1. Embracing guidance with open arms (1–3)
2. All will be questioned, even the prophets (6–9)
3. Earth is a source of provision and a proving ground (10, 24–25, 27, 34)
4. The Devil’s plan against human beings is all inclusive (11–27)
5. Adam and Eve’s first repentance (23)
6. Taqwa as protection against evil (26, 35)
7. Genuine worship and devotion to God (29, 31–32, 204–206)
8. All forms of indecency are forbidden (33, 28)
9. Salvation is through faith in God and humility (40–44, 55–56)
10. The final sequel to the Qur’an (52–53)
11. God, the Creator Supreme and Provider (54–58)
12. The rule of law and tranquility (56)
13. Nature as a constant reminder (57–58)
14. The prophets as guides—Noah, Hud, Salih, Lot, and Shu’aib (59–93)
15. God’s challenge and warning to people (94–99)
16. Human failure to maintain God’s covenant (100–102)
17. Lessons from Moses (103–129, 148–156)
18. The Prophet Mohammad as a guide (157–158)
19. Moses’s followers recognized (159)
20. Human failings and successes (168–170)
21. God reveals to us all (172–174)
22. The inability to use God-given endowments (179–180)
23. Seeking truth and doing justice (181, 159)
24. Our tendency to associate others with God (189–191)
25. Simple guidance of forgiveness, goodness, and knowledge (199)
1. Embracing guidance with open arms (1–3)
Many surahs in the Qur’an, especially in the middle sections and starting with this surah, make an urgent call to pay attention to the revelations and to embrace these gifts and endowments to human consciousness with an open heart, an open mind, and open arms. It forcefully argues that we not only have to pay attention but develop a detailed and nuanced understanding of what is being gifted to us from God, our Creator, but we have to act accordingly and create social, political, and financial norms in our societies accordingly. The prophet, as the first recipient of revelation, is asked to have no constraints emotionally, intellectually, or spiritually about this book that is being revealed in portions and to use this book to guide and caution those who wish to have faith and goodness in their lives. For the believers, this book serves as a reminder (zikra), an apt label since what these books say, and their guidance, is already built into our nature, the nature of humanity that is a true reflection of God’s nature. And that is why humanity is such a precious commodity to be considered sacred—its life, its soul, its possessions, its relationships, its covenants, and all other manifestations of its existence and purpose.
Humanity is reminded that they should, as a matter of choice and not subject to any forms of coercion, strive to follow what God reveals, as He committed to Adam and Eve, and that we will be better off if we resist any temptation to follow any other deities or systems that go contrary to what the Creator revealed. That does not mean we should not compare and contrast but that we do so with objectivity, intellectual curiosity, honesty, and a genuine commitment to benefit our common humanity and not be driven by narrow self-interest, greed, lust, ignorance, arrogance, blind loyalty, and other forms of human ailments and failings.
This attitude toward revelations, which exists in its purest form in the Qur’an, is something that Muslims have to take seriously. Christians and Jews who find their Bible and Torah sometimes inconsistent and factually challenging might have a very different attitude toward scriptures. Many of us understand that such inconsistencies and factual deficiencies are man-made and have been introduced in the scriptures by their human authors, who did their best to capture the essence of what was revealed. By the same token, one has to recognize that given the ancient nature of some of the scriptures and frequent tampering by autocratic religious and political authorities, as in the case of the Bible, some aspects of divine revelations have been corrupted, and incongruent notions have been introduced and made official over time. With respect to the Bible, the establishment of the papal institution as the sole arbiter of the Bible, the role of clerics as intermediaries between layman and God, and the nature of Jesus in relation to God are some examples of why it is difficult for many faithful to have open arms to the Bible and, by implication, to any divine scriptures, including the Qur’an. I have tried to understand and explain the Qur’an as openly and as expansively as possible, and I welcome a critical assessment of my work in this series from any discerning individuals of faith and of no faith.
2. All will be questioned, even the prophets (6–9)
Two foundational principles of personal and communal accountability have been laid out here in its most pristine and simplest form. One is that every one of who has had the privilege of being in the presence of a messenger will be questioned about our understanding of such messages and guidance and our demonstrated commitment and follow-through on such guidance. This questioning will come from God as well as from our own selves and those we are with.
As God said in the Qur’an, a soul that question itself is at a higher level of self-consciousness and is closer to God than a soul or being that goes on with life without thoughts or self-assessment, a very human trait that is innate in our nature but needs to be nurtured and constantly revisited. Not only will each one of us will be questioned, but so will the messengers themselves as to what they conveyed, how they strived to accomplish their objectives, and the extent to which they themselves understood and realized the guidance and inspiration they received.
I also want to define what is meant by messengers (mursalin). In conventional and classical understanding, this relates to prophets who explicitly brought messages in the form of scriptures such as the Torah, the Bible, and the Qur’an. But in a broad sense, any good word or good act is a message and a reminder, and each of us is, at one time or another, in the presence of such a message. The one who delivers such message, be it a person, an institution, or a media outlet, to name a few, as well as the natural world we live in, constantly reminds us about our role and our responsibilities to one another. As Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese poet, reminded us – “Have you seen an apple tree that refused to give an apple to anyone who asks?”
The second aspect is that judgment from God is always just, and such just judgment is based on statistical assessment of all that we do, unless one single act is of such a proportion that it overrides all good or all evil that one had done in life. One tradition of the Prophet said that God forgave a prostitute for a single act of kindness when she used her shoe to pitch water from a well to hydrate a cat that was dying from thrust. But for most of us, our good acts and our evil acts will be out on balance, and God’s justice will be dispensed in accordance with which side is heavier.
Such narratives are logical enough and resonate with our instinctive understanding of ourselves and those around us, but God goes one step further by stating that “God relates such matters [principles and truth] to people based on knowledge, and God is never absent [distant from His creation]” (7:7).
3. Earth is a source of provision and a proving ground (10, 25, 27, 34)
According to Islamic guidance (i.e., guidance from God), our lives on this planet are constructed around a few terms and provisions, such as:
· our God-given endowment of and for knowledge and free will,
· a fixed term of how long each one of us will spend a transient existence on this planet,
· our means of sustenance and provision being derived from this planet,
· our going back to our Creator God after death, in the Afterlife, and
· our being accountable for all our actions and deeds which will shape our Afterlife
A number of verses here as well as in a number of other places repeat and reinforce these terms and provision in a very forceful but empathetic way that we need to pay due attention to, because these are the ultimate realities that we are bound by and bound to. We need to keep these in perspective on a daily basis, and periodic deeper reflections are needed to keep maintaining our sense of purpose and to direct our attention to what really matters beyond our physical and animal existence.
God asserts in verse 10 that He made it possible for us to inherit this planet, and He has fitted the earth to provide our means of livelihood, which is sufficient reason to be thankful to which we perhaps fail in one way or another each day. Verse 25 reminds us that it is on this planet that we are destined to live, die, and then be raised again for the Afterlife—the first two facts are evident to all of us, while rising after death is a matter of belief that God wants us to take seriously and with the same level of certainly as our life and death, which are as evident as the rising of the sun each day.
