مِا۟ئَةَ

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Important Word:

خاویة (fallen) is derived from خوی. They say خوی البیت i.e. (1) the house fell down in ruins; (2) the house became empty and untenanted (Aqrab).

عروش (roofs) is the plural of عرش (roof). They say عرش i.e. he built a house. عرش البیت means, he raised the roof of the house. عرش means: (1) the roof of a house; (2) the throne or the ceremonious chair of a king; (3) the pillar, etc. supporting a thing; (4) honour and prowess; (5) leaders and chiefs among men; (6) tent, canopy, shed etc. affordingshade; (7) trellis supporting vines (Aqrab & Lane).

یتسنه (have rotted) is derived from سنه i.e. (1) it passed through a time extending over years; (2) it (food, etc.) became altered and rotten by the lapse of years or absolutely. تسنه gives the same meaning as سنه (Aqrab).

Commentary:

The preceding verse contained one illustration of how Allah brings His friends out of darkness into light. The present verse cites, as hinted in the words, or like him, another illustration of how He breathes new life into a people after they have fallen and become degraded.

The ruined town referred to in the verse is Jerusalem which was laid waste by Nebuchadnezzar. The person who, as the verse says, passed by it was Ezekiel, the Prophet; and the words which had fallen down upon its roofs hint that it was soon after its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar that Ezekiel passed by the town. Ezekiel was among the Israelite captives whom Nebuchadnezzar carried away to Babylon and who, in accordance with an ancient custom, were made to pass by the ruins of the town so that they might witness with their own eyes how their city had been laid in ruins by the conqueror. Ezekiel, who was a great well-wisher of his people, was immensely pained to see the ruins of the sacred city and pathetically asked God when the time would come when the ruined city would be restored to life, i.e. when its inhabitants, the children of Israel, would come back to it, rebuild it and make it prosperous once more. This prayer, it appears, was heard by God Who showed him in a vision that the restoration asked for would come in a hundred years.

The clause then Allah caused him to die for a hundred years does not mean that Ezekiel was actually made to die and then raised to life again. It was, in fact, a vision which Ezekiel saw (Ezek. 37). The Quran sometimes mentions scenes seen in a vision as if they had actually happened, without stating that they were witnessed in a vision or a dream (e.g. 12:5). What actually happened was that Ezekiel saw in a vision that he had died and remained dead for a hundred years and then had come back to life. As he was the representative of his people, his death signified the death of the Israelites. Thus God informed him through this vision that the children of Israel would remain in their state of captivity and lifelessness for a hundred years, after which a new life would be given them and they would return to inhabit their sacred city. And this dream or vision actually turned out to be true. For Jerusalem was first invaded by Nebuchadnezzar in 597 B.C. and again in 587 B.C., when after a long siege the city was totally destroyed by his general in 586 B.C. Ezekiel probably saw the vision in 586 B.C. The city was rebuilt about 100 years after its destruction and thus the vision came true.

It is wrong to think that God actually caused Ezekiel to die and that he remained dead for a hundred years and was then brought back to life; for that would have been no answer to his prayer, which did not pertain to the death and resurrection of any individual but to that of a town which was lying in ruins.

The words, which had fallen down upon its roofs; point out that Ezekiel saw the ruins soon after the destruction (not necessarily the complete and final destruction) of the town when the fallen roofs were still to be seen under the debris of the walls.

The words, I have remained a day or part of a day, are intended to express indefiniteness of time and mean, according to the Quranic usage, that Ezekiel did not know how long he had remained in that state. The words have been used in this sense in another passage of the Quran as well: They said, We have tarried a day or part of a day. Others said, Your Lord knows best the time you have tarried (18:20). Again, They will say, We tarried a day or part of a day, but ask those who keep count (23:114). In fact, یوم (day) here does not mean a day of 24 or 12 hours but time absolutely (see 1:4). The clause, I have remained a day or part of a day, may also refer to the time for which Ezekiel slept or the time he took in seeing the vision or the dream. Apparently Ezekiel thought that he was being asked about the duration of the time of the vision.

