ذِّكْرَ

4:141.

Important Words:

ذکری (recollection) is the noun-infinitive from ذکر i.e. "he remembered, etc." for which see 2:41, 153, 201. ذکری means, remembering or recollecting; remembrance; the presence of a thing in the mind; mentioning or relating a thing; accepting of an exhortation; reminding or causing to remember; admonition. Thus the word is used both intransitively and transitively (Lane & Aqrab).

Commentary:

When the disbelievers, in reply to their demand for punishment, were told that there was a time fixed for every prophecy and that the punishment of God could not come before its time, they began to laugh at the prophecy. So the Quran calls upon the Holy Prophet and, through him, the believers to turn away from them, i.e. to quit their company and depart from the place, so that they might not provoke the further wrath of God by indulging in their vain and insolent discourse. Believers are told not to afford disbelievers an occasion to commit further excesses by sitting in their company but to leave them at once on such occasions, so that they may be induced to turn to other talk.

The words, turn thou away from them, may also be taken figuratively, signifying that you should overlook and treat as unnoticed their action of ridiculing and should not dispute with them about it, so that they might drop the subject and turn to some other topic.

"Satan", for which see 2:15, does not always mean the Evil Spirit; the word is also applied to other harmful things.

It has even been applied to "anger" and "jealousy" in some of the sayings of the Holy Prophet. Here, also, it is used in the sense of "anger" and the sentence would thus mean, "if anger or wrath should cause you to forget the injunction to leave the company of such persons and to quit the place…" This interpretation, however, will hold good only in the case of men who stand on a high level of righteousness. In the case of ordinary men, the word would be taken to mean "evil suggestion" or "negligence".

The word ذکری (recollection), as shown under Important Words, means both "recollection", i.e. remembering, and "reminding." Taking it in the intransitive sense, the sentence would mean that when you recollect the injunction to quit the place, you should do so forthwith. Taking the word ذکری in the sense of "reminding," the sentence would mean that before quitting the place, you should remind the scoffers of their mischievous conduct and tell them that it is an evil and dishonourable course which they follow and that it is calculated to excite against them the wrath of God.

It should also be remembered that really it is not the Holy Prophet but every believer that is addressed in this verse.

36:70; 65:11.

Commentary:

This verse furnishes a powerful proof of the truth of the Quran and of its Divine origin. In fact, the promise about the preservation of the Quran made in this verse has been so remarkably fulfilled that even if there had been no other proof of the truth of Islam, this alone would have sufficed to establish its Divine origin.

Verse 8 contains the demand mockingly made by disbelievers that if the Quran were really as grand a Book as it was claimed to be, it ought to have descended under the guardianship of angels. This ridicule of disbelievers has been answered in the present verse, which emphatically says that the Quran is indeed a sublime Book and that God Himself has undertaken to act as its Guardian and that He will always protect it against every kind of corruption and interference. And in order that this promise about the protection of the Quran may gain still more force, particles expressive of special emphasis, such as انا (verily We) and نحن (Ourself) and again انا followed by ل (most surely) have been used in this verse. Thus the claim has been made in the most emphatic and forceful language.

The statement that God Himself is the Guardian of the Quran does not mean that angels do not guard it. They also do so, for when the master himself is guarding a thing, the servants must also be necessarily engaged in that service. By saying, most surely We will be its Guardian, God, however, points to the fact that there are certain peculiarities of the Quran which it is beyond the power of angels to guard and, therefore, God Himself has undertaken to do that work.

This Surah was revealed at Mecca. According to Ibn Hisham, it was revealed in the fourth year of the Holy Prophet’s ministry. Sprenger, Rodwell and Nöldeke all agree that it belongs to the Meccan period. Now it is a well-known fact that during the Meccan period, the life of the Holy Prophet and his followers was extremely precarious. They did not even know how to save themselves or where to hide themselves. For no less than three years the Prophet and his few helpless followers were virtually imprisoned in the Shi‘b (valley) of Abu Talib from where they could not venture out. They were under a ban. Is it not then astonishing that when the very lives of Muslims were in peril and the enemy was so strong that he could easily crush the new Faith, disbelievers were challenged to do all that lay in their power to destroy the Quran, and were told that God would frustrate all their designs because He Himself was its Guardian? The challenge was open and unequivocal and the enemy strong and ruthless. But what was the result? The Prophet and his Companions not only remained safe and sound but thrived and prospered and the number of converts continued to swell and the Quran remained safe against all corruption and has ever continued to enjoy perfect security. This distinctive feature of the Quran has not been shared by any other book revealed to any other Prophet.

