TRANSLATION
Serve God, and do not assign divinity to anyone else. Be good to (1) your parents, (2) close relatives, (3) orphans, (4) the needy, (5) neighbors you know, (6) neighbors who are alien to you, (7) companions, (8) strangers in your travel, and (9) those in your control [who depend on you for livelihood and dignity].247 God does not love anyone who is self-conceited, acts boastfully, is not only miserly by himself or herself but also encourages others to be niggardly, and who does not share what God has blessed him or her with out of His bounty. For such as these who persistently deny and act against the truth, God has prepared a shameful suffering. The same is true of those who spend their possessions and talents to show off and have no faith in God or in the Last Day and who take the devil as a companion and friend—an evil soul mate to be associated with!248
What apprehension do they have to believe in God, the Last Day, and to share with others what God had blessed them with? God knows all about them. God does not bring injustice on anyone, even to the weight of an atom, and He magnifies the good actions of anyone with a great reward! What would the situation be like when We [God] bring witnesses from within every community and you [Prophet Mohammad] will also be brought to testify against them? Those who denied the truth and failed to follow the guidance from the Messenger will desire on that Day that the earth would conceal them, but they can’t conceal anything from God.
INTERPRETATION
247. The context of serving people and being good to other people is put in the same sentence as serving God, thereby providing continued emphasis that God can only be served by serving people. At a personal level, specific people have been identified, including parents, family, relatives, neighbors we know (meaning in the immediate neighborhood), neighbors we do not know (meaning extended community, nations, etc.), fellow travelers—those we know and those we do not know, and any unrelated individuals who are under our direct control or influence. In earlier times, such control could traditionally mean slaves and war prisoners, but in our current context, we have to consider our industrial and knowledge economy whereby large groups of employees (and by implication, consumers) are depending on business owners and managers for their livelihood, well-being, and human dignity. We have to challenge ourselves to extract values and principles from the Qur’an and the guidance that came through revelations and prophets and apply them to our contemporary social and business constructs. This is where scholarly work is needed and not in the wasted effort of proclaiming meaningless fatwas by the so-called religious leaders, sheikhs, and mullahs. Fatwas are meant to be informed opinions, but these are pushed forth as religious edicts by self-serving religious people and sometimes by government leaders under the pretense of religion.
248. In an attempt to define who needs to be a good believer and a good person, attention is also drawn to some of the human attributes that are at the core of human greed, hypocrisy, and denial of God’s grace to humanity. Being proud and boastful in interactions with fellow humans, not sharing God’s bounty with fellow human beings (the income disparity in our world today and the unconstrained exploitation of natural resources by a few countries and companies are two stark examples of this), subscribing to evils of political corruption and social injustice, and so on—these are serious causes of human and societal failings that will not only cause us suffering but will result in severe convulsions in our societies as the consequences of natural laws that God has put in place to regulate our societies and our environments. Global warming, a man-made calamity, is causing widespread floods, for example, in the world today. Lack of social consciousness to fight corruption and ensure human freedom results in acts of terrorism that are then dealt with by counterterrorism, only to fuel more terror. Such tit-for-tat policy and show of overwhelming force without human concerns do not lessen political corruption and social injustice, which are the root causes of aberrant human behavior, such as terrorism, to begin with.
REFLECTION
The Qur’an has been very explicit that the core of human yearning is to serve God and to serve people, and the circle of this service should radiate from your immediate family to all in the global village, irrespective of one’s origin, ethnicity, belief, or position in the society. Absolute equality for everyone, entitlement to pursue life, liberty, and personal happiness in a wholesome way without restricting or interfering with the same rights of others, and the use and preservation of natural resources to benefit all inhabitants are some of the cornerstones of belief in God and the guidance that came from all prophets of God. We all need to believe in and uphold these.
ACTION
Recognizing these key positive and negative attributes at a personal level and at a societal level and practicing and encouraging such positive attributes while avoiding and discouraging the negative attributes will define our success at personal and community levels in this world and on the Last Day.
Key Arabic term
80. Miskala jarra: Like the smallest conceivable thing