God cautions us in verse 27 to be aware of the mechanism of the Devil and our own evil inclinations when exercising our own free will. We may take an improper turn, a turn that is contrary to our own innate sense of purpose, truth, and justice, and explicitly go against God’s commands and guidance contained in the teachings from scriptures as well as of His prophets. We are reminded that we should NOT fall victim to the Devil’s seduction in the way that he misled Adam and Eve, our ancestors.
Verse 34 extends these terms and provisions as listed at the beginning, applying them not only to individual human beings but also to communities, societies, and nations, as we have a collective identity and a collective personality that in many ways influence our individual identities, propensities, and choices that we can and will make. This collective and group identity and accountability also demands the imperative for organized society, building and augmenting institutional knowledge, democratic ideals, social justice, and environmental stewardship, to name a few of the major priorities of our time and our generation.
4. The Devil’s plan against human beings is all inclusive (11–27)
The story of the Devil (Satan; Iblis in Arabic) in the context of Adam and Eve is pervasive in the Qur’an (see also 2:30–39), with the central theme of the Devil being the arch deceiver of human beings, whose sole purpose is to lead humanity away from God and goodness. God in return promises each and every human being that if we follow God’s guidance and acknowledge God as our Creator and our Friend, the Devil will have no influence on us, but if we ignore God and goodness, the Devil will have a field day with human societies, some of which is evident in our lifetime.
The notion of conflict between the Devil and humanity starts with the story of God creating Adan and Eve and fashioning these first humans in best possible way and gifting them with best of attributes (95:4), a trait that is endowed in every human being. God endowed Adam with knowledge and free will and presented him to the Angels. All Angels did bow down to Adam except Satan, who refused out of arrogance and pride. Islamic tradition says that Satan was a Jinn (a spirit created from fire with humanlike free will) who elevated himself to an Angel for his good work and good grace from God but fell from God’s grace when he refused to follow God’s command with respect to Adam. Satan considered human beings the source of his fall from grace and sought permission from God to live till the Day of Judgment so that he could deceive and mislead human beings. God granted such permission to Satan, and Satan commits to every effort (7:17) to encircle each and every human being from all directions and from all vantage points to use lust and hate, jealousy and pride, poverty and wealth, injustice and oppression, lies and ignorance, false hope and despair, fake news and alternative facts to mislead and degrade human conditions on this planet.
His first attempt was to mislead Adam and Eve regarding the forbidden tree (7:19–21) by telling a lie about its fruit to instigate Adam and Eve to disobey God, as Satan himself had done before. Satan is labeled as an enemy of mankind in every sense of the word in the Qur’an, and humanity has been repeatedly cautioned not to align with Satan, an alignment that is directly opposite to God and goodness, as evidenced in 7:26–27.
5. Adam and Eve’s first repentance (23)
Although we all know the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible and the Qur’an, there are significant differences in the narratives of the key players in this epic struggle of human consciousness and the Devil’s attempt to humiliate and degrade the human condition. Biblical stories attempt to put the blame on Eve for the failure to follow God’s advice not to go near the tree, display God’s anger at the failure of Adam and Eve, and create the notion of original sin, which is the cause of human expulsion from Heaven onto this hostile earth, human suffering, and constant temptation from the Devil.
Qur’anic narratives, while overlapping some of the facts described in the Bible, take on a very different plane of context and understanding, with the human capacity to acknowledge failure, the resolution to do better, and God’s infinite mercy and grace to His creation. The story starts by designating Adam to be a very special creation, endowed with knowledge and free will and an explicit acknowledgment from the Angels that Adam (and by implication mankind) is a superior creation whose nature is aligned with God’s nature and is endowed with knowledge and free will as a reflection of a human’s godly attributes. Each human being is given a soul that is the repository of such gifts, and it will continue to exist beyond our physical presence on this planet.
When Angels express misgivings about the human condition and destiny—and rightfully so, as is amply evident in our world today—God simply says that He knows better what human beings are capable of and what He designed for than what may be apparent on the surface. The Devil (a Jinn and not a fallen Angel) becomes the first casualty of the human presence and the first enemy, only to be multiplied by humans themselves, who follow the Devil’s pride, ignorance, and prejudice. While the Devil deceives Adam and Eve (the Qur’an does not corroborate the biblical story of a serpent that beguiles Eve) to lure them near the tree and eventually eat its fruit, this turn of events, instead of creating original sin, puts into motion a series of human emotions, physical awareness, and spiritual yearning (like a real child as he or she is born from the mother’s womb) that paves the way for human descent to the earth and our eventual return back to God, to whom we truly belong.
Adam and Eve immediately realized their failure, became aware of their physical dimensions and attractions, and resolved to overcome their failure. This event was God’s way to unleash human potential as a primordial volcanic eruption leads a beautiful island (think Hawaii) that invites all creatures to come and seek livelihood, family, and spiritual maturity. This verse articulates in the most eloquent and succinct way how a human being should react to failures and seek out God as the source of guidance, thereby epitomizing the very essence of God’s design for mankind as follows:
· Adam and Eve did not blame the Devil (or worse, God) for their failure. Instead they understood that they had failed the first test of justice and truth, which is to be truly aligned with our true nature, the nature of God in which we are created. This misalignment is the source of all injustice; hence, they felt true remorse at being unjust to themselves rather than pointing fingers at others.
· Realizing their failure, they did not become despondent and desperate like the Devil when he failed the test (to bow before Adam). Instead, they were full of hope of God’s mercy because they understood who God is and how His forgiveness is ever present to all who genuinely seek such forgiveness and exercise forgiveness themselves. Adam and Eve forgave each other and reflected on their own condition, vulnerabilities, and what needed to be done to recover.
· They understood that unless they course corrected and sought guidance from God, they would be in a state of constant decline, which their human nature was unwilling to accept and succumb to.
This prayer of Adam and Eve at the occurrence of their first failure (verse 23) is quintessentially human, and people of faith should take this to heart. It is not a coincidence that this prayer of Adam and Eve is a prayer that every Muslim utters during his or her daily prayer, and the very last segment of the Islamic daily prayer ends with a similar statement to keep this tradition alive: “O God, indeed we are unjust to ourselves, oppressing our soul daily. None can forgive our failures and shortcoming but You. Therefore, shower us with forgiveness and special mercy from yourself as You are Ever Merciful and Forgiving.” This is how we connect with God and to our ancestors such as Adam and Eve.
6. Taqwa as protection against evil (26, 35)
Central to the Islamic concept of faith and goodness is personal responsibility and a genuine sense of duty to God and to fellow human beings. This is codified in the word taqwa, which is commonly misrepresented as simple piety and symbolized by someone who is drawn to daily prayer in the mosque, grows a beard (or wears a hijab), and perhaps wears Arab dress to show piety. This is certainly a gross mischaracterization of the what taqwa really means.