Sir William Muir, the well-known critic of Islam, says about the Quran: "We may, upon the strongest presumption, affirm that every verse in the Quran is the genuine and unaltered composition of Mohammad himself." Again, "There is otherwise every security, internal and external, that we possess the text which Mohammad himself gave forth and used." Again, "To compare (as the Muslims are fond of doing) their pure text with the various readings of our Scriptures, is to compare things between which there is no analogy." (Introduction to "The Life of Mahomet"). Prof. Nöldeke, the great German Orientalist writes as follows: "Slight clerical errors there may have been, but the Quran of Othman contains none but genuine elements, though sometimes in very strange order. Efforts of European scholars to prove the existence of later interpolations in the Quran have failed." (Enc. Brit.). Professor Nicholson, says in his "Literary History of the Arabs": "Here (in the Quran) we have materials of unique and incontestable authority for tracing the origin and early development of Islam—such mater-ials as do not exist in the case of Buddhism or Christianity or any other ancient religion."

The importance of this security of the Quranic text is further enhanced when we compare it with other revealed Scriptures. The Quran was revealed among an illiterate people, while most other Scriptures were revealed among peoples who were comparatively more literate and therefore better qualified to preserve the purity of their Scriptures. Yet they failed to do so, while the Quran, the most widely read of all revealed Scriptures, enjoys complete immunity from all sorts of corruption. This miraculous preservation of the Quranic text is no mere accident. It has been brought about by the special providence of God in accordance with an openly declared prophecy of the Quran.

The means adopted to safeguard the purity of the text of the Quran have been briefly referred to in verse 2 in the memorable words الکتاب (the Written Book) and قرآن مبین (the Illuminating Recital) signifying: (a) That every verse of the Quran was committed to writing as soon as it was revealed and this writing was most tenaciously preserved. (b) That it was committed to memory as soon as revealed by a number of Muslims. And this pious practice has increasingly continued so much so that in the past centuries hundreds of thousands of Muslims have had the entire Quran literally on the tips of their tongues. Add to this the fact that from the very beginning of Islam the recital of parts of the Quran in the five daily Prayers was made obligatory.

The following additional factors also very materially contributed to the preservation of the Quran:

(1) God has inspired the Muslims with an extraordinary love for the Quran. They enjoy the reading of the Book even if they do not understand the meaning of the text. This leads to its being preserved in their hearts.

(2) The rhythm of the Quran is so sweet and its language so charming and so easy to learn and the construction of its sentences so beautiful that it can be committed to memory with great ease.

(3) God so ordained that immediately after the Quranic revelation became complete, it spread far and wide, to the remotest corners of the world, among all nations and all peoples, so that it became practically impossible for anyone to tamper with its text.

(4) From the beginning the Quran formed for Muslims the basis of all the sciences and learning they acquired and developed with a view to serving it. Various branches of knowledge such as Grammar, Rhetoric, History, Philosophy and Logic were cultivated and developed by Muslims for the sake of a better understanding of their holy Book.

(5) God has preserved Arabic, the language of the Quran, as a living language, while the languages of all other revealed Books, which were not meant to last forever, have become practically dead.

