Divine Painting

In the Name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful

Extract from QUR’AANIC STUDIES – A Modern Tafsir PART I:

138. Sibghata Allahi waman ahsanu mina Allahi sibghatan wanahnu lahu AAabidoona

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2:138. Allah has done the painting! ²⁰⁸ And who could be better than Allah in painting? And worship Him, we²⁰⁹ do!

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208. Allah has done – and is, in fact, continuously re-doing – the painting on His infinitely vast canvas stretching the entire Universe. We, the creatures, are of course unable to see the full picture. But whatever parts of it we can see make us marvel at the exquisite mingling of colours to produce the breath-takingly beautiful pictures of natural sceneries. No human artist can ever hope to come even remotely near the perfection divinely executed. Our heads ought to automatically bow in recognition of and in utter submission to the Great, Inimitable Artist.

209. And who could the pronoun 'we' here, stand for? The context of this Verse and the preceding one, suggests that it is the Angels conveying the Qur'aanic Verses that 'we' refers to here. It is the Angels, moreover, who can have a better view of the infinitely large divine Painting than we, humans, and therefore can appreciate its grandeur, better. It is this better appreciation that makes them sincerely worship Allah.

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Mohammad Shafi

Friday, the 28^th of June 2019.

Awliya

In the Name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful

Awliya

Extract from QUR’AANIC STUDIES – A Modern Tafsir PART I:

107. Alam taAAlam anna Allaha lahu mulku alssamawati waal-ardi wama lakum min dooni Allahi min waliyyin wala naseerin

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2:107. Are you not aware that, certainly, it is Allah who has absolute sovereignty over the heavens and the earth? And none is there for you, other than Allah, as a wali¹⁵⁴ nor anyone who can help! ¹⁵⁵

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154. I find it difficult to find an appropriate English word for this Qur'aanic word, wali (plural: awliya). Some translators have rendered it as 'guardian' or 'protector'. But in Verse 10:62, the Qur'aan has called some good human beings as awliya of Allah. Surely it would be preposterous to call human beings as 'guardians' or 'protectors' of Allah! Let us therefore go to the literal meaning of the three-letter Arabic root word wali, which is to be close or near. It is used in the Qur'aan in that very sense. So, when the Qur'aan says that good, Allah-fearing persons are awliya of Allah, it means that Allah is so pleased with such persons that He has kept them spiritually close to Himself. In Verse 2:257, we are told that Allah is the wali of the believers. In other words, Allah is so very close to the believers that He protects and guides them at every step they take in their worldly lives. In Verse 60:9, Allah forbids the believers from being close to (tawallaw) only those who fight with them on religion, etc. It is in this sense that in Verse 5:51, Allah asks believers not to take Jews and Christians as awliya. Otherwise, Allah makes it clear in Verse 60:8, that He does not forbid the believers to have normal good relations with them if they do not fight with them (the believers) in religious matters, etc.

155. In the Qur'aanic light delineated in the preceding Note, the obvious meaning of the latter part of this Verse is that if anyone were not to accept Allah as his/her wali, there could be no one else who could be that person's wali or helper. If one accepts, without any reservations whatsoever, Allah as one's wali, then there could be one's other awliya among living believers, by way of being one's confidants, advisors and helpers in worldly and spiritual matters. But there could be no question of any person, dead or martyred – or of any unseen being (jinn) – becoming a wali or helper of a living person. If one takes such a being as one's wali or helper, besides Allah, one is committing the sin of shirk (polytheism). Alas! A majority among the Muslims today are openly indulging in this unpardonable sin. Allah asks, "Do then those who suppress the Truth think that, other than Me, they can take My worshippers as awliya? ..." [Q: 18:102]

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Mohammad Shafi

Friday, the 21^st of June 2019.

Jews & Muslims

In the Name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful

Extract from QUR’AANIC STUDIES – A Modern Tafsir PART I:

63. Wa-ith akhathna meethaqakum warafaAAna fawqakumu alttoora khuthoo ma ataynakum biquwwatin waothkuroo ma feehi laAAallakum tattaqoona

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2:63. And that time when We took your pledge and raised the Mountain over you! ⁷⁰ "Hold on to what We have given you steadfastly! And do repeatedly refer to and remember its contents in order that you become pious!"⁷¹

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70. We get further explanation on this episode, in the history of the Children of Israel, in Verse 7:171. The mountain was so raised over them (i.e. Moses' people) that they thought it was about to fall on them. Allah thus used even coercion to make the recalcitrant Jews abide by the Book of Allah given to Moses. HE does that even now to the so-called Muslims to make them abide by the Qur'aan. HE coerces them by involving them in some or the other calamity or ignominy every now and then. And we are very much the witnesses thereto! But alas! The Muslims of today generally are as recalcitrant as the Jews had been during Moses' time.

