لَمَّا

6:22; 10:18; 39:33.

18:103; 33:9; 48:14.

Commentary:

This verse reverts to the central theme of the Surah, viz. the truth of the claim of the Holy Prophet as a Divine Messenger, and sums up the argument to support and substantiate it. The argument is to the effect, (1) that a false claimant must eventually come to a sad end, and (2) that the rejecters and deniers of Divine Messengers never thrive and prosper.

26:7.

Important Words:

انباء (tidings) is the plural of نبأ which means, news or tidings. The word is generally used in the Quran about important news relating to some great event (Aqrab and Kulliyat).

Commentary:

The words, shall come, imply that the important "tidings" referred to in the verse were ordained to come to the Meccans from outside. The words, which were revealed at Mecca, thus contain a veiled prophecy to the effect that the Holy Prophet will have to flee from Mecca and that, after his flight, the Meccans will go out and fight him but that they will be routed, and the news of the great success of the Holy Prophet or, to quote the expression of the Quran, the tidings of that at which they mocked, will reach the Meccans from outside. This prophecy was fulfilled in a wonderful way at the famous Battle of Badr, thus showing that God possesses both perfect knowledge and perfect power.

2:125; 21:74.

20:74.

Important Words:

افرغ (pour forth) is derived from فرغ i.e. it was or became empty, vacant, devoid or unoccupied; or he was or became devoid of, or free from business, occupation or employment. فرغ الماء means, the water poured forth. افرغه means, he poured out or poured forth water, etc. So the clause ربناافرغ علیناصبرا would mean, O our Lord, pour forth upon us patience (or steadfastness) just as water from a bucket is poured forth; or send down upon us such patience as may envelop us (Lane).

Commentary:

As shown under Important Words above, the words, pour forth upon us, are intended to express the idea of abundance. The magicians prayed to God that He might grant them patience in abundance that they might become, as it were, covered with, and enveloped by, patience and, might bear the trials without flinching. They were already unusually patient, but still they prayed for more and yet more help from God to keep them firm and steadfast. That indeed is the true spiritual station.

6:7; 20:129; 21:12.

Important Words:

القرون (the generations) is the plural of القرن which gives a number of meanings: (1) part or division of time; (2) people of one time; (3) a generation coming after another; (4) a people that is destroyed so as to leave no remnant behind it; a century (Aqrab and Lane).

Commentary:

This verse brings to light some eternal divine truths. One is that it is always a life of wrongdoing i.e. the contravention of the law of nature or that of Shari‘ah that brings about the downfall and destruction of a people. The entire history of the world bears eloquent testimony to this great truth. The other divine law hinted at in this verse is that Divine punishment does not overtake a people unless a Prophet of God first appears among them to warn them of their evil ways and of the Divine punishment that will come upon them, if they do not follow him and give up their wicked practices. Thus it is the mercy of God and not His punishment that is meant to be emphasized in this verse, because we are told that when God sees that a certain people have made themselves deserving of His punishment on account of their evil lives, He, out of His great mercy, sends to them a Prophet so that they may follow him and, by reforming themselves, escape the impending punishment and become heirs to His favours. It is only when they reject the Divine Messenger and instead of mending their ways, begin to persecute him that God sends down punishment on them.

Punishments again are of two kinds: (1) those that are the result of contravention of the laws of nature, and (2) those that come when the law of Shari‘ah is flouted. The latter class of punishments never occur unless a people begin to lead wicked lives and unless a Prophet is first made to appear among them. Punishments of this kind are known by certain characteristics. For instance, (a) their occurrence is generally foretold by previous announcements based on Divine revelation; (b) they assume the form of an unusual and extraordinary upheaval in nature such as a succession of earthquakes or the widespread outbreak of virulent epidemics; and (c) they occur after a Warner has made his appearance. The other class of punishments, such as the rise and fall of nations from natural causes, are due only to the contravention of the ordinary laws of nature. These must always be distinguished from the first-mentioned class of punishments.

39:48.

34:34.

Important Words:

اسروا (they will conceal). اسرہ gives two contrary meanings: (1) he concealed it; (2) he manifested or revealed it, or he made it known (Lane).

