In the Name of Allah, the Gracious, the
Merciful
Excerpts from QUR’AANIC STUDIES – A Modern
Tafsir PART I (the historical background, in which the Qur’aanic Verse quoted was
revealed, was the battle of Uhud wherein Muslims had suffered many casualties):
154. Thumma
anzala AAalaykum min baAAdi alghammi amanatan nuAAasan yaghsha ta-ifatan
minkum wata-ifatun qad ahammat-hum anfusuhum yathunnoona
biAllahi ghayra alhaqqi thanna aljahiliyyati
yaqooloona hal lana mina al-amri min shay-in qul inna al-amra kullahu
lillahi yukhfoona fee anfusihim ma la yubdoona laka
yaqooloona law kana lana mina al-amri shay-on ma qutilna
hahuna qul law kuntum fee buyootikum labaraza allatheena
kutiba AAalayhimu alqatlu ila madajiAAihim waliyabtaliya Allahu
ma fee sudoorikum waliyumahhisa ma fee quloobikum
waAllahu AAaleemun bithati alssudoori
3:154.
Then, after the sorrow, He sent down the peace of slumber covering one section
of you, while another section cared about their own selves, entertaining wrong
thoughts about Allah – thoughts prevalent during the times of ignorance. They
said, "Have we had the authority to take decision in any matter?"
Say, "The authority in taking decisions in all matters indeed rests with
Allah." They hide within their own selves what they do not reveal to you.
They say, "If we had anything to do with taking any decision in this
affair, we would not have been slain here." Say, "Even if you had
stayed in your houses, those for whom death was decreed would certainly have
gone forth to their decreed places of death." And in order that161
Allah might test that which is in your conscious minds and purge that which is
in your subconscious.162 For Allah knows well the secrets of your
minds.
161. What follows in this sentence is the
2nd purpose of Allah Ta'ala in inflicting sorrow upon sorrow on the Muslim
army. The first purpose, mentioned in the preceding Verse, was to prevent the
believers from indulging in grief over what they had lost and what befell them
in the battlefield. The sorrows succeeded one another so rapidly that the
believers had no time for grief. And immediately after the causes for the
sorrows ended, the believers were overcome with a becalming slumber.
162. The mind operates at two stages -
one, conscious, and the other subconscious. It is the conscious mind that
exercises the freedom of choice given to man and takes the decisions on any
course of action. The decisions may be influenced by events that are still
fresh in the conscious mind, but these are also influenced by events that have
got submerged into the subconscious and by feelings and emotions that have
their bases in the subconscious. In this Verse, sudoor (plural of
sadr) has been used to refer to the conscious mind, whereas quloob
(plural of qalb has been used to refer to the subconscious. Conviction
on anything, good or bad, comes from the subconscious. In religious
discussions, we modern-day Muslims may reiterate our faith in the Qur'aan and
in all the divine directives therein. But in practical life, most of us forget
those directives and do not mind resorting to falsehoods and corruption to get
our worldly things done in our favour. That is because Islam has not become a
matter of conviction with us. In other words, Faith has not entered our
subconscious, as the Qur'aan says in Verse 49:14. The subconscious is within
the conscious mind as confirmed in Verse 22:46. In the context of the battle,
in the perspective of which these Verses were revealed, Allah tested the minds
of those in whose subconscious still lurked wrong thoughts of the period of
ignorance, before their exposure to Islam. Allah's 2nd purpose of inflicting
sorrow upon sorrow on the Muslim army was to bring out into open those wrong
thoughts and to purge them from the subconscious.
Friday, the 13th
of December 2019.
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