The clause, Nay, thou hast remained in this state for a hundred years, points out that although in one sense he had remained in that state for a hundred years (for he had dreamt that he had been dead for a hundred years), yet the statement that he had tarried for a day or part of a day, was also correct, for the time spent in seeing the vision was naturally very short. To bring home this fact to the mind of Ezekiel, God directed his attention to his food and drink and to the ass. That his food and drink had not become stale and that his ass was still alive, showed that he had really tarried only for a short time. The words and look at thy ass also indicate that Ezekiel saw the vision while sleeping in his fields with his ass by his side, for while in captivity the Israelites were made to work in the fields as farmers.

The words that We may make thee a Sign unto men show that Ezekiel was to be made a Sign to men inasmuch as his vision, according to which Jerusalem was to become re-inhabited by the children of Israel, was to come true. The words, look at the bones, are intended to echo the words used by the children of Israel in those days of misery, viz. that they had become like dry bones and there was no hope of their being ever endued with new life (Ezek. 37:11, 12). The words along with the accompanying clause meant that God had power to clothe the bones with flesh and to breathe new life into them. The bones were first to be set or placed in position and thereafter clothed with flesh, i.e. the Israelites, then like dead bones, were first to be brought back to their town and then the process of the clothing of the bones with flesh, i.e. the rebuilding of the town, etc. was to be completed.

The vision of Ezekiel has been mentioned in the Bible in chapter 37 of his book.

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Important Words:

الزانی is act. part. from زنی (aor. یزنی inf. n. زنی & زناء). They say زنی بھا i.e. he committed fornication or adultery with her. Thus الزنا means both fornication and adultery. ابن زنی، ولد زنیة and ولد الزنا all mean the same thing, i.e. the offspring of fornication or adultery. الزانی means, fornicator or adulterer, and الزانیة means, fornicatress or adulteress; and applied to a man it has an intensive meaning, i.e. one much addicted to fornication or adultery. The plural of زان is زناة like قضاة which is plural of قاض and the plural of زانیة is زوان (Lane & Aqrab).

جلدة (stripes) is derived from جلد. They say جلدہ i.e. he hit or hurt his skin; he beat his skin; he beat him; he struck him with a whip; he flogged him with a whip. جلدة means, flogging, scourging, whipping; stripe. The word is used both as plural and singular (Lane & Aqrab).

Commentary:

Chastity as a moral virtue holds a very high place in the code of Islamic laws that govern relations between the sexes. The present Surah has laid down comprehensive commandments to safeguard and protect it. Islam views with extreme disapprobation the slightest breach of these laws. It is Islam’s very great sensitiveness about chastity that is reflected in the punishment prescribed for adultery or fornication in the verse under comment. The punishment prescribed is hundred stripes, no distinction having been made whether the guilty persons are married or unmarried or one of the party is married and the other unmarried. Thus flogging and not stoning to death according to this verse is the punishment prescribed by Islam for adultery or fornication. Nowhere in the Quran has stoning to death been laid down as punishment for adultery and for that matter for any other crime however serious. Islam has not prescribed killing as a necessary and unqualified punishment even for crimes much more heinous than adultery such as unprovoked murder, dacoity, treason against the state and disturbing the peace of the land. Though extreme penalty for these crimes is death, yet the payment of blood money in the case of the first offence (2:129) and imprisonment or banishment for the other crimes (5:33-34) have been laid down as alternative punishments. Elsewhere in the Quran where punishment for adultery for a married slave-girl is mentioned (4:26), it is clearly stated that she will get half the punishment prescribed for that of a free, married woman; and evidently the punishment of stoning to death cannot be halved.