As common in all Arabic words, there is a root word consisting of three letters, and in this case, the root is waqa, which conveys a deep commitment to preserving, protecting, and aligning with what is the reality, the truth, the pristine state of the soul, and our human nature, which is the nature of God. Hence wiqayah signifies an act of preserving, restoring, and aligning with what is true and something done exceptionally well. Sometimes taqwa is used to signify guarding against evil in classical commentaries of the Qur’an. That is also not fully representative of what taqwa stands for. Google’s slogan, Do No Evil, is not same as doing good, and the absence of evil does not guarantee the presence of good unless there is active imperative to do “good.”
Taqwa represents that sense of duty and personal responsibility that draws one (as opposed to forces one) to what is good and naturally repels one from what is evil. Harnessing this instinct and being true to our human nature is what taqwa really implies and wishes to impart when God said that the Qur’an will act as a guide for those who have taqwa (ref 2:2), more so than who profess to be a Muslim or claim faith (imaan).
This verse (26) uses a simple but powerful analogy to make the same point. God gifted us with a mechanism to make clothing (after the Devil exposed Adam and Eve to their nakedness), and clothing serves several important purposes: to cover our shame (keep our evil instincts under control); to protect our physical body from heat, cold, and other hazards; and, equally important, to beautify ourselves to move us to a more aesthetically pleasing level of existence and experience. Taqwa is presented as the clothing of the soul, enabling it to fight evil, to preserve its natural state to be in conformity with God’s nature, and to move to the higher spiritual ground to bring elegance and brilliance to our human condition. That is the true understanding of taqwa. You can also look in volume 1, where the glossary #9 and footnote #2 add further nuances to this very important concept and term used in the Qur’an.
7. Genuine worship and devotion to God (29, 31–32, 204–206)
Throughout the Qur’an, the notion of worship of God and its obligation at prescribed times such as the times of daily, weekly (Friday Mass—Jummah) and special prayers such as during the month of Ramadan are mentioned repeatedly as a continuous reminder. Such reminders are also accompanied by the required mind-set, spiritual predisposition, and keen awareness of our being from God and our destiny back to God. In this chapter (surah), such reminders are prominent in three different places, as listed in the verses.
The first call comes along with a command to be just and to maintain justice as a requisite as well as a result of being faithful to God and our ability and commitment to show true devotion where we reorient ourselves to God with true sincerity and commitment at each time of formal and informal prayer.
The second call comes to remind us that we should be in our best form—both physically (healthwise and aesthetically) and spiritually—at times of prayer and that we should take advantage of provisions and resources that God has gifted us with, without being driven by consumerism and wastefulness. Our commitment to God is being put on the same level with God’s commitment to provide us with the good things of this world, not only in this life but in the life to come after death.
The third and last call in this chapter comes at the very end, where we are reminded that the Qur’an is a living source of God’s guidance, and we should pay close attention to the Qur’an during prayer and during its reading at other times. Such reading and listening should be done with humility, consciousness, and a mindfulness that permeates our daily conduct and larger pursuits in life. We are also reminded that pride has no place in God’s worship and bowing down and prostrating ourselves in front of God is the ultimate show of humility and devotion that has been made part of Islamic prayer rituals.
8. All forms of indecency are forbidden (33, 28)
Throughout the Qur’an a strong emphasis is placed on common human decency, and we have been warned time and again to stay away from all forms of indecency, irrespective of whether such forms of indecency are explicit or hidden from other humans. Indecencies are not only immoral and shameful acts such as indecent exposure and sexual indiscretions that are commonly associated with indecency, but, more importantly, they include any form of sinful act that is against God and against human beings. Acts of rebellion against peace and social justice, violation of all forms of human and women’s rights, denying God’s supremacy in our world, doing evil in the name of God, and establishing a divine partnership with God are all considered acts of indecency without any authority from God.
When a community or a nation justifies such indecencies in its individual and collective conduct and mores and then gives justification based on previous generations and, worse still, on God’s command, God clearly states in verse 28 that such justifications are unacceptable and cannot be from God, since God never commands anything that comes even close to such indecency.
The key takeaway is that every generation has to revisit its social norms and continue to question what is decent and what is indecent from human and divine perspectives, rather than simply rely on the accepted norms and beliefs from previous generations, while being respectful and thoughtful about the knowledge and wisdom gathered over the generations of human understanding and experience. But it is never sufficient nor responsible behavior to perpetuate norms and practices that are incompatible with our genuine understanding of what is decent and indecent.
9. Salvation is through faith in God and humility (40–45, 55–56)
Salvation is a major theme in all religions, principally among the Catholics and Evangelicals of Christian faith who consider it an exclusive domain of their faith to the exclusion of others. For the better part of Christian history and the ascendency of the papal institution, Catholics have been told that only they are the ones to receive salvation though faith in God and in Jesus Christ. Many modern-day Evangelicals and people of Latter-Day Saints (i.e., Mormons) also take on this vigorous notion that only they are eligible for salvation. Some conservative Muslims and clerics, particularly from the Middle East, also expound the same notion, that they are the only ones worthy of God’s grace, to the exclusion of others. Many people of Jewish faith, especially those who are Orthodox and conservative, feel that only such Jews will be favored by God to the exclusion of to others. Some of these types of mentality have led to forced conversions by the Crusaders, slavery, global conflicts, ethnic cleansing, wholescale massacre of indigenous people in the Americas, and even the current widespread sentiment about the so-called clash of civilizations, fueled by populist sentiment in the United States and Europe.
The sense of reality that we find in God’s guidance and throughout the Qur’an is very different from the above sentiments and beliefs. These verses, in consonance with many other verses, in the Qur’an portray a different picture that can be summarized as follows:
· Salvation will be denied to those who deny God and reject His guidance out of arrogance, irrespective of any counterclaim perpetuated by clerics and scholars of various faiths, superficial religious affiliations, and derivation of self-serving assertions without regard to human affinity to faith and goodness.
· Unblemished faith in One God and goodness to fellow human beings are the only acceptable grounds for God’s grace, and God assures us that each one of us is capable of such belief and pursuit.
· Fast-forwarding to resurrection after death, God makes it clear though storytelling and conversations among various groups of people that those who misguide people and hinder people from genuine understanding of God and cause confusion between what is good versus what is evil and who plunge into evils are the ones who will not achieve salvation. Their affiliation with a religious group will not be the deciding criteria or basis for salvation.
· Verses 55–56 add further clarity that only genuine faith, true humility, and preserving peace and harmony among people are the true attributes of seeking and hoping for God’s mercy and ultimate salvation.
