حَقٍّ

2:62, 67; 5:61; 7:168.

2:62, 92; 3:22.

Important Words:

حبل (protection). See 3:104.

المسکنة (wretchedness) is derived from سکن i.e. he or it was or became still or silent or motionless. مسکنة means, the state of مسکین; lowliness or submissiveness; lowness, abasement or humiliation; paucity of property; evil state or condition; weakness; poverty of mind, etc. (Lane). It also means disgrace and wretchedness (Aqrab) also loss of the power of movement (Mufradat).

Commentary:

This verse contains an important and far-reaching prophecy regarding Jews. They are forever doomed to disgrace and humiliation. They have ever to live in subjection to other powers. The history of the Jewish people from the time of the Holy Prophet up to the present day bears woeful testimony to the truth of this awful prophecy. In all countries and in all ages, the present age of enlightenment and toleration not being excepted, they have been the victims of bitter persecution and have been subjected to diverse kinds of disgrace and humiliation. Their practice of usury has also made them the hated of all nations.

The word حبل rendered here as "protection" is full of significance and is applicable in almost all its different meanings, for which see 3:104. Generally speaking, the divine rope, or in other words, "protection from Allah", refers to Islam; and "protection from men" refers to the protection of non-Muslim powers. The latter may be illustrated by the Treaty of Versailles, which afforded the Jews a temporary protection, while the former was made possible through a section of them accepting the Holy Prophet. In the present age, the Promised Messiah (Holy Founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam), whom God has raised as the saviour of mankind, is the emblem of protection for the Jews. They can save themselves by accepting him.

The word مسکنة rendered as "wretchedness" also signifies, humiliation, disgrace, and loss of the power of movement. All these have been the fate of the Jews. They have often been expelled from countries, and even today in Russia there are certain districts which they are not permitted to enter. The recent persecution of the Jews in Germany and other countries of Europe is only too well-known to need a reference.

The clause, kill the Prophets unjustly, refers not only to the attempt of the Jews to crucify Jesus, but also to their plots to kill the Holy Prophet of Islam.

The verse also serves as a warning to Muslims that if they rejected the Promised Messiah, who has come in the spirit and power of Jesus as well as of the Holy Prophet, and whose duty it is to preach and rejuvenate Islam, they would also be smitten with the same disgrace which has been the lot of the Jews for their rejection of Jesus and the Holy Prophet.

See 2:62.

Important Words:

یقتلون (seek to kill). See 2:62.

بشرھم (announce to them). See 2:26.

Commentary:

Disbelievers are here warned that if they do not accept the Signs of God and persist in rejecting and fighting His Messengers and are not prepared to accept the arbitrament of divine revelation and of reason, they cannot escape Divine punishment. No Prophet of God, whatever circumstances faced him, ever failed in his mission. No amount of persecution or attempts to murder the Prophets ever succeeded in arresting or retarding the progress of their faith. The history of religion provides a standing testimony to this fact; and the Holy Prophet of Islam—the Greatest of all Prophets—was not going to be an exception.

The expression فبشرھم بعذاب الیم translated as "announce to them a painful punishment" literally means, "give them the glad tidings of a painful punishment". The word بشر (give glad tidings) has been used with a twofold purpose; (1) to signify that the promised punishment is extraordinarily great, the word بشارة literally meaning a news that changes the colour of the skin of the listener; (2) to point to the fact that the disbelievers have been deprived of a great blessing. They were invited to God’s favour which was truly glad tidings but, having rejected it, they incurred His wrath and brought punishment on their heads.

5:65.

4:156.

Commentary:

The words, Allah has heard the utterance of those, have been used by way of rebuke and warning, meaning that God is not unaware of these impudent utterances and that the utterers will certainly have to answer for them.

The words, Allah is poor and we are rich, were uttered by the Jews on behalf of the hypocrites and as an expression of their thoughts when the latter were called upon to spend their wealth in the cause of Allah (3:181). These words also express the thoughts of those niggardly persons and the weak of faith who join a new religion but find it hard to comply with its ever-growing monetary demands and sometimes cry out in impatience: "Has Allah become poor that we are asked to spend our hard-earned money in His cause?" In fact, one of the principal causes of the opposition to a new religious movement is reluctance on the part of the people to undergo the sacrifices of money and comfort that it demands.

