A072
Surah: 009 - Ayah: 072
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9:72
Every Muslim believes in and is certain of the sublime Paradise, the way it has been praised and described in wisdom-filled words in many places in the wise Qur’an. Yet, there is still a supreme rank which is far better and greater than Paradise. Can you tell us what that rank is? Yes, it is the pleasure of Allah (Rizwan) (9:72). How can the pleasure of Allah be attained? Through acting upon every command of God and the Prophet, with such a pure intention that, except the pleasure of God, no other purpose has been taken into consideration. This is called the purity of intention, namely, the purity and soundness of the will of heart. Indeed, according to an Hadith of the holy Prophet, the rightness and wrongness of actions depend on the intentions. Thus the root and foundation of every good deed is intention, followed by speech and then action.
Q106 There is no doubt that the entire Qur’an from the beginning to the end praises paradise and every kind of its bounty, yet in verse (9:72), it is also said that the pleasure of Allah (Rizwanu’llah) is greater than paradise. Would you kindly shed some light in this connection?
A106 God willing, I will try. The verse that sheds light in this connection is (9:72): “God has promised to the believers, men and women, gardens underneath which rivers flow, forever therein to dwell, and pure dwelling-places in the gardens of Eden; and God’s good pleasure is the greatest. That is the supreme triumph.” There is nothing in paradise without the Holy Spirit and Perfect Intellect. That is, paradise in the form of the personal world. Since it is a miraculous thing, it can therefore extend and become equal to the entire universe and can contract and adopt the human form.
If you had truly seen the exalted Imam in the luminous body, then it is he who is paradise, angel, spirit, subtle body and your own higher “I”; the subtle world, believing jinn, living miracle, light, manifestation of Tur, and it is the same angel whose name is Rizwan. Almighty God has made the manifest Imam (36:12), the comprehensive of comprehensives (jamic-i jawamic) and the universal of universals (kull-i kulliyyat), therefore nothing remains out of his miraculous domain. Thus, the Imam is the angel Rizwan who is the living and luminous pleasure of God as well as the guardian of paradise, as in verse (39:73) those who are in charge of paradise are called khazanah (sing. khazin).
This verse has been referred 6 times.