10. The final sequel to the Qur’an (52–53)
The Qur’an, as a Book of Revelations from God, is the final sequel to other Books of Revelations such as the Torah, the Bible, and other revelations of antiquity that can be attributed to biblical prophets such as Abraham and David, among others; to other historical figures such as Buddha, Confucius, and Krishna in some of the existing major religious; and spiritual teachings that continue to inspire millions of people all over the globe. The Qur’an, as well as prophetic traditions, affirms that God sent prophets over generations of human beings to every part of the planet to ensure that God’s guidance would be available to all over time and distance. Some of these teachings have survived in fragments, while others have maintained their totality, in substance if not in their original forms, such as the Torah and the Bible, while the Qur’an, by all historical accounts and as affirmed by God Himself, has been and will be preserved in its entirety for all future generations. The Qur’an as such is considered the final revelation that encapsulates all of God’s revelations and is declared here and in many other places as a Book that contains knowledge and guidance, and it’s a source of mercy from God for all who aspire to believe as well as for those who believe.
Having said that, there continue to be doubts and misalignments with regard to the guidance contained in books such as the Qur’an and the Bible for a number of factors such as
· the lack of continued deliberations by each generation to continue to improve our understanding of the scripture and its implementation in our continually evolving social, political, and moral constructs;
· creating undue bifurcation between human sciences and scriptural guidance without open and honest conversations that focus on human upliftment rather than narrow and self-serving dogmatic views in all spheres of human knowledge, historical religious practices without proper grounding in scriptures, and doctrines and human and societal biases across nations and communities;
· the corruption of scriptures and undue control by religious authorities over how scriptures should be studied and interpreted, let alone implemented, and the outright assertion by those who lack faith in God that scriptural guidance is irrelevant and that only human knowledge, however flawed, matters; and, last but not least,
· a lack of genuine desire among various parties, communities, and religious groups to focus on our common origin, common faith in God, and common destiny that encompasses not only our presence on this planet but also the life that will continue to exist beyond our temporal life on this planet.
The Qur’an provides a framework (4:59) for addressing our issues by making reference to scripture and the teachings of prophets and community leaders; seeking input from experts in politics, human knowledge, and science; and always remaining true to our inner core of a human being, which always seeks God, truth, justice, and human dignity. Throughout human history we have seen examples of how such a framework uplifts human conditions and creates a civilization that we can be proud of. The rise of Moses and his followers against slavery in Egypt; the rise of early Christians against the Romans; the spread of Islam against the practices of polytheism, social injustice, and denial of science and human knowledge; and the American Revolution and experiment against the usurpation of power and religious corruption are some examples of large-scale successes of this framework, with the acknowledgment that even such successes had elements and periods of failure that are well documented and well known to our generation, such as the Holocaust, the Spanish Inquisition, slavery on the American continent, European colonial expansion, two world wars, widespread corruption across Muslim lands, unprecedented negligence of our environment, and alarming income disparities among people on this planet.
Verse 53 calls our attention to the fact that we will be called to account for our failures, and the final sequel to the revelations will be the revelation of God Himself, when truth will become no longer subject to denial or dispute, our intentions will made known to everyone, and we will make excuses for our failures and wish to be sent back so that we can right the wrongs we committed in our lifetime on this planet.
11. God, the Creator Supreme 54–58)
Unlike other Books of Revelations, the Qur’an devotes a significant part of its messages to drawing our attention to the creation of the natural world and how it is purposefully created and constructed to sustain our lives through the application of physical sciences and spiritual aspirations and how Mother Earth, with its vastness and expansive biodiversity, creates the ideal condition of fruits, vegetables, and grains growing in abundance to sustain our lives and the lives of all creatures, known and unknown.
Verse 54 reminds us that God is the Creator of the Universe and this planet of ours. He created them in a measured way and assumed full control of their existence and operation. An example of such operation is the persistent and consistent alteration of day and night that profoundly affects our lives and sense of purpose in the most elegant way conceivable. By the same token, we are told that the sun, the moon, and numerous stars are purposely driven to sustain lives, our lives. Through physical sciences we have a good grasp of how our lives depend on the sun, 93 million miles away, and how the rotation of the earth around the sun and around its own axis creates the possibility of day and night in a consistent and elegant manner, which only God can make possible. God reminds us that His is the creation and its operation, and we should acknowledge His presence and His gifts with utmost humility and a deep sense of awareness and gratitude, without which the transgression of natural laws and abuse of the natural world will take place, a situation that is far too evident already in terms of global warming, pollution of our environment, widespread income inequality, and corrupt governance all over the world, both political and financial, not to mention the moral degradation that results from such conditions.
To drive home the points made above, God reminds us to look around and see how the wind blows, drawing up moisture from oceans and rivers, forming clouds laden with His mercy, and pours down water to thirsty earth so that fruits and vegetation can grow, to the delight of all creatures, including humans; this is an apt analogy to how God will bring out the living again from the dead on the Day of Resurrection. The variety of soil and weather conditions on the earth creates varying degrees of fertility and foliage growth, reminding us once more of God’s ability to sustain and constrain lives as He pleases. Our lives and our physical world are a constant reminder for each and every one of the conscious human beings to understand the essence of God’s presence and purpose and to live a purposeful and thankful live. Without thankfulness and purposefulness, there can be no human development, either spiritual and physical.
12. The rule of law and tranquility (56)
This verse is foundational to the rule of law that God wishes and that every human society should endeavor to achieve and sustain. A call is made to each individual, especially those who believe and wish to be good human beings, that any form of mischief, be it anarchy, indecency, a violation of human dignity, injustice, income inequality, abuse of natural resources, pollution of the natural environment, or anything that we all can name and agree on, should not be a norm in one’s life and in one’s community, and where such a situation exists in whatever shape or form or to whatever extent, effort should be made to bring about reformation to establish the new norm (natural norm) of peace and prosperity with human freedom and allowance for equal opportunity to every human being in every part of the world.
God wants us to be mindful of Him and our responsibilities as faithful human beings to aspire to peace in the face of mischief and to fear that if we are not mindful and continuously exerting ourselves to goodness, mischief will take over even if peace is the current norm. Every generation has to aspire to peace and also fear the consequences if we are negligent so that we can be driven to be vigilant and act proactively. As the previous verse also implies, humility and quiet deliberation on matters of faith and justice are akin. Be mindful of God with humility in your private moments, not only in the public square and places of worship.
At the very end of the verse 56, God reminds us that He is always with those who wish and do good, to give us courage and confidence that the effort that we put in to curb mischief in our society and to bring about reformation of truth and justice will always win if we are genuine, thoughtful, and innovative and work collectively, because God is on our side always.
13. Nature as a constant reminder (57–58)
Living in the twenty-first century, many of us have become accustomed to material progress and modern infrastructure that protects us from the elements of the weather and to getting our food and other necessities from grocery stores and Amazon and have become oblivious to the direct connection with nature and our own existence. Instead of being thankful for all that God has enabled us to do and achieve through our knowledge, technology, and natural resources, some of us deny that God has any hand in our progress and our very survival on this planet.