Again, it is not only the text of the Quran that has been preserved intact by God. He has provided for the preservation of its spirit also. This has been done by raising divinely inspired Reformers among the Muslims from time to time. These Reformers, known in Islamic terminology as Mujaddids, receive revelations from God and interpret and explain the true meaning of the Quranic text. Such Reformers appeared among the followers of other religions also, but that was only for so long as such scriptures served as guides for their followers. After the advent of Islam, however, all other religious systems and their scriptures, which were intended only for specific periods and specific peoples, became abrogated and divinely inspired Reformers ceased to appear among them. Now, therefore, the Quran alone among all revealed Scriptures of the world holds the field as a living Book and hence divinely inspired Reformers now appear only among the followers of Islam. In our own time God has raised Ahmad, the Promised Messiah, Founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement, to demon-strate the truth and excellence of the Quran in a manner unparalleled in the history of Islam. Ahmad’s present-ation of Islam is not like one praying for a hearing, as was the vogue among the apologetic school of Muslim writers, but as a victor challenging the protagonists of all other religious systems and the so-called Modernists and Higher Critics to find fault with any teaching of Islam; and also as a judge passing his judgement upon them. The appearance of such Reformers in itself constitutes proof of the living power of a religion and its Scripture inasmuch as they are really the fruit of their religion and their appearance proves its efficacy.

The question here arises, if the Scriptures revealed to the previous Prophets have not been preserved in their original purity, what guarantee is there to believe that the Quran would enjoy permanent security? In this connection it should be noted that the promise of protection made by God in this verse mentions the word الذکر (rendered in the text as "this Exhortation") and not the Quran or any other word; and herein lies the answer to the above question. For, to become deserving of the permanent protection of God it is essential that the Divine revelation should be الذکر of which the necessary attributes are: (1) that it should establish a close and permanent relationship between man and his Maker, inspiring in the former constant remembrance of God, the word ذکر meaning remembering; and (2) that it should elevate man to a state where God may also remember him or in other words favour him with His words and with heavenly help, the word ذکر also means eminence. The verse under comment thus purports to mean that God undertakes to protect any Scripture so long as it serves the above two purposes. But when, through changes in the conditions and circumstances of man, any Scripture ceases to perform these functions and God, in His infallible wisdom, deems it necessary to reveal another Scripture, He naturally ceases to extend His protection to earlier revelations. The question as to when any particular Scripture at any particular time ceases to serve the above-mentioned purposes has to be decided on facts. It is a fact beyond doubt that at the present time no religion other than Islam can claim that there is among its followers anyone who fulfils in his person the conditions mentioned above, viz. attainment of such nearness to God that God begins to speak to him and manifests His special powers for his sake. Such a claim can be made only by a follower of the Quran. As stated above Ahmad, the Promised Messiah, has made this claim in our own time and has proved by powerful heavenly signs that his claim is founded on fact and God is helping his cause wonderfully. It is, therefore, natural that Muslims should claim and believe that now the protection of God is a privilege enjoyed by the Quran alone.

As regards the future, our belief based upon promises made in the Quran is that whenever Muslims forget, or fall away from, the teachings of the Quran, God will, by raising heavenly Reformers, restore to them their faith in its pristine purity. The teachings of the Quran will thus remain effective for all time and will ever continue to enjoy Divine help and protection.

35:26.

3:59; 15:7, 10; 20:100.

Important Words:

The word الذکر translated as Reminder among other things means: (1) remembrance, the presence of a thing in the mind so that it is never forgotten; (2) the praise or glorification of God; (3) eminence, honour: (4) a book containing an exposition of religion and an institution of religious laws; (5) strong and firm saying (Lane). See also 2:41, 153, 201; 6:69; 12:105 & 15:7.

Commentary:

The word applies to the Quran in all these different senses: (a) The Quran is a book which helps man to remember God; (b) it praises and glorifies God; (c) those who act upon its teachings get honour and eminence; (d) it contains an exposition of the religion of Islam; and (e) it is strong and firm in the sense that its teachings and the truths it inculcates admit of no doubt or objection. The verse develops the theme of the previous verse and says that the Prophets come with clear proofs and Divine Scriptures, that is to say they come with heavenly signs and Divine commands. In this lies the secret of their success.

