One Five

One Five

Assalamu alaikum. Allah Almighty has revealed to us in the Qur'an that He has installed signs on earth and in our selves, if we but see.

On the earth are signs for those with sure faith — and in yourselves too, do you not see? —

Scattering [Winds](Al-Dhariyat) 51:20-21

I wish to share a discovery that, to the best of my knowledge, has gone unrecognized till now, and is evidence writ in our physicality of the truth of Islam. Please examine the photo below. Muslims will recognize this gesture as part of tashahhud, the kneeling portion of the prayer, specifically the part where we recite, "Ashadu an la ilaha illa Allah," which translates as, "I testify there is no god but Allah." We are testifying as to the Oneness of Allah and the pointing of the finger, the number one sign, is symbolic.

Now please look at photo number two. Again you see the number one sign, the gesture people do the around the world in times of triumph. But don’t look at the index finger; look at what the other fingers do. The thumb and fingers form a rough circle, a letter O. If you try it yourself you will see that your fingers naturally do this when you make a number one. There is a word for this: fitra. Fitra means instinct. The fitra of the hand when it makes a number one is to also make an O. Except it’s not an O.

Please examine the photo below.

What you see is the Eastern Arabic (also known as Arabic-Indic) numeral for the number five. As you can see, it looks a bit like a hollow egg and is called “khamsae.” Below you will find a traffic sign in Abu Dhabi that displays both the Eastern Arabic and Western Arabic numeral, the one we are familiar with, for the number five.

Eastern Arabic numerals are older than Western Arabic numerals, which entered Europe via Al-Andalus, the Muslim civilization that existed in present day Spain. To this day Eastern Arabic numerals are used in the Middle East, notably, in the Arabian Peninsula, where Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, received the revelation of the Qur’an. And most notably, Eastern Arabic numerals were NOT in use by the Arabs at the time of the revelation. They had not yet come into contact with Indian mathematical treatises that gave rise to the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. The seminal text which contained the first mathematical treatment of zero was written by the Indian mathematician Brahmagupta in the year 628 CE. But Prophet Muhammad was taught the rituals of the Muslim prayer by the Archangel Jibreel right at the beginning of his mission, at age 40, in the year 610 CE. Muslims had been offering their prayers for near two decades before the system that gave rise to Hindu-Arabic numerals had even developed. And the Indian progenitors to the Eastern Arab (Arabe oriental) five don’t look anything like the hollow egg khamsae anyway, as the photo shows below.

Please make a number one sign again and now see what your other fingers are saying. Every time your index finger says one, the others say a sideways five. Your fingers are saying five in a way that the Arabs never knew when the Qur’an was revealed… Islam is the religion of five: we pray five times a day. It is a sign, and it shows the genius of Allah hiding a sign over space and time. He hid it sideways, in our hands, and with a script that didn’t even exist at the time.

You may want to start over and reread these words, reread life, for what this means to sink in. Within a signature gesture of a world religion that claims to be the Final Revelation, the perfection of religion as explicitly stated by the Author of the Revelation, the Author of the Qur’an, is a hidden symbol that further affirms the truth of the Revelation, of Islam, and in a script that didn’t even exist at the time… How is that possible?

There is more. The same gesture, which in our modern world is the height of human egotism, the “I’m number one!”, the “We’re number one!”, and hidden in it is a sideways “five.” It’s as if He’s saying on the sly, “No you’re not. I made you, I’m Number One, and I made you so even if you reject Me, you still submit to Me, you still admit to Me and My religion for you… I’m Number One, and the way for you is Five.”

Genius…

Divine Genius.

Even the story of the secret five tells: If you look too rigidly at life, don’t look deeply, don’t open yourself up and examine things, don’t catch the corners of your eyes, you’ll completely miss it. But that doesn’t mean it’s not there, not staring at you, that you’re not being told; it just means you’re asleep to what’s going on, to your part in the show… And it tells. Islam is the religion of five: we pray five times a day. Every time a Muslim in tashahhud testifies to One, his hand says Five. And whether you are Muslim or not, your hands do too. Your hands speak now, and will speak in the end...

Today We seal their mouths, but their hands speak to Us, and their feet bear witness to everything they have done.

Ya Sin (Ya Sin) 36:65

Postscript: Please note the name of the Sura above, the sound and meaning of the same words in English, and read the verse again:

Today We seal their mouths, but their hands speak to Us, and their feet bear witness to everything they have done.

Ya Sin (Ya Sin) 36:65

Genius.

Divine Genius…

Please, please. Please read the Qur’an.