REVELATIONS WELL EXPOUNDED【Quran commentary】Surah 41 Fussilat

Commentary By Maulana Wahiduddin khan

1-5. The call of a prophet is the pure call…

The call of a prophet is the pure call of religion. However, people mostly follow the religion of their forebears. Their thinking is dominated by their national traditions and contemporary mores. For this reason, the prophet’s unadulterated religion does not fit the pattern or mould of their thought. He appears a stranger to them. This difference acts as a mental barrier between the prophet and the common people. Unable to see the prophet’s call in its proper perspective, they are not prepared to accept it.

The prophet’s call is in itself extremely rational. It is in itself a proof that it has come from God. But the aforesaid mental barrier proves so impregnable that a man is unable to penetrate it in order to grasp the meaning of the prophet’s call. Thus God opens the doors of His Grace to man, but he does not pass through them.

6-8. Whenever the call for Truth is issued…

Whenever the call for Truth is issued, it takes place at the level of human beings. But people are unable to understand how it is possible for a man to speak in the language of God, and therefore they deny his message. But God communicates his message through a human being. One who cannot see beyond the humanness of the prophet and recognise the divineness of the message delivered by him, must remain deprived of God’s guidance in the present world of trial.

Only that belief in the Hereafter is reliable which is accompanied by a firm belief in the oneness of God and the giving of alms for the sake of God’s pleasure. One who truly finds God can never be held in thrall by the greatness of any other being. Similarly, one who truly finds God cannot prevent himself from spending his wealth for the cause of God.

‘So take the straight path to Him’ means ‘keep your worship purely for God’, i.e. your whole attention should be directed towards God; the sole object of your prayers and worship should be the one and only God; your entire thinking should become God-oriented. God’s perpetual blessings will be showered on those who conduct themselves in this way.

9-12. A study of the universe reveals that…

A study of the universe reveals that its creation has been effected gradually in a phased manner. Creation in this way?in other words by stages, means planned creation; and when the creation of the universe has been so carried out, it essentially follows that it has a Planner who has purposefully created it according to a set plan.

Similarly, there are mountains on this earth at various places that maintain the balance of the earth. There are millions of species of living organisms on this earth and every species requires different types of sustenance, which are found in its habitat. Similarly, a study of the universe also shows that initially all things were in the shape of divided atoms. Then they combined to form different entities. It is further evident from such a study that all the things in this immense universe are uniformly governed by the laws of nature.

These observations clearly establish that the Creator of the universe is all-knowing and all-aware. He is all-powerful and dominant. So, who else can be there whom a man can treat as being worthy of worship?

13-14. Rejection of the call for Truth is…

Rejection of the call for Truth is the greatest crime in the eyes of God. If this rejection is of a call given by a prophet, the punishment for this starts right here in this world, just as happened in the case of the communities of ‘Ad and Thamud.

The main point of the call for Truth has always been that man should become a worshipper of God. He should associate with the one and only God his feelings of fear and love. But in every age it has happened that the contemporaries of the Prophet opined that his personality was too unimpressive to have been chosen by God as His messenger. Therefore, they refused to accept his words.

15-18. Man is living in a world where the…

Man is living in a world where the vastness of heaven and earth negates the greatness of man; where the event of death proves that man is a non-entity and truly powerless. In spite of this, man poses as being great and harbours no doubts of his power.

God, time and again, causes the Truth to be revealed and declared, thus disproving man’s claim to greatness. But man does not learn a lesson until he is destroyed. The ruins of the ‘Ad, Thamud and other communities are concrete examples of the results of human folly. The very days that these peoples considered auspicious became the very reverse at the behest of the Almighty.

Here ‘inauspicious days’ means winter, for the Arabs called winter inauspicious.

19-24. It is stated in the Quran that on…

It is stated in the Quran that on the Day of Judgement a man’s skin, ears, eyes and limbs will testify to his deeds. The theory of ‘skin speech’ of modern times has established the feasibility of such a happening. It has now been discovered that every utterance a man makes is recorded on the skin of his body and that it can be heard once again, just like a voice recorded by mechanical devices. Since God is not visible, man carries the impression that God does not see him. This misunderstanding gives rise to arrogance in man. But if a man realises that he is being observed by God at all times, his whole behaviour will change.

In the Hereafter, when he finally stands before God, man will express sentiments of obedience, but this will be of no avail, because obedience or submission has value or credibility only if it is practised at the ‘unseen stage’ and not after reality has been unveiled for all to see.

25. In the present world, on the one hand…

In the present world, on the one hand, there are preachers of God who advise or instruct a man about the Truth. On the other hand, there are leaders who exploit people by making such speeches as please them. Those who pay no heed to God’s advice fall a prey to leaders’ smooth talks and without stopping to think, rush headlong to perdition.

Those who are deceived by the false utterances of such leaders and rush after them cannot but end by being destroyed forever.

