human, Jim Bolder, who had once caused the Qax sun to nova.

Paul, his awareness tightly focused on the Jovian's roiling storms, began to piece together an understanding of the future plans of the Qax.

Unlike most baryonic species the Qax would be able to coexist with the dark matter photino birds. The Qax inhabited the turbulent, twilit depths of low-energy systems. It would not matter to the Jovian's Qax parasite, for example, if, thanks to the photino birds, its host's distant star failed to shine; as long as the planet turned and its inner core glowed with heat the Qax could survive.

So the Qax might become the last baryonic inhabitants of the Universe.

Eventually, though, the energy sources which fuelled the turbulence sustaining the Qax would everywhere run dry. This Jovian would grow cold, exhausted by its own weather. Then, at last, it would be time for the Qax to leave. There would be a second Qax exodus, on a far vaster scale than the first, as the race followed the Xeelee through their Ring to a fresh cosmos. Paul speculated wildly on the container vessel which could store a consciousness based on the rhythms of galactic orbits ...

But the Qax weren't yet troubled by such problems. They were aware that the photino birds' actions had doomed the Ring. The Ring would close eventually; having won the Universe the photino birds were sealing themselves into it. But, the Qax judged, there was plenty of time.

And besides, the Qax had another project to complete. A loose end.

The final destruction of humanity.

The Qax had waited through the humans' brief, vainglorious morning as they grew to dominate the species around them - only to waste their strength in the absurd assaults on the Xeelee. Eventually the Xeelee had gently sealed the majority of the surviving humans in the box-world beyond the Eight Rooms. Some small colonies of people in various forms had survived, however, and the Qax had watched as, one by one, these remnants dwindled and expired.

Paul suspected that the Qax had not been reluctant to speed this process.

Now the Universe seemed at last empty of humans. But after the actions of Jim Bolder the Qax judged that even a small group of humans represented a risk to the long-term survival of the Qax. So the Qax would ensure that humans would never again rise to threaten the species with their unpredictable plans. They waited.

It was clear that there were more humans within and beyond the Rooms, still inaccessible to the Qax; and it was also clear that the emerging humans could have only one plan of action: to take the Xeelee ship across the lost Universe to Holder's Ring. For that last voyage, surely, all the humans would emerge from the protection of the Rooms; all of humanity would be contained in a single, fragile craft, undertaking an exodus with ironic parallels to the evacuation forced on the Qax so long ago.

Then the Qax would strike.

Paul considered. The Qax's enmity to humanity had endured for millions of years; it transcended hatred, even calculation, and had metamorphosed into a species imperative.

It was ironic that until his entrapment by the Qax Paul had imagined that the humans' greatest source of danger would be the rampant photino birds. Now he found it difficult to envisage how the little band of humans could run the gauntlet of this ancient enemy and survive their passage to the Ring.

His scheme, his sub-units concurred, was as unlikely and improbable as any of the wild ventures undertaken by humans in the past. Its only merit was that it was better than allowing the Qax simply to crush the Xeelee ship.

His plan hinged on the fact that the humans faced two dangers: from the Qax and from the dark matter photino birds. The photino birds were vastly more powerful, but the Qax, with their unswervable intent, represented the greater immediate danger. Clearly the humans could not fight through either - let alone both - of these great powers to the goal of the Ring. Well, then: the foes must be diverted.

So he tries to summon the remnants of the anti-Xeelee to where the Qax are, the photino birds immediately take interest. They think the Xeelee are coming back and speed up work on destroying Bolder's Ring, the Xeelee escape route.

The Qax realize they have to stop them.

This gives Paul enough time to get back to the humans. The woman manages to get a bunch of the villagers to agree to leave. A few decide to stay behind.

The people who chose to go with the woman settle into the ship, she sits at the controls, then Paul floods her with instructions and the ship takes off jumping across the universe on autopilot to the Ring.

Paul finds his own way to the ring only to find the photino birds quickly trying to destroy the weakest part of it. The Ring is millions of light years big and takes up a huge chunk of the universe. It spins around a singularity and prevents an event horizon from forming. That's the gateway out.

The Qax show up and throw a huge star through hyperspace at the photino birds. As it hurtles towards the creatures, ripping them apart in the process and about to impact with where the birds had congregated, the humans in the Xeelee ship finally pops out of hyperspace.

Other Qax-controlled ships (left behind by other species) show up and start firing starbreaker beams at the birds.

The Xeelee ship carrying the humans goes through the portal as the birds overcome the Qax and break the Ring. The photino birds return triumphantly to whatever it was they were doing while the remaining Qax retreat to their new homeworld.

The original universe eventually decays and the last bit of hydrogen fuel runs out. The remaining Qax and Paul huddle together around a cooling proton star.

In the new universe, the Xeelee ship uses its starbreaker beams to form a mini sun out of the elements. Then a planet, and then in a process mimicking Genesis or the Creation by God (but taking about a year and a half) it develops the planet to be just right for humans and using human DNA populates it with random creatures then sets the people down on it.