Guidance (indication and help)

Sha'rawi distinguishes two kinds of guidance: the guidance of indication, by which God has shown the way to all creation, and the guidance of help and ease, given to those who believe and respond. On this basis he reads the verses that ask how God could guide people who disbelieved after believing (Al Imran 86, Al Imran 87) ¹.

Sha'rawi compares indication to road signs, which show the way to the goal but do not take a traveller by the hand. God has guided all people in this sense, believer and disbeliever alike, by showing them the law ¹².

Whoever accepts the law and believes in it, Sha'rawi says, is given further guidance through help and ease, and God gives him the sweetness of obedience so that he turns to it with energy. He illustrates this with a traveller asking a policeman the way to Alexandria. If the traveller thanks him, the policeman gives more direction and help; if he denies him, the policeman ignores him ².

Sha'rawi holds that the question "how could God guide" denies the guidance of help and not the guidance of indication, since help requires an act on the part of the one helped, and the disbeliever has done nothing to earn it. He ends by saying God does not guide the wrongdoers, meaning those who associate partners with God, which he calls the original wrong ³⁴⁵.

This is Sha'rawi's reading alone, taken from a scanned copy whose edition is not yet verified, and it is presented under his name. The division of guidance into indication and help is a question in kalam, and those works have not yet been checked (needs_source). In this context Sha'rawi also mentions Abdullah ibn Salam, who knew the Prophet ﷺ from the earlier books. See also God's bounty and The self-reproaching soul.

The Sheikh says God has made two kinds of guidance for people: guidance of indication and guidance of assistance. People, he says, are of two kinds, and some enter through guidance of indication and are then granted guidance of assistance ^{6 7}. The Sheikh holds that guidance of indication belongs to people of thought, who ask themselves whether it is reasonable that God should give them wealth and standing and that they should use them to harm their health, to lead people astray, or to kill a fellow human being ⁸. He says that indication tells a person to stop, and that when he knocks at its door he enters a second door called guidance of assistance. In this connection he cites a divine hadith whose sense is that God receives the repentant one from afar, welcoming him ⁹. The Sheikh says a person may wake after the dawn prayer with an open chest before any good news or promotion has reached him, and he explains this as God having given him guidance of assistance. Guidance, he says, is the first provision God gives a servant, and with it the opening of the chest begins ^{10 11}.