26-28. ‘Abdullah ibn ‘Abbas has explained…

‘Abdullah ibn ‘Abbas has explained that these words mean ‘to find fault’, i.e. attribute defects to the Quran and the possessor of the Quran and thus alienate people from both the book and the man (Tafsir ibn Kathir).

There are two methods of expressing an opinion about a thing or a person – one is criticism and the other is denigration. Criticism means analysing the matter under consideration on the basis of facts. Contrary to this, denigration means desisting from presenting any arguments in connection with the matter under consideration and simply trying rather to find defects in it, cast a slur on it, thus making it the target of condemnation.

The method of criticism is the most legitimate, while the method of ferretting out or imputing defects is the way of unbelievers. Moreover, the latter method amounts to denying the signs of God; because every true argument is a sign of God. Those people who do not bow down before an argument and try to belittle it by imputing defects to it and making false allegations against it are, in fact, denying the signs of God. Such people will be treated, in the Hereafter, as deserving of the severest punishment.

33-36. The call of the Quran is to invite…

The call of the Quran is to invite people to God. Bringing man closer to his Lord and Sustainer; making him spend his whole life in remembrance of God; developing a feeling in man that he should make the one and only God the centre of his attention – these are the real aims of the Quranic call and undoubtedly there is no call better than this.

But, only that person becomes the preacher of God who is so sincere in his call that he, first of all, accepts whatever he wants others to accept. Whatever he exhorts others to do, he should have himself started doing from the outset.

The greatest weapon of a preacher of Truth is his ability to treat people well. Even if people are not good to him, he should be good to them. He should adopt the policy of avoidance in the face of provocation or irritating behaviour and exercise patience under trying circumstances. Almighty God has made it possible for unilateral good behaviour to be immensely persuasive. The preacher of God is aware of this God-given asset, and uses it to the utmost extent, even although it may involve crushing his own feelings and killing the urge to retaliate.

Whenever a caller to Truth has the feeling within him that it is necessary for him to retaliate against a particular instance of oppression in order to prevent the enemy from becoming so bold as to commit even greater excesses, he should immediately understand that this is a satanic inducement. It is the duty of every believer and preacher of Truth to seek the protection of God from such feelings instead of acting upon them.

37-38. The greatest human blunder is hav…

The greatest human blunder is having regard for outward appearances. In ancient times, the sun, the moon and stars appeared quite dazzling to man, so he took them as deities and started worshipping them. In the present age, it is the glamour of the material side of civilization which appears dazzling. So, materialism has now been given the same status as was enjoyed in former times by the sun and the moon, though the sun, the moon and other phenomena are all creations of God. A man should worship the Creator and not His creations.

The arrogance of the proud is not related to the call of Truth but to the preacher giving that call. It appears to the leaders of an age that the preacher of Truth is smaller in stature than themselves and that therefore the message conveyed by him is also of lesser import.

39-40. The phenomena of rains soaking…

The phenomena of rains soaking dry land and thereafter greenery sprouting from it are a regular occurence. This is an allegorical reference to an inner reality. In this way man is informed that God has made extensive and elaborate arrangements in this world to refresh and invigorate his dry existence. The soil absorbs the water and allows it to percolate downwards, making the rain water a source of revitalization for it. Similarly, if man allows God’s guidance to permeate his existence, he too will become reanimated upon receiving it.

The main reason for a man’s not benefitting from God’s guidance is that he distorts God’s message. When God’s guidance comes to him, he does not take it as it is, instead he tries to ferret out some points in it which he may misrepresent. In this way, God’s guidance does not become a part of his mind. It does not nourish his soul.

For those who accept God’s guidance as it is, there is the reward of paradise, and for those who distort its real meaning, there is the punishment of hell.

41-43. The Quran is a book of unsurpass…

The Quran is a book of unsurpassable greatness. The proof of its being so is that untruth cannot enter it either from the front or from behind, i.e., there is no possibility of interference with it from any side. It cannot be distorted either directly or indirectly. And this holds true now and for all time to come.

This is a very extraordinary forecast to make. In terms of the cause-and-effect system of this world, if this forecast has to come true, it is necessary that a strong community should permanently exist as the bearer of the Quran; it should not be at variance with the teachings of previous prophets; nobody should ever be able to find fault with the Quran; the evolution of knowledge should never result in contradiction of any of its statements; the vicissitudes of history should not exert any influence upon it; the language of the Quran, Arabic, should always remain a living language.

Islam’s long history after the revelation of the Quran shows that, surprisingly, all these factors in its favour have strongly resisted erosion. The very convergence of these factors is quite extraordinary: there is no other book except the Quran in respect of which so many positive factors have continuously remained accumulated for so long a period as one thousand five hundred years. This is sufficient proof that the Quran is the Book of God.

