Topic: Unrighteous

3:180; 5:66, 67.

Important Words:

مثوبة (reward) is, like ثواب (with which it is synonymous), derived from ثاب which means, he returned, or he returned to a good condition. مثوبة and ثواب mean, requital or reward of good or bad deeds. Generally, they are used in the sense of a reward of good deeds (Aqrab).

Commentary:

If the Jews had possessed true faith in God and had acted in His fear, they would not have devoted all their energies to the acquisition of worldly gains but would have sought the good of the Hereafter. They have, however, been seeking the advantage of the present life only and have neglected the Hereafter altogether, which shows that they are utterly lacking in true faith and are not leading righteous lives.

2:198; 9:36.

2:178.

Important Words:

الاھلة (new moons) is the plural of الھلال i.e. the new moon. The word is generally used about the moon of the first two or three nights. About the moon of other nights the word used is قمر (Aqrab).

مواقیت (means for measuring time) is the plural of میقات which is derived from وقت i.e. time. میقات means: (1) time; (2) time fixed or appointed for a certain thing; (3) a promise for which a time is fixed; (4) a place in which a meeting is appointed to take place at a particular time (Aqrab & Lane).

Commentary:

When the Companions of the Holy Prophet heard of the great blessings of the month of Ramadan, they naturally desired to know the blessings attending other months. This question on their part shows how solicitous they were to win God’s blessings and attain His nearness.

The clause, they are means for measuring time, should not give rise to the misunderstanding that Islam looks upon the moon only as a means of measuring time; for elsewhere the Quran speaks of the sun also as such (6:97 and 17:13). In fact, Islam has made use of both the lunar and solar systems for measuring time. Where worship is to be performed in different parts of the day, the solar system of reckoning time is used, as in the five daily Prayers or for the opening and the closing of a daily fast; and where worship is to be connected with a particular month or part thereof, the lunar system is used, as in selecting the month of fasting or the appointment of the time of Pilgrimage, etc. As a matter of fact, as religious commandments are meant for the general public, the system used is always such as may be easily understandable by the common people. All commandments relating to a fixed time are therefore based on the visible part of the solar or the lunar system of reckoning time, as the case may be. Changes in the position of the sun during the day are visible but the beginning of a solar month is not visible. On the other hand, the appearance of a new moon in the beginning of a lunar month is visible. Therefore Islam has made use of both; and the solar system is as much Islamic as the lunar system.

The clause, and it is not righteousness that you come into houses by the backs thereof, points to a very important principle that the real purpose in appointing different acts of worship is the intrinsic usefulness thereof and not that to each change of time there should be attached an act of worship. Therefore the question, resulting from the over-eagerness of the Faithful, that, like fasting, there may be prescribed other acts of worship relating to other months also, was like approaching a house not through its door but by "the back thereof". The primary thing was worship and time was only secondary, but those who put the question wanted to make time primary and worship merely secondary. This was like putting the cart before the horse.

The clause also means that one should adopt the right course to attain an object. Every end can be attained by having recourse to certain means. Similarly, certain ways have been prescribed by God for winning His pleasure and attaining His nearness. People should faithfully stick to these and not devise ways of their own. By doing so, they will only suffer trouble, and gain nothing.

It is also on record that it was the practice among the idolaters of Arabia that when they left their homes and started on Pilgrimage to Mecca, then if for some purpose or object they had to come back to their houses, they did not enter them by their doors, but climbed into them by their back walls (Bukhari, ch. on Tafsir). Islam does not approve of such meaningless practices.

7:97.

Important Words:

النعیم (bliss) is derived from نعم. They say نعم عیشه i.e. his life was or became plentiful and easy; or it was or became good or pleasant. نعمة (na‘mat) means, ease and plenty; pleasantness and softness of life; enjoyment of a life of ease; comfort and affluence; tenderness, bloom, or freshness. نعمة (ni‘mat) means, a benefit; favour; boon; blessing; bounty; grace or what God bestows on man. نعیم means, grace of God; ease and plenty; welfare; well-being; delight and pleasure; blessing (Lane).