The reality of our existence is that we are deeply and utterly dependent on this planet for our survival—in terms of food, water, and air to feed and sustain us; the natural resources we use to build our buildings, our computers, and our transportation; the cotton and synthetics for our clothing; and herbs, plants, and minerals for our medicine; and so on, to give few examples that we can readily connect to.
God reminds us that it is He who directs winds in our global weather patterns to distribute good news of His mercy in terms of rain to nourish the earth and to carry pollen to bring out fruits from trees and to distribute seed across the lands. The wind carries water vapor from oceans and rivers to form clouds and drives such water to land that needs water so that fruits and vegetables can grow to create and support our extended food chain. The emergence of such growth, its abundance, its beauty, and our freedom to cultivate and extract such nourishment should be a reminder of God, that we should be thankful in the most genuine and profound way. Also, the variations in the productivity of various lands and various climates that produce different fruits and vegetables that expansively and profoundly affect our lives and the lives of other creatures, the enormous variety of flora and fauna that are also a source of spiritual understanding of our own fragile existence, and our utter dependency on God should being a deep sense of humility and thankfulness and care for one another, as Mother Nature does without asking questions or showing any discrimination.
God repeats such natural cycles of growth and life, and our mutual dependencies to communicate and share His messages and guidance, especially for people who are tuned to thoughtfulness and purposefulness and are able to distance themselves from the day-to-day preoccupation of earning and earthly pleasure and consider it a worthy pursuit to reflect on life, its diversity, and its beauty and to connect the dots as to where it comes from, what makes life possible, and where we go from this planet after our death. Disregarding God’s guidance and being overly consumed by our material progress has been one of the major shortcomings of our century, and conscientious and mindful people—young and old—have to engage to reverse such apathy and denial of God’s grace to humanity.
14. The prophets as guides—Noah, Hud, Salih, Lot, Shu’aib (59–93)
Beginning with this chapter, the Qur’an begins to provide additional narratives on prophets—the biblical prophets mostly—with an aim to demonstrate the common thread among all prophets and the common destiny of their communities and followers. There is a common pattern of the message; the enmity that it generates among people against prophets and their followers; and the eventual outcome, where the deniers of prophets and God’s messages were humbled or removed with another generation of people to come and rehash the same message, perhaps with different prophets and under different living conditions and civilizations. The overall pattern has been repeated with following key attributes:
· Prophets were raised from the communities themselves, where they spent a part of their early lives so that they would understand the social norms, existing beliefs and customs, the power dynamics, and the social structure, and they spoke their language to be effective communicators.
· These prophets were of exemplary character, and they were thoughtful individuals even before they became prophets and earned the respect of their communities for their care, concern, and humility. But once they were given prophethood and began to question their community about their false or flawed belief systems, disregarding the God Who should be worshipped, when they warned their communities about social injustice and ignorant customs and practices, when they sided with the poor and the oppressed, it generated powerful responses from the rich and powerful, from the corrupt and the morally bankrupt against such prophet’s teachings and moral stance.
· In most instances fewer people followed the prophets, fearing the oppression of the powerful, expecting handouts from the rich, being ignorant of and accustomed to the existing norms and practices of their forefathers and being unable or unwilling to seek truth and justice in their lives.
· Eventually, when the lives of the faithful and the followers of the prophets were made unbearable, God always sided with them and protected them once they had proven their commitment to faith, to truth, and to justice, while He curtailed the reach and the power of the rejecters of faith through natural disaster, internal dissention, moral bankruptcy, and increasingly dysfunctional social order and practices.
The purpose of these stories is to remind future generations to take lessons and to proactively manage their affairs and safeguard faith, truth and justice in their lives and in their communal acts and practices.
15. God’s challenge and warning to people (94–99)
God follows certain prescribed ways of nudging people toward faith and what is good, but at the end of the day, people have to demonstrate their understanding and commitment through civil discourse, reforming their lives and societies based on truth and justice, establishing rule of law that respects human freedom and dignity, and creating a social order that allows each and every human being the maximum potential to blossom into a full human being worthy of God’s creation and His representation on the planet.
God has sent prophets and people of knowledge, consciousness, and goodwill in every generations in the past. And there will always be conscious human beings driven by God-given intellect, a higher vision for humanity, and a desire to right the wrongs of the day in every generation to come. As God said in the Qur’an, for every prophet there have been enemies, and so, in every generation, leaders who bring consciousness into our individual and collective conduct, call for justice in our social order, inspire knowledge over ignorance, and exhibit humility over arrogance will be faced with the forces of evil, ignorance, and arrogance, devoid of consciousness in God and in human purpose. Such affairs are part of the construct of our world, as through such means God inspires and confirms those who are committed to faithfulness and goodwill while confronting the evils of those who are creating evidence of their own wrongdoing in the process.
Human sufferings, afflictions, and even natural calamities are reminders to bring humility, patience, and conscious purposefulness into our lives, whereas sustained affluence and happiness can lead to a false sense of security and a denial of God’s presence in our lives. By the same token, a reverse outcome is also a possibility. That is one of the reasons that the Prophet cautioned that sustained poverty can lead to denial of God and advised his wealthy followers not to give away all their wealth to charity but to leave some for their heirs.
God makes a conditional promise in verse 96 that if we as humanity, in any part of the world, truly believe in God and develop conscious purposefulness in our personal and communal lives, God will open up blessings and human development from all possible sources, even unknown to current generation. Throughout human history such predictions have played out. Our history has been recorded with some level of detail, and certainly our current world order reflects that reality as it continues to unfold in front of our eyes.
While God’s promise for His blessing and human development is conditioned on our collective affinity to our common humanity and connection to God, we are also reminded that we do not take such blessings and prosperity for granted. Just as physical calamities and danger can appear from nowhere during any part of the day or night or from above or beneath the earth, the real danger lurks in the negligence of our soul and a diminished or lost connection with God.
16. Human failure to maintain God’s covenant (100–102)
Human societies, from the time of Abel and Cain (the first recoded human conflict, a selfish and ungodly act recorded in the scriptures) to our modern day, continue to defy our covenant with God—sometimes with defiance and outright rejection, such as the Pharaoh, Lenin, Hitler, and Mao Ze Dung, to name a few, and at other times through deception and hypocrisy, such as corrupt practices and a lack of democratic institutions in many Muslim countries, using labels such as Islamic Republic or People’s Republic; church-sponsored slavery or Crusades for Western democracies, which shows a persistent affinity for some form of racism in terms of color or national or religious affiliation in modern-day religious and atheist extremists all over the world, be it in the name of Islam (ISIS in the Middle East), Christianity (some Evangelicals and white supremacists in the United States), Hindu nationalists in India, communists in China and Russia, or corporate greed that is leading to extreme income inequality all over the world, even in the first-world countries.
