Maulana Wahiduddin Khan | The Sunday Guardian | March 26, 2017, p. 12

A successful lawyer from UP decided to buy property in an expensive locality. One of his friends asked him why he shifted there, to which he answered: "Because I do not want my Mercedes to be parked next to a Santro."The above lawyer said this because he considered his car merely a shopping item. He only knew that he had the money to buy a Mercedes and so he purchased it by paying the required amount. But this is greatly underestimating the matter. In truth, the car is a great divine gift.God created human beings, then He provided them with natural vehicles such as horses, camels, mules and others for travel. This was the first phase of vehicles. God knew that this would not be sufficient for man. So, He kept another thing in potential terms in the natural world. This potential was that of mechanical vehicles. God gave man a mind. By utilizing his mind, man made many discoveries about nature. In this way, he discovered the wheel. Then, after long research he developed wheeled vehicles such as the bicycle and cars.

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Modern vehicles are God-given, in terms of potential. And since many countries and their citizens were involved in turning this natural potential into actual, these vehicles are also a gift from humanity. If a person ponders over this entire history, he will first of all acknowledge the Creator. This is known as shukr, or gratitude, in religious terms. Keeping this entire history into mind, one will realize that a car or a vehicle is God's great bounty, and in making it reach the commercial level, the entire humanity played an important role. When one thinks this way, one will acknowledge God the most and then acknowledge the humanity. One will realize that the money through which one has purchased the car is of indeed very negligible value.