Commentary:

Man is so made by nature that punishment has two different effects on him. It increases the obstinacy and refractoriness of some, while it renders others humble and docile. But the punishment inflicted by God is never such as to produce doubtful results. Its effect is straight and certain. It breaks the pride of the arrogant. The reason of the difference between the punishment inflicted by God and that inflicted by man is that the latter affects only the body, man having no power to inspire the heart with awe, while the former affects both the body and the heart. The verse purports to say that when God’s punishment overtakes men, it strikes awe into their hearts and they become prepared to save themselves by making every sacrifice in their power, and, as it always descends on the right person and on the right occasion, men realize its justice and therefore become repentant and begin to bring about a real change in their lives.

The verse may have another meaning also. God’s punishment descends only on those who oppose His teachings. Such people have no high ideals. They are mean and niggardly and it is only their base desires that prompt them to oppose the truth. Thus the verse purports to say that those on whom God’s punishment descends are incapable of manifesting any magnanimity of heart, and in time of trouble seek to save their skins by sacrificing anything, even their personal or national honour, which men of high ideals always try to save even at the cost of their lives. This, the verse hints, is evidence of their being in error; for if they had been in the right, they would not have stooped to such meanness. See Important Words.

The words اسروا الندامة (they will conceal their remorse) may also be rendered as, "they will manifest or express their remorse."

20:70.

Commentary:

The expression, Is this enchantment?, constitutes an effective refutation of the charge implied in the words سحر مبین (manifest enchantment) in the preceding verse. Moses is described here as asking his people how his teaching could be called an enchantment when it crushed all falsehood, deceit and trickery. The words, And the enchanters never prosper, provide the second refutation of the same charge. Enchanters, the verse purports to say, merely practise deception and propagate falsehood. They can never attain the success that comes to the Prophets, who have a great mission. The Prophets come to bring about a complete change in the lives of their followers and they succeed in this great and difficult mission despite all obstacles and impediments. In the face of this undeniable fact, how could the Prophets be called enchanters and spreaders of falsehood?

15:43; 16:100; 17:66.

Important Words:

مصرخکم (succour you) and مصرخی (succour me) are both derived from صرخ which means, he called or called out; or he cried or he cried out vehemently; he called or cried for aid or succour or, transitively, he succoured or aided someone. اصرخ also means, he succoured or aided; he came to the help of. مصرخ means, aiding or succouring; or an aider or succourer (Lane & Aqrab).

Commentary:

By uttering the words, I cannot succour you, Satan disclaims the possession of any power to lead man astray. It is indeed true that Satan has no power over man. He is only an instrument for the manifestation of man’s weaknesses, just as angels are instruments for the manifestation of his good qualities. In reality man is led astray by his own baser self, for, as the verse puts it, Satan only calls and it is man who obeys. The function of Satan is merely to make evil suggestions, just as the function of angels is to make good suggestions. Angels cannot make a man good, nor can Satan make him bad. They only show the way, good or bad, and man does the rest.

It may appear paradoxical on Satan’s part to claim, as he has done in this verse, that he asserted the Unity of God and disclaimed association with Him. In a sense it is true, because he who is conscious of God’s glory and has actually witnessed it cannot be guilty of shirk (setting up equals to God). Shirk comes into being when man accepts Satan’s evil suggestions and disobeys God. Satan may thus be likened to arsenic. So long as arsenic does not enter the system of man in toxic quantity, it is a valuable drug, but when man makes a wrong use of it, it becomes a deadly poison. Similarly, before Satan enters the spiritual system of man he is but a test-question and nothing more. Indeed, Satan is only an agent deputed to expose human weaknesses and frailties.

But here arises a question. If Satan has no power over man, why will he be punished with Hellfire? This question is answered in 7:13, where Satan is represented as having been created of fire. How can a thing which is created of fire be said to be punished when cast into fire? A burning piece of coal is not tormented when thrown into a furnace. This is why perhaps some of the mystics in Islam have held the view that it is not Satan, but his manifestations and vicegerents that will be punished. Satan, they say, is but an agent meant to try the mettle of man and only performs his functions.