Commentary:

The verse makes it absolutely clear that in order to get salvation and enter Heaven, it is necessary that the People of the Book should believe in the Holy Prophet and the Quran and that their believing in past Prophets and past Books is not sufficient. In this connection see also 2:63.

The expression, gardens of bliss, denotes a perfect state of spiritual pleasure as well as an abode of bliss. It may be noted here that while qualifying the word جنة (garden or Heaven) the Quran uses four distinct expressions:

(1) جنات النعیم i.e. gardens of bliss, as in the present verse; (2) جنات الماوی i.e. gardens of refuge, as in 32:20; (3) جنات عدن i.e. gardens of eternity, as in 9:72; and (4) جنات الفردوس i.e. gardens of Paradise, as in 18:108. These names represent different aspects as well as different grades and sections of Heaven.

2:104; 5:66.

Commentary:

In this verse the words, the people of those towns, refer to all the different peoples mentioned in the foregoing verses. The verse is thus intended to sum up the given narration with a view to introducing the case of the people of the Holy Prophet’s time.

The words لفتحنا الخ rendered as, We would have surely opened for them blessings from heaven and earth, may signify: "We would have taught them wisdom or granted them knowledge from heaven as well as from earth". By earthly wisdom or knowledge is meant that wisdom or knowledge which a person acquires from personal observation or from his fellowmen; but the wisdom or knowledge from Heaven is that wisdom or knowledge which comes directly from God. The word "blessings" may also be taken in the physical sense. In this case blessings from heaven would mean, for example, timely rains, extraordinary success, the removal of diseases, etc., while blessings from the earth would signify, for example, abundant produce of land, peace and order, etc.

Important Words:

عمل (man of conduct) generally signifies work, deed or action; a motion of the whole or of a portion of the body or even of the mind; the utterance of a saying. The word عمل (lit. deed) may also mean ذوعمل i.e. the doer of a deed, which construction is permissible in the Arabic language when an intensified sense is intended (Lane & Muhit).

Commentary:

In a brief sentence, viz. he is surely not of thy family, God disclosed a great truth to Noah.

What He meant was that when He promised to save his family, He did not mean all members of the family, but only such of them as were righteous and believed in him, because, truly speaking, only those persons were members of his family who had established a true relationship with God through him.

The Quranic words انه عمل غیر صالح rendered here as, he is indeed a man of unrighteous conduct, are capable of two interpretations. First, they may refer to the prayer of Noah. In that case, the clause would mean that this act of his, i.e. his prayer for his son, was غیر صالح i.e. out of place, the word صالح meaning "suitable, meet or proper." By using these words with regard to Noah’s prayer, God meant to point out that as He had already pronounced His judgement and the hour of punishment had actually arrived, so the time for prayer had passed.

Secondly, the clause may refer to Noah’s son. In that case, the word عمل (lit. deed) would be taken as meaning ذوعمل(the doer of a deed). This usage of the word is quite in harmony with Arabic idiom, according to which the infinitive is sometimes used in place of the active participle to impart emphasis. An Arab poet describing the restlessness of a she-camel who had lost her young ones says:انما ھی اقبال و ادبار i.e. "She is so restless that she has become the very act of moving forward and backward," meaning the embodiment thereof. According to this meaning of the word عمل the clause would mean that the reason why his son was not considered as belonging to his family was that he was a man of unrighteous conduct.

The words, ask not of Me, may mean either asking for a favour in prayer or simply inquiring. Taking the words in the former sense, the verse would mean that one should not pray for a matter of whose benefit one is not certain, for in such a case a man cannot know whether what he is praying for will prove a blessing or a curse. In such cases one should pray to God only generally to grant what is good in His sight. There are, however, certain matters about the goodness of which there can be no doubt, e.g. the pleasure of God or the welfare of the life to come. For such matters one can pray without qualification. The prayer of Noah for his son belonged to the former category. He did not know how his son would behave if he were saved. It was possible, nay it was most probable, that if he had been saved, the cause of religion would have materially suffered through him.

