نَجْزِي

11:12; 39:11.

Commentary:

The verse means to say that the sums of money which will be offered to you as bribes will soon be spent but the boons and favours which God will confer on you will endure not only in this world but will extend to the next.

The words, according to the best of their works, mean that while rewarding Muslims, God will take into consideration their best works and will reward them according to those works. In fact, the good works which a man does are of various degrees; some being of a higher standard of excellence than others. For the purpose of rewarding Muslims God will not consider their deeds of the lower type nor even of the middling standard, but will take into consideration their best works and will reward them according to these. Nay, God’s reward will exceed even their best works, for it will be at least ten times as much as their best deeds (6:161). But this great reward, it is added, will be conferred only on those who do not waver under hardships nor barter away their faith for a paltry price.

3:196; 4:125; 20:113.

Commentary:

Whereas on the one hand the verse recognizes the equality of rights of men and women and promises both equal share in the favours that God will confer on them, on the other it tells disbelievers that, as they have degraded women, dominion and authority would be taken away from them and would be given to a people—Muslims—who will give women their due rights.

Commentary:

It is significant that whereas claimants to the Godhead will only be punished in the hereafter for their false claims, those pretenders and mountebanks who falsely lay claim to prophethood are punished in this very world. They meet with death and destruction and their whole organizations come to nought in this very life (69:46-48). This difference in treatment of these two kinds of pretenders is due to the fact that the absurdity of a claim to the Godhead is self-evident because no sane person would ever accept a claimant to godhead as God and therefore such a claimant need not be punished here. But a false claimant to prophethood, if allowed to go scot-free, may succeed in deceiving many innocent people into accepting his false claim; therefore he ultimately meets with defeat, discomfiture and destruction in this very life and is not allowed to live long and his mission is not permitted to prosper.

2:83; 3:58; 13:30; 22:57; 30:16; 35:8; 42:23; 47:13.

Commentary:

This verse gives a brief but very apt description of a Mujahid,—a true striver in the way of God. High and noble ideals and consistent and constant effort to carry out those ideals into actual practice is what in Islamic terminology is called Jihad, and the person who possesses these noble ideals and lives up to them is a Mujahid in the true sense of the word.

Man’s good actions are of different degrees. Some are better than others, yet some others are of the noblest quality. The expression لیجزیھم أحسن الذی کانوا یعملون signifies that God will reward all the good works of the believers whether good, better or of the highest quality as if they belonged to the last degree, i.e. He will reward the good deeds of a believer, taking the best of them as the basis of reward.

32:22; 27:91.

Commentary:

The verse means to say that God would only punish those wicked deeds of disbelievers whose hein-ousness had led to forfeiture of pardon, and will forgive most other crimes. See also 42:31.