The words, We shall record what they have said, signify that God will not let such mischievous utterances go unpunished, implying that what is forgiven is, as it were, not recorded.

5:14.

3:182.

2:89.

2:89; 16:109; 83:15.

Important Words:

طبع (sealed) is similar to ختم for which see 2:8. طبع means, he sealed, stamped, imprinted or impressed (Lane).

غلف (wrapped in covers). See 2:89.

Commentary:

See 2:8; 2:62; 2:89.

5:110; 9:78; 34:49.

Important Words:

The words ما یکون لی (I could not) may be interpreted in various ways, such as, it was not fitting or proper for me to do so; or it did not behove me; or it was beyond my power or position; or it was impossible for me; or I had no right to do so, etc. See also 3:80.

نفس (mind) means, among other things, knowledge; purpose or intention (Lane). See also 3:29.

Commentary:

The expression, Holy art Thou, besides hinting that it is only God Who is free from error, embodies a beautiful reply on the part of Jesus to the question put to him by God in the words, didst thou say to men, 'Take me and my mother for two gods', which seemed to imply a sort of reproach and an expression of displeasure. The reply of Jesus appears to be something like this: "I was only a humble Messenger, O God, therefore I could not ask men to take me and my mother as gods beside Thee, for if I had done so, that would have been a reflection on Thee that Thou didst choose as Thy Messenger a person who turned faithless to Thee and asked his followers to take him and his mother as gods beside Thee. But Thy choice, o God, cannot be wrong; hence it was impossible that I, a Messenger of Thine, should have bidden men take me and my mother as gods, and Thine own all-embracing knowledge, o God, is a testimony of my innocence."

The word نفس (mind) when used about God implies "intention." Thus the last sentence of the verse would mean, "I do not know what Thou meanest by this question. Thou, being All-Knowing, well knowest that I did not say so; hence, I fail to understand the object or purpose of Thy ques-tion." This reply of Jesus shows that in his heart he was afraid that some shortcoming in the execution of his duty might have displeased the Almighty.

Commentary:

When Lot told his townsmen that they had his daughters in their custody and that, if he did anything which was injurious to their interests they might avenge themselves on him through his daughters, he was in fact offering his daughters as hostages. Now, the rule with regard to hostages was that only males were accepted as such (Enc. Bri.) so the people told Lot that they could not take his daughters as hostages for that was against their custom and law. The words, we have no claim on thy daughters, clearly show that they had not come with the motives which most commentators ascribe to them, for a people who had become so depraved and corrupt in their morals as the people of Lot were, could raise no question of claim or no claim, right or no right about the satisfaction of their carnal passions.

The words, thou surely knowest what we desire, mean, "You know that what we at present want is to prevent the coming of strangers, so to say that we should accept hostages and leave the strangers alone is an offer which we cannot accept."

2:252.

47:8.

Important Words:

صوامع is the plural of صومعة which is derived from صومع. They say صومع الشیء i.e. he collected together the thing. صومع البناء means, he raised the building. صومعة means a mountain; a high place where a monk lives or a holy man worships seeking solitude; a cloister; the cell of a recluse (Aqrab & Lane).

بیع (churches) is the plural of بیعة which means, a church or, as some say, a Jewish place of worship (Aqrab & Lane).

صلوات Places of worship of the Jews (Aqrab).

Commentary:

The verse gives the second reason, which led the poor and weak Muslims to take up arms. It was that they were driven out from their hearths and homes without a just and legitimate cause, their only crime being that they believed in one God. For years the Muslims were persecuted at Mecca, then they were driven out from it and were not left in peace even in their exile at Medina. They continued to be harassed in that place also. Islam was threatened with complete extirpation by a combined attack from the Arabian tribes round Medina, among whom the influence of the Quraish, on account of their being the custodians of the Ka‘bah, was very great. Medina itself was honey-combed with sedition and treachery. The Jews, compact and united, were opposed to the Holy Prophet. ‘Abdullah bin Ubayy, whose designs to become the crowned king of Medina had been upset by the Holy Prophet’s arrival in that city, and the hypocrites were an additional source of great danger to Islam. The Quraish held out a threat to ‘Abdullah bin ‘Ubayy that if the people of Medinah gave shelter to the Holy Prophet and did not make common cause with them against Muslims they would attack Medina with all their powerful hosts and allies and would kill their men and carry their women to Mecca in captivity (Abu Dawud). Thus Islam had to defend itself against much more powerful enemies at Medina than at Mecca. The position of Muslims in the first few years of their life at Medina was decidedly much weaker than at Mecca and the Holy Prophet’s difficulties instead of lessening had greatly increased. It was under these highly unfavourable circumstances that Muslims had to take up arms to save themselves, their faith and their Holy Prophet from extermination. If ever a people had a legitimate cause to fight, it were the Holy Prophet Muhammad and his Companions, and yet the unconscionable critics of Islam have accused him of waging aggressive wars to impose his faith on an unwilling people. See also 9:13.