So in spite of the fact that the Quran has quite clearly and unequivocally laid down (as in the verse under comment) flogging as the punishment for adultery and has made no discrimination whatever between a married or an unmarried culprit in the matter of awarding punishment (because زانی means both a fornicator and adulterer), and in spite of the fact that the present and other relevant verses were revealed in connection with slander-mongering about ‘A’ishah, the Holy Prophet’s noble consort, who herself was a married lady, it is curious that the misconception has persisted without any justification or linguistic authority among certain schools of Muslim religious thought that the verse under comment deals with punishment for unmarried persons only and that the punishment for a married adulterer and adulteress is stoning to death. The misconception seems to be due to a few cases recorded in Hadith whereby married persons guilty of adultery were stoned to death by the order of the Holy Prophet. One of these few cases was that of a Jew and a Jewess who were stoned to death in accordance with the Mosaic Law (Bukhari). It was invariably the Holy Prophet’s practice that he abided by the Law of the Torah in deciding cases till a new commandment was revealed to him. In one or two other cases on record in which the punishment accorded was stoning to death, it has not been established whether the crime was committed before or after the verse under comment was revealed. It seems that in cases in which the guilty person was stoned to death, the crime was committed before the revelation of this verse, but by some miscalculation on the part of some chronicler it was believed to have taken place after it. There is no dearth of such historical anachronisms in the books of Hadith. Or there might have been some other aggravating circumstances besides the crime of adultery which made the Holy Prophet award the guilty person or persons the extreme punishment of death and which the chronicler of the incident failed to take into account. Otherwise it is simply inconceivable that the Holy Prophet should have contravened the quite clear and unequivocal Divine commandment in this respect.

Another possible cause for misunderstanding about the form of punishment for adultery may be a saying attributed to Caliph ‘Umar. He is reported to have said: "There was a verse in the Book of God about rajm (stoning). We read it, we understood it and we remembered it. The Holy Prophet stoned adulterers to death and we also stoned after him. Were it not that people might say that ‘Umar had added in the Book of God what was not in it, I would have written it down" (Kashful-Ghummah vol.2, p.111). The whole hadith seems to be a pure fabrication or at best the result of misunderstanding or distortion of what ‘Umar might actually have said. How by writing down in the Quran what was a part of it could be called an addition to it and how, of all men, ‘Umar could have been afraid of anybody for doing the right thing, least of all for restoring to the Quran a lost text! It is impossible to attribute such confused thinking and irresponsible talk to a man of ‘Umar’s intellectual and moral calibre and stature. If the saying were to be taken at its face value, the whole claim of the Quran that it enjoys perpetual Divine protection and therefore is quite free from human interference falls to the ground.

‘Ali seems to hold quite a different view from that of ‘Umar regarding this very important religious question. After flogging a woman who had committed adultery and then stoning her to death, he is reported to have said: "I have flogged her in obedience to the commandment of the Book of God and have stoned her to death in accordance with the practice of the Holy Prophet" (Bukhari). From this hadith, two inferences clearly emerge:

(1) In the matter of punishing an adulterer or adulteress the practice of the Holy Prophet was at variance with the commandment of God as laid down in the Quran, which is impossible. (2) Whereas according to ‘Umar there was a commandment in the Book of God about stoning to death of an adulterer, according to ‘Ali there was no such commandment, it was only the practice of the Holy Prophet according to which he stoned to death persons guilty of adultery. It is impossible to reconcile the views of these two great leaders of Islam and equally impossible to believe that they held diametrically opposed views regarding a most important question of religion. And it is indeed very surprising that in the face of quite clear, unambiguous and unequivocal Divine commandments the view should have been held, of all men by ‘Umar and ‘Ali, or by any school of Muslim religious thought that Islam has prescribed stoning to death as punishment for an adulterer. The Quran rejects this view as wholly untenable. Somewhere some misunderstanding must have occurred on the part of a chronicler or narrator of the sayings of the Holy Prophet which has caused all this confusion.

It may be of interest to note that the verse has used the words الزانی and الزانیة (and not زانی and زانیة) which suggest a particular class of adulterers and fornicators such as hardened or habitual culprits or those who are lost to all sense of shame and remorse and having thrown all restraint and constraint to the winds indulge in this hideous crime openly.

The verse further lays down that the beating of the culprit should not be so severe as to cause his death or break his bone but should hurt only the skin as the word اجلدوا used in the verse signifies and as is implied in 4:26.