Advanced Industries in This Age

It may be said in answer: perhaps the secret in that returns to what divine wisdom has decreed—of the human being’s reaching what he has reached in this time, not before it—of the causes. That is because mankind, in these two centuries, has multiplied until they almost filled the face of the globe, and the primitive methods, at that time, in the field of agriculture and industry were not able to provide the necessary needs of human beings of food, clothing, bedding, vessels, and conveyances—so Allah, Exalted is He, the Knowing, the Wise, inspired the human intellect toward making what covers the need of human beings in all the fields they need.
- So, Allah inspired them to discover electricity, and inspired them to employ it in industry in general; then He, Exalted is He, opened for them the doors of inspiration until they reached what they reached of advanced industries in the field of agriculture and irrigation, and in the field of transport and communication by land, sea, and air, and in all the fields that the human being requires. So blessed is Allah, the Creator, the Wise, the Knowing, Who taught the human being what he did not know.
Except that I see that this tremendous blessing which Allah, Exalted is He, has bestowed upon the human being in these ages is a blessing exposed to disappearance, and that is because of mankind’s forgetting the One Who bestowed it upon them, and their turning away completely from thanking Him and remembering Him.
Allah, Exalted is He, has related in the Qur’an the greatness of His blessing upon Qarun: "And We gave him of treasures that of which the keys would burden a band of strong men. When his people said to him, 'Do not exult. Indeed, Allah does not like the exultant.'" [Al-Qasas:76] So Qarun forgot Allah’s blessing upon him, and he replied to his people when they said to him what they said: "He said, 'I was only given it because of knowledge I have.'" [Al-Qasas:78]
So he became self-admiring until he saw and believed that what had come to him of excessive wealth and tremendous riches had only come to him by his acumen and his intelligence and his knowledge of ways of earning, and by his insight into the causes of trade and profit; so when he forgot Allah’s blessing upon him and admired himself, Allah, Exalted is He, stripped from him what He had given him, and caused the earth to swallow him and his dwelling.
- And the world today is self-admiring of what it has reached of astonishing development in all fields, while, in this development, they are heedless of the remembrance of the One Who granted them that, and completely forgetful of Him; and they believed, as Qarun believed, that they were only given what they were given by their knowledge and their acumen. Therefore, we said: what we see of great advancement is exposed to disappearance: "Until, when they rejoiced in what they were given, We seized them suddenly…", [Al-An‘am:44].

Source: Min Thimār al-ʿIlm wa al-Ḥikmah vol.3