After having given reasons why the Muslims were obliged to take up arms, the verse proceeds to mention the object and purpose of the wars of Islam. The object was never to deprive anybody of his home and possessions or to deprive whole peoples of national freedom or compel them to submit to foreign yoke under the garb of making them civilized as Western nations do, or to explore new markets and get new colonies. It was to fight in self-defence and to save Islam from extermination and to establish freedom of conscience and liberty of thought. It was also to defend places of worship belonging to different religions against desecration or destruction. Having laid down the principle that all religions have their origin in Divine revelation and that the founders of all religions were Divine Messengers and should therefore be equally respected (35:25), the Quran in the present verse has enjoined upon the Muslims to defend, even with their lives, all the places of worship—the churches, the synagogues, the temples, the cloisters, etc. This subject also finds an echo in vv. 2:194; 2:257; 8:40; 8:73. Thus the first and foremost object of the wars of Islam was, and will always be, to establish freedom of belief and worship and to fight in defence of country, honour and freedom against an unprovoked attack. Could there be a better cause to fight for than this? The Islamic injunctions as embodied in the present verse did not remain merely pious principles. They were acted upon by Muslims in daily life. The Muslims in the heyday of their power and glory always allowed complete freedom of belief and worship to people who accepted their protection and guardianship. To show the broad-mindedness and catholicity of Islamic teaching in this respect, we give below only one of several charters of freedom which the Holy Prophet granted to the followers of other faiths:

This is the document which Muhammad, son of ‘Abdullah, God’s Prophet, Warner and Bearer of glad-tidings, has caused to be written so that there should remain no excuse for those coming after. I have caused this document to be written for Christians of the East and the West, for those who live near, and for those of the distant lands, for the Christians living at present and for those who will come after, for those Christians who are known to us and for those as well whom we do not know. Any Muslim violating and abusing what is therein ordered would be regarded as violator of God’s testament and would be the breaker of His promise and would make himself deserving of God’s curse, be he a king or a subject. I promise that any monk or wayfarer, etc. who will seek my help on the mountains, in forests, deserts or habitations, or in places of worship, I will repel his enemies with all my friends and helpers, with all my relatives and with all those who profess to follow me and will defend him, because they are my covenant. And I will defend the covenanted against the persecution, injury and embarrassment by their enemies in lieu of the poll-tax they have promised to pay. If they prefer themselves to defend their properties and persons, they will be allowed to do so and will not be put to any inconvenience on that account. No bishop will be expelled from his bishopric, no monk from his monastery, no priest from his place of worship, and no pilgrim will be detained in his pilgrimage. None of their churches and other places of worship will be desolated or destroyed or demolished. No material of their churches will be used for building mosques or houses for the Muslims, any Muslim so doing will be regarded as recalcitrant to God and His Prophet. Monks and bishops will be subject to no tax or indemnity whether they live in forests or on the rivers, or in the East or West, North or South. I give them my word of honour. They have my promise and covenant and will enjoy perfect immunity from all sorts of inconveniences. Every help shall be given them in the repair of their churches. They shall be absolved from wearing arms. They shall be protected by the Muslims. Let this document be not disobeyed till the Judgement Day (Baladhari).

Similar charters were granted to the followers of other faiths. True Muslims have always tried to follow faithfully the example of their Prophet.

The words, "And Allah will surely help one who helps Him," signify that Muslim armies will receive Divine help because they fight Allah’s own battles and promote the sacred cause which is very dear to Him.