FATE OF THE TRUTH-TELLER

Identity at Risk

NAPOLEON HILL, an American self-help author, mentions an interesting true story in his best-selling book The Law of Success. A Greenland Eskimo was taken on one of the American North Polar expeditions. Later, as a reward for faithful service, he was brought to New York for a short visit. He was filled with amazement and wonder at the miracles of sight and sound that he saw there. When he returned to his native village, he told stories of buildings that rose to the very face of the sky; of tram cars, which he described as houses that moved along a track; of artificial lights and all the other dazzling concomitants of the metropolis.

His people looked at him coldly and walked away, and forthwith throughout the village he was dubbed Sagdluk, meaning the Liar. In shame, he carried this name to his grave. Long before his death his original name was entirely forgotten. The simple minds of the Eskimos were unable to visualize the startling pictures drawn by Sagdluk, so they simply rejected the truth.

Just as the Eskimo was made to see a hitherto unknown world, so God gave the prophets a glimpse of the world that lies beyond death. They came to their peoples and conveyed to them the truths that God had embedded in their consciousness. But since these truths belonged to an unseen world, which man was unable to visualize, people dubbed them madmen and liars (QURAN 11: 27). This was the fate of all the prophets of God. (QURAN 36: 30)

Indeed, every truth-teller in the history of man has had to tread the same rocky path. In this world, a veil of falsehood clouds the truth. Man has not seen the world in which truth will come into its own. The prophets were made to see that world before its coming so that they could warn man of its advent. But they met with disbelief from people who had seen nothing beyond the world which meets the eye.