Surah 17. Al-Israa, Ayah 99

See notes [98] and [105] above.

Lit., "to create the like of them" - i.e., to resurrect them individually, each of them having the same identity (or "likeness") which he or she had before death.

Lit., "a term (ajal) for them". Since ajal denotes, primarily, "a specified term [at which something falls due]", it obviously relates here to the inescapable fact of resurrection.

Allah, Who created all that is in the heavens and on earth, has surely the power to revive the life of individual souls after their bodies have perished,-and revive them with memories of their past life and for a continuation of their spiritual history. Only He has fixed a term for each stage of our existence, which we can neither prolong nor shorten.

This phrase carries us back to xvii. 89, after we began the argument about the real motives for the rejection of the Qur-an by sceptics. The argument is now closed in a sort of minor circle within the major circle sketched in n. 2304 above.