Surah 30. Ar-Rum, Ayah 30

I.e., "surrender thy whole being"; the term "face" is often used metonymically in the sense of one's "whole being".

For this rendering of hanif, see note [110] on 2:135 .

See 7:172 and the corresponding note [139]. The term fitrah, rendered by me as "natural disposition", connotes in this context man's inborn, intuitive ability to discern between right and wrong, true and false, and, thus, to sense God's existence and oneness. Cf. the famous saying of the Prophet, quoted by Bukhari and Muslim: "Every child is born in this natural disposition; it is only his parents that later turn him into a 'Jew', a 'Christian', or a 'Magian'." These three religious formulations, best known to the contemporaries of the Prophet, are thus contrasted with the "natural disposition" which, by definition, consists in man's instinctive cognition of God and self-surrender (islam) to Him. (The term "parents" has here the wider meaning of "social influences" or "environment").

Lit., "no change shall there be [or "shall be made"] in God's creation (khalq)", i.e., in the natural disposition referred to above (Zamakhshari). In this context, the term tabdil ("change") obviously comprises the concept of "corruption".

Din Qaiyim here includes the whole life, thoughts and desires of man. The "standard Religion," or the Straight Way is thus contrasted with the various human systems that conflict with each other and call themselves separate "religions" or "sects" (see verse 32 below). Allah's standard Religion is one, as Allah is One.

For Hanif see n. 134 to ii. 135. Here "true" is used in the sense in which we say, "the magnetic needle is true to the north." Those who have been privileged to receive the Truth should never hesitate or swerve but remain constant, as men who know.

As turned out from the creative hand of Allah, man is innocent, pure, true, free, inclined to right and virtue, and endued with true understanding about his own position in the Universe and about Allah's goodness, wisdom, and power. That is his true nature, just as the nature of a lamb is to be gentle and of a horse is to be swift. But man is caught in the meshes of customs, superstitions, selfish desires, and false teaching. This may make him pugnacious, unclean, false, slavish, hankering after what is wrong or forbidden, and deflected from the love of his fellow-men and the pure worship of the One True God. The problem before the Prophets is to cure this crookedness, and to restore human nature to what it should be under the Will of Allah.