As generations after generations inherit this earth, God takes stock of our conduct, our institutions, and our social constructs and afflicts us with natural consequences, as He sees it, for our evils and misdeeds (more so than as God’s punishment, as some religious people would like to assert) and lets us persist in such evils with an expectation that people of conscience, godliness, and goodness will rise to the occasion and restore the balance that is very much a bedrock of human survival, success, and our savior (not Jesus, not Mohammad, but our deeds) with God.
The lack of commitment to the covenant with God is at times widespread. No generation is immune from it, but as time and again we have seen throughout history, the human condition—both material as well as spiritual—improves when we strive to be faithful to our covenant with God, which is nothing more than “to seek the truth and to establish justice thereby” (7:181).
17. Lessons from Moses (103–129, 142–156)
The stories of Moses, the Children of Israel, their sufferings, their triumphs, and their trials are mentioned in many places in the Qur’an, many of which corroborate what was already in the Torah and the Bible and, in some cases, add more color and nuance to the story and always end with a statement of lessons to be taken. In these two segments, the first segment is pre-Exodus, when Moses came back to the Pharaoh, in whose household he was raised, as a prophet of God to speak truth about God and human conditions and to rescue the Children of Israel from slavery. The second segment is post-Exodus, where the Children of Israel were secure from the Pharaoh and achieved the freedom to manage their lives, which became a trial for them when Moses went to Mount Sinai to receive the tablets of Ten Commandments and other instructions that are the basis for the Torah.
When Moses came to the Pharaoh, he had nothing with him except the endowment from God of prophethood, his intellect, his experience, his brother Aaron for company and help against a powerful king who declared himself to be God, and a group of people who were reduced to slavery and despair but sustained a deep longing to be freed and to live their lives as a community of common heritage of Israel, a lineage that goes back to Joseph, to Jacob, to Isaac, and to Abraham. Moses brought no visible hope to his people but only increased the resolve and arrogance of the Pharaoh to deny God and oppress the Children of Israel even more. In this context, the conversation noted in verse 129 between Moses and his people is worth dwelling on to deepen our understanding of human conditions and God’s expectation of us. “His people lamented: ‘We are being persecuted—before you came and since you are here.’ Moses comforted them: ‘It may well be that God will destroy your tormentor and give you a hand in overseeing the affairs of the land. God will see how you conduct yourselves then.’”
The Children of Israel were divided, as this always happens under extreme oppression and injustice. One group was in despair, as they saw that nothing had gotten better since the arrival of Moses but had only gotten worse. Another group understood that persecution would continue before things get better, as God was on their side, and they cautioned Moses and themselves not to take on the blame for the persecution and lose hope. It was to such human aspiration that Moses spoke to when he said that perhaps God would destroy their enemy and give the rule of the land to them in turn. Such a turn of events was not the end goal, as we reflect on what he said next. He said that once you get your rule and command of the land and your affairs, then God will see how you manage your freedom and your affairs, affairs that need be managed based on truth and justice.
This leads to the second segment, where Moses was in deep devotion on Mount Sinai to receive guidance from God—the Ten Commandments, which form the very foundation of evolving human societies. But his community abused their God-given freedom, created division among themselves, refused to listen to Aaron, and degraded themselves to worshipping a calf instead of God, who had saved them from the Pharaoh. This was the beginning of a series of ups and downs in Jewish history during the lifetime of Moses and afterward, as there had been repeated incursions against the covenant of God and His repeated forgiveness. In each case, a smaller group of resilient faithful always exerted themselves to bring themselves back to God’s guidance and renewed their commitment to truth and justice, a legacy that was propagated by many Jewish prophets, including Jesus and finally by Mohammad, a prophet declared to be a mercy to all of mankind, and a final revelation, the Qur’an, corroborates, augments, and completes the long series of God’s guidance to mankind, including the Bible and the Torah.
18. The Prophet Mohammad as a guide (157–158)
Aside from the confirmation that the advent of the Prophet Mohammad is mentioned in both the Torah and the Bible, which is detailed in the footnotes corresponding to verse 157, I would like to draw attention to certain attributes of the Prophet and the faithful that are really the crux of these two important verses. The following attributes of the Prophet are mentioned:
· He was an unlettered person who did not know how to read or write, but he was deeply aware of the social customs and beliefs of his people, including the few Christians and many Jews who lived in and around Makkah during his upbringing, his trade journeys to Syrian and Yemen, and his interactions with people coming to trade in Mecca during the season of pilgrimage. Some Muslim scholars would like to assert that given that he could not have read the Torah or the Bible, he must have known nothing of the Christian and Jewish faiths, while some non-Muslim scholars like to assert that he borrowed his Qur’an narratives from reading of the Torah and the Bible, thereby trying to negate the divine origin of the Qur’an. Both positions are untenable and have been refuted in the literature of the past and need no further discussion here.
· The Prophet has been characterized as someone who inspires, motivates, and provides legal frameworks for what is good and how to be good while discouraging and prohibiting all that is evil and impure—a characterization that is equally true of Moses and Jesus, but Jesus did not have the opportunity to put his teachings into practice, given the threat to his life, and Moses had repeated setbacks, as his community, time and again, deviated from his teachings even while he was with them. The followers of Mohammad demonstrated a steady resolve to adhere to his teachings and to reform societies after his prophethood and through the sixteenth century, a steady progression for almost a thousand years.
· The Prophet is characterized as liberating people from the shackles of ignorance, oppression, and superstition and enlightening them with knowledge, wisdom, and freedom to choose and make informed and responsible choices about life, liberty, and success that really matter.
· The Prophet, as declared in the Qur’an, was a teacher and messenger for all of humanity, not confined to a region or an ethnic group, and he was guided and sent by none other than the Creator of the Universe, Who is the One and Only God and Who gifts life and brings death so that we can be brought back to a new life that will be shaped by our current life.
Time and again, the Qur’an makes us take a step back and take stock of the person of Mohammad, whose life and legacy is a living memory and inspiration of what is possible when human beings put faith in God and demonstrate unfailing commitment to truth and justice.
19. Moses’s followers recognized (159)
Throughout the Qur’an there is a persistent theme that seeking truth and establishing justice is the cornerstone of God’s message to mankind. All prophets, notably the last three prophets—Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad—were inspired and instructed to deliver the same message and put their guidance into practice.
In this verse, God recognizes that a group of followers of Moses, at the time of the, Prophet, was committed to be guided by the truth and to establish justice in their communities. This has been true throughout Jewish history, even to this date, even though some Muslims and Christians might disagree. In a similar manner, there have always been groups of Christians who did the same throughout Christian history, a recent example being the founding fathers of the American Revolution, who were people of deep faith in God and demonstrated an uncompromising stance on liberty, justice, and the pursuit of human purposefulness.
In today’s climate of political corruption, national isolationism, corporate greed, and religious extremism all over the world, we can take lessons from the Qur’an to have the humility and generosity to acknowledge the genuine otherness of others and their respective contributions and capacity to do good and to focus more on our collective responsibility to seek the truth and establish justice. As God said in another instance in the Qur’an (7:181), “Let there be from among the people, a group who seek the truth and establish justice thereby”—a call to all of humanity who wish to listen, irrespective of faith affiliation, to establish our common humanity to one another and to God, our Creator.