14:22; 40:48.

10:55.

Important Words:

أسروا (will conceal). أسر is one of those Arabic words which have contrary meanings. أسرہ means, he concealed it; he manifested it, he made it known (Lane). See also 10:55.

أعناق (necks) is the plural of عنق (‘unuqun) which is substantive noun from عنق (‘aniqa) which means, he was or became long and thick in the neck. عنق means, the neck; a company of men or a numerous company of men; the heads or chiefs of men or great ones. عنق النخل means, the trunks of palm-trees (Lane & Aqrab).

17:95; 23:25.

Commentary:

This verse sums up the subject matter of the whole Surah. The preceding verses deal with the mission of the Holy Prophet and answer the criticisms and objections of disbelievers against him. Their first objection was that the Prophet had split up the people into groups and parties and thus had sought to carve out of this chaos a new community for himself and to impose his leadership on them (v. 8). This objection was answered by a reference to the Divine practice that whenever there came a Prophet into the world, the people to whom he preached his Message naturally became split up into two hostile camps with the result that those who accepted it and followed the Prophet’s lead triumphed over their opponents and became a strong community. To this the disbelievers would retort that the Prophet could not succeed in the face of their great resources, power and numbers (v. 36). When this objection was also refuted by the argument that power and wealth belonged to God and that it was not these things but right beliefs and good actions that led to the success and prosperity of a people and that Muslims being righteous and holding right beliefs were destined to triumph over them (vv. 37-40), the disbelievers pretended to derive consolation from the false and flimsy plea that the Prophet could not succeed because three great factors worked towards his failure, viz. that he acted against the old traditions of their forefathers, that he was a liar and an impostor and that he employed unfair and deceitful means for the furtherance of his cause and held out false promises. It is to these three objections of disbelievers that the verse under comment refers.

11:101.

Commentary:

The verse means to say that it is not the nations of the west who alone have attained to great power and influence. There have been other nations in the past who also rose to great power. The Prophets of God came to them and invited them to truth and warned them against their wicked ways. But in their conceit and arrogance they refused to see reason and paid no heed to the voice of their Prophets. So Divine punishment descended upon them and destroyed them. The nations of the West are the most powerful nations in the world today. In the intoxication of their might and material resources, their wealth and prestige, they have cast the warning of nature to the winds and have given themselves up wholly to the acquisition of material wealth and the pursuit of sexual pleasures and physical comforts. The whole Surah constitutes a warning to these people to mend their ways and to desist from their present evil course for the day of their reckoning is fast approaching; and they should remember that when Divine punishment descends upon a people they are destroyed.

28:22.

Commentary:

By the words, "made me one of the Messengers," Moses means that the very fact that God has made him a Prophet is a proof that what he had done was not an intentional wrong but an unwitting act done on the spur of the moment.

6:57; 39:65.

Commentary:

The verse means to say that when God is the sole Creator of heavens and earth and it is He Who has created man and has made full provision for all his physical and spiritual needs, it is inconsistent with reason and highly presumptuous on the part of man to worship any being or thing in preference to Him, "the Lord of all the worlds."

10:92.

Commentary:

The verse means to say that when the cup of iniquities perpetrated by disbelievers becomes full, and the Divine decree that they should be punished comes into operation, no profession of faith on their part is of any avail, and repentance is too late.

Commentary:

The Quran has been called ذکر (Reminder) in this verse because first, it presents and repeats its principles and themes in different forms, thus making men remember them. Secondly, because it reminds them of eternal truths that are ingrained in their nature. Thirdly, because it reminds them of the noble teachings that were revealed in former Scriptures; and fourthly, because by acting upon its teachings men can rise to the heights of spiritual eminence.

Commentary:

The verse purports to say that were it not that by the obliteration of disparity of means, wealth and position, all men would have become of one type and human society would have ceased to function, God would have provided all disbelievers with houses made of silver, having doors and stairways of silver, and would have given them couches of silver on which to recline and other ornaments of gold, because these things possess no worth or value in His sight or at the most are a temporary embellishment of this worldly life which itself is of very short duration. But the life eternal and everlasting, whose blessings will know no limitation or diminution is only for the righteous and God-fearing.