The verse further points to a distinction between the Holy Prophet and former Prophets. It says that while clear signs and Scriptures were given to former Prophets, the Holy Prophet has been given the Reminder, the most perfect of all Divine Books. So when the former Prophets succeeded in their mission by the help of their Scriptures, it is inconceivable that the Holy Prophet should fail when he has got the most perfect of all Divine Scriptures.

The expression لتبین للناس (that thou mayest explain to mankind) may mean two things: (1) That the Prophet has been given the most perfect Divine Book in order that he might preach its message to all the world. It is not intended for any one people or nation or for any particular age, but for all peoples and all ages. (2) Since such a perfect Book has been revealed to the Holy Prophet he could not possibly keep it a secret. The perfection of the Book demanded that he should invite the whole world to its great Message.

By adopting the form of address contained in the words "which has been sent down to them" the verse appeals to disbelievers to listen to the Divine Message which although revealed to the Holy Prophet is intended for all men. They should appreciate this token of Divine love and favour by accepting it and acting upon it. The words also imply that since the Quran is intended for all mankind it is the primary and paramount duty of Muslims to preach it to all the nations of the world. Unfortunately, Muslims have neglected this sacred duty to their own detriment.

The words, "that they may reflect", suggest that Divine revelation, among other things, possesses the characteristic of sharpening the intellect of men. The marvellous change that took place in the condition of the Arabs after they accepted the Quran bears eloquent testimony to the truth of this statement. Wild and half savage hordes of the desert became, within a few years, the teachers and leaders of the world in knowledge and culture.

34:42.

Important Words:

بورا (ruined) is derived from بار which means, he or it perished. They say بارت السوق i.e. the market became dull. بار العمل means, the work became null and void. بارت الارض means, the land was or became uncultivated. The Arabic saying بادوا و باروا means, they became extinct and perished. بور means, a bad and corrupt man or people; a ruined man or people; a man or people in a state of perdition (Lane & Aqrab).

35:19.

Commentary:

The expression بالغیب (in secret) may mean that (1) a believer fears God while he does not see Him; (2) he behaves as a righteous and God-fearing person even when other people are not seeing him, i.e. he is sincere and honest in his belief and actions.

Important Words:

أفنضرب (shall We take away). ضربه means, he struck him. They say, ضرب الدھر بیننا i.e. the time separated us. ضرب عنه means, he shunned, left or avoided him or turned away from him (Lane & Aqrab).

صفحا (neglecting) is derived from صفح. They say صفح عنه i.e. he turned away from him or he turned away from him and left him; he turned away from his sins, or he forgave him. ضربت عنه صفحا means, I turned away from him and left him. The word صفحاً is here an infinitive-noun and therefore is in the accus. case as in the phrase قعدت جلوساً (I sat down); or it is in the accus. case as an adv. noun, and the meaning is, I turned away from him aside.أفنضرب عنکم الذکر صفحاً would thus mean, shall We take away the Reminder from you or separate you from the Reminder and turn away Ourselves from you and neglect you. Or shall We then turn away the Reminder from you, and not invite you thereby to the Faith, turning away Ourselves from you. Or shall We then neglect you and not teach you what is incumbent on you (Lane & Aqrab). See also 2:274 and 15:86.

Commentary:

The verse means to say that Heavenly Reminders in the form of Divine signs will never cease to come. If rejection of heavenly signs had been a reasonable ground for their discontinuance no Prophet would have come after the first one. But Prophets continued to appear and to show signs in spite of the fact that most of them were rejected. The Prophets are sent to the world to lead men to God and to warn wrongdoers of the evil consequences of their transgressions and iniquitous behaviour. So long as man needs to be guided and led to God—and man will need guidance till the end of time—and so long as there are wicked men in the world who require to be warned and reformed, so long will Prophets continue to appear.

Commentary:

The verse means to say that, now that the Meccans have been visited with Divine punishment, they cry that if it is removed, they would repent and reform. Their present show of humility, however, is only a temporary phase. There has come to them a great Prophet, whose whole life lay before them like an open book. They knew that he was honest, sincere, truthful and trusty. Yet they rejected such a paragon of truth and righteousness. What trust could then be placed in their word?

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).