20. Human failings and successes (168–170)
There are certain human conditions that are persistent in every generation and in every geographical location but with varying levels of persistence and intensity. There are people of faith and goodwill in each, while there exist evils and evil people as well. Each group is tried with abundance, blessings, and trials of misfortunes, which affect each group differently. The intent from God is to turn evil people away from evils and toward faith and goodwill and to keep people of faith and goodwill on their path steadily.
Here attention is drawn to a generation—and this could be applied to any group from any faith, be they Muslims, Christians, Jews or other faith group—that inherited God’s guidance from previous generations who were righteous and good people. This generation turned their backs to God’s guidance and used God’s Book to justify their evilness. The Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust in Europe, and slavery on the American continent are stark reminders from the Christian group that abused their faith in exchange for evil. At the same time, the American Revolution against the British and the example of the founding fathers of Unites States of America are a shining example of those who turned misfortune and oppression into a path of righteousness and human freedom that is unparalleled in human history.
While the Prophet of Islam and his early generations of followers for a thousand years ushered in, over a vast expanse of this planet, advances in education, science and technology, the rule of law, and human freedom and justice, recent generations of Muslims, even after the experience of colonialization, have failed to bring education, human freedom, and justice to their societies and are mired in inept political leadership, widespread corruption, and abuse of Islamic laws in the name of so-called Sharia and in flagrant violation of women’s rights in most of the Islamic countries.
Although the Jewish faith ushered in for the first time organized faith in One God and a community of faithful based on truth and justice, over time the rabbis and Jewish legal scholars persisted in interpreting the Torah to benefit themselves personally and brought corruption in faith and in social practices, later to be followed by the popes in the Christian faith; and their opposition to Jesus, a Jewish prophet, and the recent atrocities and massive displacement of Palestinian Muslims and Christians in the name of a Jewish state is very much contrary to the teachings of Moses. It is remarkable to reflect on the conversation that Moses had with his community at the time of their dire oppression by the Pharaoh. He said: “Perhaps God will make you the leader of the land, and then He (God) will see how you behave.”
Perhaps it is time for all the Muslims, Jews, Christians, and people of faith all over the world to reflect on our current generation and question our individual and collective faith and our lack of alignment with truth and justice, despite enormous increases in human knowledge and human sciences. God is consistent in reiterating that any group of people who have faith, seek the truth, and establish justice will prevail in the long run on this planet and will be rewarded by God in the life to come.
When the forty-fifth president of the United States talks of faith in God on the one hand and supports white supremacists and neo-Nazis on the other hand, one can see the direct evidence of the evils that come when we allow leaders and societies to turn back on God’s teachings and justify evil in the name of God and religion. We have seen this before, and we need to be ever vigilant to be successful, as God is always on the side of truth and justice, as stated in verse 170.
21. God reveals to us all (172–174)
The notion that God presents Himself to every newborn, the descendants of Adam and Eve, and that each one of us in every generation experiences this truth, is something that we need to reflect on deeply and treasure like no other truth and experience, yet it is hard to search and find in our memory when and how this happens or happened.
God says in this verse that He reveals Himself to every child who is born and asks him or her to assess a simple truth: Am I not your Sustainer Creator? God does not force the simple truth that He is the God; instead He gives the choice to confirm or deny that He is God, a reminder of God’s commitment (and an endowment) to Adam that humans have been endowed with the unique capacity to seek, gain, and teach knowledge and the resultant freedom and responsibility to make informed choices. Every child then responds: “Yes, I bear witness (to this fundamental truth).” God then goes on to express the reasoning behind His desire to reveal Himself at the beginning of each child’s life. There are two reasons: (1) lest we complain to God on the Day of Resurrection—on our second birth—that we were unaware and uninformed of this fundamental truth, and (2) we assert that we are not at fault for not knowing God because our forefathers denied God or were polytheists and we just followed them without proper knowledge. God then goes on to say that this Qur’an and this verse, which each one of us can touch and read, reiterates the events of God’s revelation to each of us at the time of our birth so that we can remind ourselves, reflect on our lives, and subscribe to this fundamental truth about God, about faith, and about a purposeful life so that we can educate, build capacity, and demonstrate active pursuit of faith and goodness in our lives before we go back to God at the time of death and give accounts of our lives on the Day of Resurrection.
Now one of the questions we need to ponder is when such revelation of God happens to a human child—is it at the time of birth, when a child is fully formed and ready to venture out into the world, or at the first smile a baby produces, or at first sound he utters, or at the first dream she has? Or does it happen that the soul that retains that knowledge and is embedded in every child at some point between conception and birth? I am not sure that there is a scientific experiment that we can conduct to discover that moment—or it will be left to philosophers to ponder or spiritualists to try to feel in every generation. Perhaps we can look and reflect on a few human experiences and thoughts to uncover this truth about our knowledge and acknowledgment of God. Every human being, human community, culture, and civilization from the beginning till today has demonstrated a yearning for God and has instinctively tried to connect with God on two levels: (1) at a personal level at times of tragedy or elation, knowing that none seems to have capacity to remove such tragedy (e.g., death and calamity) or bring such elation (e.g., the birth of a child; life-threatening moments, once removed) in our individual or collective experience and existence, and (2) we exist as part of a larger natural world—the earth with its vast expanses and resources, the atmosphere with its protective shield, the surrounding solar system where the sun acts as the source of all energy that we need for survival—this construct, which is part of a larger construct, is beyond our human capacity to build, maintain, and organize, let alone even to fathom its underlying construct and purpose. I realize that some of my atheist and humanist friends might think otherwise.
At another level, as a scientist, technologist, entrepreneur, and, certainly, as a fellow traveler on this journey of life, I have seen time and again and have observed that in every generation throughout human history, our human capacity to think, imagine, and dream is in itself a confirmation that that thought, that imagination, that dream is real and reflects a reality that already exists, but we need to renew our feeling, our experience or rediscover that reality. The fact that every single human being has a flickering light and yearning in the depths of their soul or their thoughts or their consciousness that there is a God is itself is an affirmation of that truth about God and our existence in His creation and a consequence of that conversation between God and the human child in each one of us.
22. The inability to use God-given endowments (179–180)
Every human being is endowed with certain capabilities and capacities that are unique to that individual, in addition to what is given to the human species as a special endowment from God unlike what is given to other creation. Two critical endowments are our capacity to seek, learn, and teach knowledge and our freedom to make choices. To enable these endowments, we are given eyes to see; ears to hear; a heart to feel; a voice to speak and articulate with; a brain to process, retain, analyze, and decide; and a soul with consciousness to align our purpose, thoughts, and actions with what is true and just.
