THE LAW OF LIMITS

If you take a square piece of paper and start folding it, you will only be able to fold it up to eight times. After that, the ninth or tenth fold becomes impossible. This principle applies whether your paper is the size of a postcard, a daily newspaper, or a very large poster. In every case, your folding will stop at eight folds. It won’t go beyond that. This is the Law of Eight, established by nature. No change to it is possible. Similarly, in every area of life, there are limiting laws that restrict activities at a certain point. Even the most powerful person cannot break these limits.

In this world, an atomic bomb can only be dropped once; no one can repeatedly use atomic bombs. People are free to say cruel words, but turning those words into reality isn’t possible for them. Someone may demolish a single place of worship, but they can’t destroy all places of worship. A person might gain power through negative slogans, but no amount of power is enough to make those slogans historically significant.

This unchangeable law of nature is the greatest guarantee of peace and security for every person in this world. As long as this world exists, this law will inevitably stay in force. It will only stop existing when the world itself ends, and no one remains to speak cruel words that scare people or to create malicious schemes that cause insecurity among them.

This immutable law of nature, in its quiet voice, is saying, “O people, save yourselves from your own injustice, for there is no one outside of you who can target you with your own oppression and corruption.”

This very Law of Eight is called the Law of Repulsion (Daf’) in the Quran (2:251; 22:40), meaning the law of restraint that forces everything to stay within a set limit.