Surah 22. Al-Hajj, Ayah 61

Sc., "and therefore has the power to succour the believers who have been wronged".

I.e., it is He who knows what is in the hearts of men, and nevertheless, in His unfathomable wisdom, allows the darkness of oppression to grow at the expense of the light of freedom, and then causes the light to overcome the darkness: an eternal, cyclical recurrence which dominates the life of mankind. (As Ibn Kathir points out, the above passage contains a direct allusion to {3:26-27}-"Say: O God, Lord of all dominion! Thou grantest dominion unto whom Thou willest, and takest away dominion from whom Thou willest.... Thou hast the power to will anything: Thou makest the night grow longer by shortening the day, and Thou makest the day grow longer by shortening the night...."

To some it may appear strange or even irreconcilable that Allah should be both Merciful and Just; that He should both protect His devotees and yet ask for their self-sacrifice-that he should command them to return good for evil, and yet permit retaliation under certain restrictions. But such thoughts are short-sighted. Do they not see many inconsistencies in all Life, all Nature, and all Creation? Why, even in such simple phenomena as Night and Day, the one merges into the other, and no one can tell when precisely the one begins and the other ends. Yet we can see in a rough sort of way that the one gives rest and the other activity, that the one reveals the beauties of the starry heavens and the other the splendour of the sun. In countless ways we can see there the wisdom and the fine artistry of Allah. And there are subtle nuances and mergings in nature that our intelligence can hardly penetrate. Now human life and human relations are far more complicated, and it is Allah alone Who can see all the subtle distinctions and hear the cries of all His creatures, in a world which Tennyson described as "red in tooth and claw".