Having these extraordinary gifts, many of us fail to take stock of our own capabilities and capacities and thereby fall short of our human potential at personal and community levels. In this first verse (179), God points out that there are those humans and Jinns (another creation of God that the Qur’an refers to, unlike any other Books of Revelations) who fail to use their eyes to see properly and their ears to listen and internalize carefully, and their hearts are devoid of true feelings and empathy. These specific examples are a symbolism of our mental and spiritual conditions that limit our consciousness and our ability to act properly. Such conditions are like an animalistic condition, which is inferior to the human condition. We are told that these people (humans and Jinns) are like cattle, or, even more misguided than these animals, and heedless, despite the extraordinary capacity to be otherwise.
God then draws our attention to His names (attributes), which are also human attributes (30:30), and makes a call that we live and act according to these attributes and not be influenced by those humans who violate such attributes—that is, failing to honor our own better judgments and conditions, which are a reflection of what God has endowed us with, in keeping with His own attributes. We are told that those who fail in their pursuit of truth and justice will face the consequences of their failure; one such consequence is an Afterlife in Hell, as well as making our peaceful earth a hellish place for others.
23. Seeking truth and doing justice (181, 159)
In two instances in the same chapter, God repeats His recurring inspiration and expectations of people of faith—that truth and justice are intricately and profoundly linked, so without truth, justice cannot prevail or be restored, and without justice, truth cannot come out and be heard.
In the first instance, God proclaims that Mohammad has been sent as a Messenger to the entire world (all of humanity) by God, Whose dominion encompasses the earth and the entire universe and Who controls life and death and has no partner in His command and Glory. The attributes of this Prophet are that although he is unlettered (ummi), he believes in God and follows God’s words. It is then imperative that those who wish to believe in God and be good should follow the lead of the Prophet. In this context God also makes reference to the fact that Moses, a prophet of God, had among his followers also a group of people who sought and guided with truth, and with such truth they established justice.
In the second instance, in the backdrop of the discussion that many people do not use their eyes to see the truth, do not use their ears to listen to the truth, and do not use their hearts to feel and align with truth, we are told that we should align ourselves with the attributes of God, which are also human attributes. From such people, God always creates a group who, just like a group of the followers of Moses, will seek and guide with truth and with such truth seek to establish justice.
Truth and justice are two fundamental aspects of our lives and are the basic foundations of human development—both material as well as spiritual. Without truth, justice cannot be found or established, and without a just society, truth is difficult to seek and find. It is a holistic circle where the pursuit of truth will always lead to justice, and pursuit of justice will always lead to truth.
24. Our tendency to associate others with God (189–190)
For most of us, one of the most significant events in life is the birth of a child. The process of childbirth originates from God’s grace in which He created Adam and Eve and from them generations of men and women who were drawn to each other for the love, comfort, and support that create the ideal conditions to contemplate having a child. A child is conceived in the mother’s womb from the union of elements from the mother and the father and progresses slowly but surely over a period of almost ten months, a consistent process that enables us to anticipate, predict, and enjoy the grace of God in creating a new human being as a gift and as a responsibility—to support in his or her growth as well as in the growth of the parents themselves, as a newborn opens up a new world of excitement and challenges in raising another human being, a process that their parents went through a generation before.
While the process of a child growing in the mother’s womb follows a consistent development patterns, there are times when things can go wrong, and not all pregnancies result in a healthy child. Every expectant parent eagerly monitors and feels the growth of the child in the womb and genuinely hopes that God will grace them with a healthy baby. At times of distressing news about the baby, they fall on their knees and beg God openly, and in their private moments, they seek God’s continued blessings for the child.
While God always listens to the pleas and wishes of every expectant parent, the parents and the child, as they grow together, sometimes fail to live up to their alignment with God. Their belief system is not as genuine as it should be, and they persist in giving credit to themselves and to other man-made gods for delivering them a good baby. The baby becomes a distraction from God as opposed to keeping them close to God, and they indulge themselves and their child in beliefs and practices that are contrary to true belief in One God.
This story gets repeated in every generation, and with the advance of science and technology, there is a renewed danger that we as human beings, despite knowing better, become over-reliant on our own ability. This ability continues to expand through God-given knowledge while we become unmindful to the reality that we all come from God and to Him we will eventually return, and our accountability to God is not the least bit diminished by the increase of our knowledge and ability. On the contrary, our increased capacity for knowledge, science, and exploitation of the resources at our disposal will further lend credibility to the notion that we ought to be ever more grateful, humble, and mindful of our connection to God and not use that capacity as an excuse to deny God and His grace to humanity.
25. Simple guidance of forgiveness, goodness, and knowledge (199)
This verse comes on the heels of discussion of and references to the human tendency to associate the One True God with other deities, persona, and natural artifacts that are nothing but created beings or things and as such should not be worshipped or invoked. The previous verses caution us against any forms of superstition or ignorant worship or bad human conduct.
While atheists deny God and His grace for humanity, humanists believe human beings and humanity are the only source of our values, aspirations, and inspiration while denying or marginalizing God as if He did not exist—or, even if He exists, He is no longer actively engaged with humanity after its creation. Polytheists, on the other hand, assume that God is not the only entity who creates, nurtures, and takes accountability but that there are other deities or creatures or persona who act with or independently of God in taking care of or punishing human beings.
The Trinity in Christianity, for example, associates Jesus and Archangel Gabriel with God as if they were a trio managing the affairs of humanity, while God is the Creator and Head of these three godheads. Unitarians reject such concepts, and there are numerous variations and nuances among numerous denominations such as Catholics, Protestants, Methodists, Lutherans, and Greek Orthodox in Europe and America, along with other variations on different continents.
Hinduism in India, while accepting Brahma as the main god, has many other deities who act like demigods, performing specific activities and/or exhibiting specific characteristic of the natural order. Some groups even worship elephants or monkeys as gods and keep a god of their choice at home to whom they show daily devotion. Some Buddhists, even though they do not believe in God, act as if Buddha is a Godhead, and many Buddhists in Thailand, for example, consider the king as Godhead.
God in this specific verse offer three pieces of advice for humanity to consider in light of their differences in understanding who God is and how God should factor into their lives and in the expression of their common humanity. First and foremost, actively engage to seek knowledge about yourself as a human being, of human societies, and of the natural world so that ignorance does not take hold of your mind and your consciousness and let your search for knowledge lead you to the Truth and to God. Second, always strive to be good and do good to others, no matter what the circumstances are and whom you are interacting with, be it a person, an animal, a tree, an insect, air, water, the world at large. Third, while disagreements among human beings and human societies are inevitable, in matters of faith as well as all matter of life, we should keep knowledge and being good at the core of our conversations and efforts to resolve such disagreements, and if we cannot resolve the differences, forgiveness is a better course than coercion or any physical violence, specifically in matters of God and faith. God says repeatedly in the Qur’an that such matters should be left to God to resolve on the Day of Judgment, and while on earth, we should respect one another’s faith and customs while advocating our own point of view with wisdom and the best of manners.