In the Name of Allah, the Gracious, the
Merciful
The ancient tribe of Thamood did not believe that one of their own
brethren, Salih, was Allah’s Messenger sent to them. And they asked for a Sign.
They were given a she-camel and were warned of divine punishment in case they
harmed her. But they did harm her! The extract below, from Chapter 26 of QUR’AANIC STUDIES – A Modern Tafsir, discusses the
punishment meted out to the tribe and the lesson to be learnt therefrom by the
modern man:
158. Faakhathahumu alAAathabu inna fee thalika laayatan wama kana aktharuhum mu/mineena
158. And then the punishment
befell them. There is indeed in this a sign, and most of them believed not.6
6. The ancient tribe of Thamood was given
the sign of the she-camel. And yet most of the tribe did not believe. Other
pre-historic tribes too were given such signs, and most of them, likewise,
believed not. They were deficient in knowledge as compared to the peoples of
this historic age. Allah Almighty had therefore given signs to His Messengers
sent to those peoples so that they could thereby recognize the Messengers as
authentically from Allah. But no such extraordinary or miraculous sign was
given to Muhammad (peace on him), His Messenger sent for this historic age,
claims to the contrary prevalent among some misguided sections of Muslims
notwithstanding. Nothing in the Qur’aan supports such claims. The Qur’aan, on
the contrary, urges the believers to look around them and to ponder over the
innumerable natural phenomena contrived specifically for sustenance of human
and other lives on this planet. The provision of absolutely essential things
like free air and almost-free water, the occurrence of day and night
continually succeeding each other, the deliberate tilt of earth’s axis at a
particular angle to cause seasonal changes, the mind-boggling orbital movements
of trillions and trillions of the heavenly bodies in a perfect mathematically
correct balance of centripetal and centrifugal forces without bumping into one another,
and innumerable such phenomena in nature provide signs galore, for those who
reflect, of a super-intellectual Being in perfect control. The miraculous signs
of old are now redundant and superfluous.
Friday, the 23rd of June 2017.
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