The greatness of the Quran must be discovered through argument and reasoning and not by a display of power. Its greatness will be apparent on the basis of power on the Day of Judgement. But then those who did not accept God’s Truth on the strength of arguments would be compelled to accept this Truth by being humbled.

44. When the Quran was revealed in the…

When the Quran was revealed in the Arabic language, opponents of Islam said that this was the Prophet Muhammad’s mother tongue, and therefore it was not difficult for him to write some sort of book in Arabic and present it as holy scripture. They further said that had he really been a prophet, he would have delivered discourses in a strange language with the help of God.

Non-serious and insincere people alone indulge in such talk, and such people can never be satisfied. For example, if it had happened that the prophet had approached the Arab people and started talking to them in Greek or Syriac or Persian language, the people would have had grounds for saying; ‘How strange is this prophet! He says that he has come to guide the people, but he speaks in a language which is not understood by his audience.’

The fact is that only those people are able to accept the Truth who are serious about it. Those who are not serious about the Truth are unable to understand even the clearest of its points. The analogy befitting them is that of a person who is called from a very far-off place. Such a person will hear some voice, but he will be unable to make out its real sense.

45-46. When the Truth was revealed thro…

When the Truth was revealed through previous prophets, some people accepted it while others did not. The same thing happened when the last of the prophets was raised.

Why does man give the Truth such indifferent treatment? The reason for this is the existence of the present conditions for man’s trial. In the present world of trial, whenever Truth appears, a veil is attached to it which screens it from human vision. This veil, which was required to be torn asunder, is then turned into a source of doubt.

But this doubt cannot be an excuse for anybody on the Day of Judgement, because it proves that man was not serious about the issue of Truth. Man is perfectly serious in the matter of his worldly interests and therefore he tears down all the veils and discovers the reality. Similarly, if he were to become serious about his ‘other worldly’ interests, he would pull down all the veils of doubt and see reality as it actually is.

47-48. The springing of a fruit from a tree…

The springing of a fruit from a tree or the emerging of a live being from the womb of a mother is in essence the same as the emergence of the world of the Hereafter from the present world.

What is fruit? It is the change of the fruitless into the fruitful. What is a human being? It is a non-human entity turning into a human being. The Hereafter, too, in fact, is the change of present existence into the Hereafter. The first type of change occurs before us every day. Then why should another, but greater change of a similar nature (i.e. the change of the present world into the world of the Hereafter) be incredible?

The Day of the Hereafter will be the day of the final appearance of realities. When that Day arrives, all false bases on which human beings had built their lives will be demolished.

49-50. The moment of crisis for a man is…

The moment of crisis for a man is the moment of self-discovery. So, when he is confronted with adversity, he forgets self-conceit and starts remembering God. At that time, he realises that he is the subject or servant of God and God is his Deity.

But, when God gives him relief from his trouble and blesses him with amenities, he immediately forgets his earlier position. He links the grace of God bestowed upon him with the cause-and-effect chain and considers it to be result of his own devices and abilities. He develops a perverse mentality according to which he thinks that the only life is that of this world, and that there will be no reckoning in the Court of God. Furthermore, his prosperity leads him into the misunderstanding that since he is well-off here, he will definitely be well-off in the hereafter also.

51-52. If God’s bounties are bestowed on…

If God’s bounties are bestowed on anyone, he should take it as God’s Grace and be grateful to Him. But it is man’s wont to become arrogant on receiving favours. When he gets into trouble, however, he starts pleading with God to help him. But invocations made under compulsion have no value in the eyes of God. Man would be truly virtuous only if he bowed down before God in times of comfort as well as in times of trouble.

The Truth does not compel anybody: submission to it should be voluntary. So, those who do not have any compulsion to make this obeisance ignore the Truth, for in material terms, they see no harm likely to befall them for doing so.

53-54. The story of all the people inhabiting…

The story of all the people inhabiting this world is the story of the present. No story is the story of the future, because nobody’s future could ratify its present. In such a world it was forecast by the Quran about itself one thousand five hundred years ago that the events and facts occurring after its advent would go on testifying to the correctness of the Quran. In the ensuing ages, the Quran will not only maintain its veracity, but will become clearer and more rationally established. The Quran will always be ‘the book of the hour’.

All these forecasts in respect of the Quran have proved, quite wonderfully, to be one hundred per cent correct. Academic research, historical events and revolutions throughout the ages, have all built up evidence in favour of the Quran, so much so that even non-Muslim research has borne testimony to the fact that, in view of its rare qualities, the Quran itself provides the proof of its being a Book of God. No human writing can possess such eternal qualities.

Those who do not bow down before the veracity of the Quran, in spite of this clear reality, simply prove that their audacity has made them lacking in seriousness; it is only frivolous people who can indulge in the unreasonable behaviour of not accepting reality, in spite of clear evidence in support of it.