4:144; 17:98; 18:18.

34:44; 61:7.

Important Words:

مریج (state of confusion) is derived from مرج (maraja) which means, he mixed a thing with another thing or two things together. مرج الامر (marija) means, the affair became corrupt, spoiled, disordered or in a confused or disordered state. مرج الناسmeans, the people became confused so that they could not extricate themselves from their perplexity (Lane & Aqrab).

Commentary:

The verse means that though disbelievers always reject the Divine Message, their rejection or denial does not rest on sure ground. They are always in a confused state of mind. They do not know what they should make of the Message. They call it poetry, sorcery, the day-dreaming of an ambitious visionary, the confused vapourings of an unhinged mind, or the forgery of an impostor (21:6). But the Holy Prophet and his followers stand on the bedrock of certainty and sure knowledge.

Commentary:

The verse signifies that the Message of the Holy Prophet was meant not only for the Arabs among whom he was raised but for all non-Arabs as well, and not only for his contemporaries but also for the coming generations till the end of time. Or the meaning may be that the Holy Prophet will be raised among another people who have not yet joined his immediate followers. The reference in the verse and in a well-known saying of the Holy Prophet is to the Second Advent of the Holy Prophet in the person of the Promised Messiah in the latter days. Says Abu Hurairah: "One Day we were sitting with the Holy Prophet when Surah Jumu‘ah was revealed. I asked the Holy Prophet, "Who are the people to whom the words And among others from among them who have not yet joined them, refer. Salman the Persian was sitting among us. Upon my repeatedly asking him the same question, the Prophet put his hand on Salman and said, “If Faith were to go up to the Pleiades, a man from these would surely find it” (Bukhari). This hadith shows that the verse applies to a man of Persian descent. Now, the Promised Messiah, the Founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement, was of Persian descent. Other sayings of the Holy Prophet speak of the appearance of the Messiah at a time when there would remain nothing of the Quran but its words and of Islam but its name i.e. the true spirit of Islamic teaching will be lost (Baihaqi). Thus the Quran and Hadith both seem to agree that the present verse refers to the Second Advent of the Holy Prophet in the person of the Promised Messiah.

Commentary:

The verse appears to say to the Holy Prophet that disbelievers cast severe looks at him that might frighten a person of a lesser calibre into giving up his mission, but he has a Divine Message to deliver to the world and so he can hardly be intimidated into yielding to such pressure tactics. They call him a madman. But far from this, his teaching contains the quintessence of wisdom; through it not only his own people—the Arabs—would be lifted from the lowest depths of degradation to the highest summits of greatness and glory, but it would also cleanse other peoples, freeing them from moral blemishes and raising their spiritual stature (v. 52).

11:41; 54:14.

Commentary:

The reference in the verse is to Noah’s Flood.

96:10-11.

Important Words:

لبداً (crowd upon him suffocating) is derived from لبد. They say لبد بالمکان i.e. he remained, stayed, continued to dwell in the house لبد الشیء بالشیء means, the things became heaped one upon the other. لبد (labida) also means, he (a camel) became choked and suffered from a contortion in the chest and the throat (Lane & Aqrab).

Commentary:

"The Servant of Allah" refers to the Holy Prophet, he being God’s servant par excellence. These words may equally be applied to every Divine Messenger or Reformer. Whenever such a one calls men to God and invites them to give up their evil ways and adopt the path of virtue and righteousness, the sons of darkness place all sorts of obstacles and impediments in his way and harass him in every conceivable manner in order to stifle and smother his voice.

46:32.

Commentary:

Though God endowed man with great natural faculties and revealed Himself to him through His Messengers and heavenly Scriptures, yet unregenerate man fails to carry out the purpose of his creation which the Quran has summarized in the words: ما خلقت الجن و الانس الا لیعبدون i.e. man has been created to develop divine attributes and imbue himself with divine personality.