If the word "ask" be taken in the sense of "inquire," the verse would mean that Noah was not to inquire about a matter which was beyond his power to comprehend or the disclosure of which was not considered proper. The words مالیس لك به علم do not, in this case, mean "that of which thou hast no knowledge," for man always inquires about matters which he does not know. The words would therefore mean "that which thou canst not know," either because they are beyond thy comprehension or because they cannot be disclosed to thee.

God’s reply to Noah given in the words, he is indeed a man of unrighteous conduct, shows that Noah was not aware of the misdeeds of his son, and the reason why Noah was advised to abstain from asking questions about his son was that such questions were calculated to expose the latter’s misdeeds, which was inconsistent with the God’s attribute of mercy as well as with His attribute of covering up or screening the faults of His creatures. Extraordinary are the ways of God! On the one hand He decreed that Noah’s son should be drowned, and on the other His mercy drew a veil over his misdeeds.

The clause, I advise thee lest thou become one of the ignorant, refers to Noah’s prayer to God to save his son, who was a member of his family and was apparently included among those whom God had promised to save, and means: "You, being the bearer of the Word of God, must in future ponder over every aspect of the Divine revelation received by you and should not act unknowingly." In other words, the seeming indefiniteness of the prophecy was cited to serve the purpose of a warning to Noah, who was asked to learn a lesson from it and to remember that prophecies bear more than one meaning and that their true significance becomes known only when they are actually fulfilled.

It may be asked why, whereas Noah refers to a "promise" of God (see the preceding verse), actually there is no mention of a Divine promise here. In this connection it may be noted that the words ارکبوھا بسم الله i.e. Embark therein in the name of Allah…(v. 42) did imply a Divine promise, because sometimes a commandment is tantamount to an undertaking. When God directed Noah to make his people enter the Ark, the direction implied a promise by God to save those who entered it. Similarly, the words, except those against whom the word has already gone forth (v. 41), also point to a promise having been made by God. If the above-quoted words contained only a command-ment and implied no promise, the names of excepted persons should have been revealed to Noah so that these could have been refused entrance. The fact that the names of the excepted persons were not disclosed shows that all those who went into the Ark were meant to be saved.

21:96; 36:32.

Important Words:

برزخ means, a barrier; a bar; a thing that intervenes between any two things; an obstruction or a thing that separates two things; the interval from the time of death to the Day of Resurrection. The word is technically applied to the period or state from the day of death to the Day of Resurrection (Lane & Aqrab).

Commentary:

The word لعل (that) conveys the idea of doubt. As used here the word shows that the disbeliever will have been so deeply impressed by God’s Greatness and Majesty and his own insignificance that he dare not declare with certainty that he will make amends for what he had left undone in life on earth. He only expresses a hope that he will do righteous deeds if he were sent back to this world.

The word کلمة has been used in the verse, as at several other places in the Quran in the sense of a full sentence. The Holy Prophet also used the word in the sense of a complete sentence in a well-known hadith:

أصدق کلمة قالھا لبید، الا کل شیء ما خلا اللّٰه باطل

i.e. the truest sentence is the one which the poet Labid uttered and which is to the effect, "Everything besides God is subject to destruction." See also 4:172.

The verse incidentally disproves a commonly held belief that a man passes into Heaven or Hell immediately after his death. In fact after death he lives in برزخ which is an intermediate state of incomplete realization of the punishments or rewards of Hell or Heaven respectively or a state of preparation for their complete and full realization. The Quran has compared barzakh to the embryonic state and the resurrection to the birth of the fully developed soul.

4:95.

Commentary:

Though after the Fall of Mecca, at the time when this Surah was revealed, almost the whole of Arabia had entered the fold of Islam. Some tribes still refused to accept the new order of things and were determined upon fighting the Muslims to the bitter end. Moreover, the neighbouring Byzantine and Persian Empires were awakening to a realization of the challenge to their power which they thought had arisen in Arabia, and war with Islam seemed inevitable. So the direction embodied in the verse under comment was necessary. The Muslims are told that even when the exigencies of war necessitate prompt action to forestall a military move on the enemy’s part, rumours which are naturally very much rife in time of war should not be given ready credence. They should be tested and their correctness ascertained before action is taken upon them.