71. This divine command was ostensibly given to the Jews. But it is as if Allah is telling the Muslims of today: 'Hold on to the Qur'aan steadfastly! And do repeatedly refer to and remember its contents in order that you become pious!' Are there any amongst us, listening to the divine Whisper, my fellow Muslims?

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Mohammad Shafi

Friday, the 14^th of June 2019.

Resurrection

In the Name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful

The background to the extract below from QUR’AANIC STUDIES – A Modern Tafsir PART I is that someone had killed a person, and people were quarrelling on who the murderer was. Allah Almighty made that case an example to show how He would resurrect people on Judgment Day. The murdered man, thus resurrected in that case, would name the murderer.

73. Faqulna idriboohu bibaAAdiha kathalika yuhyee Allahu almawta wayureekum ayatihi laAAallakum taAAqiloona

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2:73. So We asked them to raise him up⁸⁶ from something thereof ^{87 to 89}. Thus, does Allah give life to the dead ^{90 & 91}, and show you His signs so that you understand ⁹²..

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86. Among the various meanings in which the Arabic root word zaraba is used in the Qur'aan, one is 'to set up' or 'to raise'. It is in this meaning that this word, with its grammatical variation, is used in Verse 57:13. It is used therein to connote 'setting up' or 'raising' a wall between the believers and the hypocrites, in the Hereafter. And the pronoun hu obviously refers to the murdered person mentioned in the preceding Verse 2:72. Since the pronoun is masculine, it is obvious that the murdered person was a man. And in the context of the reference made to Allah giving life to the dead, further down in this very Verse (2:73), it is obvious that the killed man was brought to life again to disclose to the people as to who had killed him.

87. Here, the pronoun used is the feminine ha. This has led some of the commentators of the Qur'aan to link it to the slaughtered cow referred to in Verse 2:71. But this linkage is unwarranted. For, in the immediately preceding Verse 2:72, mention is made of a murdered man, and his dead body (the Arabic word for which is feminine in gender) is already referred to therein as ha. We should remember that the All-knowing Allah could make no mistakes!

88. The fact, that His choice of words is perfect, is well illustrated in the use of the masculine pronoun hu just before, in this very Verse 2:73. Had the Jews been told to hit or strike at the dead body of the murdered man, the pronoun used would have been ha and not hu. The use of hu there conclusively proves that the Jews were told to raise a living man, and not to strike at a dead body.

89. So, the Jews were asked to raise the murdered man to life from or with something or some part of the dead body. It needs no mentioning that in this act of raising the living from the dead, Allah was the sole Architect and the people were just the instruments! Just like: a man and a woman are merely the instruments with which Allah brings a new human being into this world.

90. And in this divine statement lies the divine confirmation of the conclusions drawn in the foregoing notes! The reference here, obviously, is mainly to the Resurrection of mankind in the Hereafter. Allah says that He thus gives life to the dead. That is, just as He had given life to the murdered man (of the episode narrated in these two Verses) from some part or remnant of his dead body. Allah has thus disclosed to us that on the Resurrection Day, He will give life to every human that ever lived on this earth and died, from any remnant of that human. And the good earth contains distinctive remnants aplenty of every such individual! A tiny bit of a bone, a tooth, or even hair from any dead person, mixed with the earth, serves as a good enough remnant for the Almighty Allah to resurrect that person from!

91. Modern knowledge has enabled us to have an insight into these wonderfully meaningful divine Verses. Any bit of a remnant from the dead person contains microcells. And every such cell contains a DNA map distinctive to that person! So even a man now can come to know, by conducting a proper DNA test, as to which person that remnant belongs to. So, we can now understand how the Almighty Creator can have no problems at all in distinguishing the remnants, one from another.

92. In the pre-historic age – the setting for this episode described here in these two Verses under our study – the extent of human knowledge was limited. The All-knowing Allah had compensated the people living then with seemingly miraculous signs to make them understand the Reality of, inter alia, the Hereafter. The seemingly miraculous bringing of a murdered person back to life in the episode, described here in these two Verses, was one such sign. But now, with the considerable advance in human knowledge, the divine signs about the Reality are implanted in that advanced knowledge itself. A few years back, with such knowledge, man succeeded, for the first time, in making a surrogate mother sheep give birth to a lamb that was genetically identical – a clone – to another sheep! The lamb was made to be conceived in the surrogate mother's womb asexually by implanting the nucleus of a cell taken from the body of the other sheep into an unfertilised egg of the mother sheep! This human effort of course involved a very complicated and uncertain procedure, the success rate of which is said to be very, very low! But it did give the unmistakable sign that the Resurrection is a distinct possibility!

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Mohammad Shafi

Friday, the 7^th of June 2019.