-->
No translation has been selected yet. Please click on the (Compare) link at the top and enable the translations of your choice.
Lit., "it is not upon thee ('alayka) that he does not attain to purity".
Allah's Message is for all, but if the great ones arrogantly keep back from it, it is no fault of the preacher, so long as he has proclaimed the Message. He should attend to all, and specially to the humble and lowly.
No translation has been selected yet. Please click on the (Compare) link at the top and enable the translations of your choice.
No translation has been selected yet. Please click on the (Compare) link at the top and enable the translations of your choice.
The fear in the blind man's heart may have been two-fold. (1) He was humble and God-fearing, not arrogant and self-sufficient; (2) being poor and blind, he feared to intrude; yet his earnest desire to learn the Qur-an made him bold, and he came, perhaps unseasonably, but was yet worthy of encouragement, because of the purity of his heart.
No translation has been selected yet. Please click on the (Compare) link at the top and enable the translations of your choice.
No translation has been selected yet. Please click on the (Compare) link at the top and enable the translations of your choice.
Sc., of the existence and omnipotence of God. The Qur'an is described here, as in many other places, as "a reminder" because it is meant to bring man's instinctive - though sometimes hazy or unconscious - realization of God's existence into the full light of consciousness. (Cf. 7:172 and the corresponding note [139].)
Allah's Message is a universal Message, from which no one is to be excluded, rich or poor, old or young, great or lowly, learned or ignorant. If anyone had the spiritual craving that needed satisfaction, he was to be given precedence if there was to be any question of precedence at all.
No translation has been selected yet. Please click on the (Compare) link at the top and enable the translations of your choice.
No translation has been selected yet. Please click on the (Compare) link at the top and enable the translations of your choice.
At the time this Sura was revealed, there were perhaps only about 42 or 45 Suras in the hands of the Muslims. But it was a sufficient body of Revelation of high spiritual value, to which the discription given here could be applied. It was held in the highest honor; its place in the hearts of Muslims was more exalted than that of anything else; as Allah's Word, it was pure and sacred; and those who transcribed it were men who were honorable, just and pious. The legend that the early Suras were not carefully written down and preserved in books is a pure invention. The recensions made later in the time of the first and the third Khalifas were merely to preserve the purity and safeguard the arrangement of the text at a time when the expansion of Islam among non-Arabic-speaking people made such precautions necessary.
No translation has been selected yet. Please click on the (Compare) link at the top and enable the translations of your choice.
No translation has been selected yet. Please click on the (Compare) link at the top and enable the translations of your choice.
No translation has been selected yet. Please click on the (Compare) link at the top and enable the translations of your choice.
No translation has been selected yet. Please click on the (Compare) link at the top and enable the translations of your choice.
For my rendering of qutila as "he destroys himself", see surah {74}, note [9].
No translation has been selected yet. Please click on the (Compare) link at the top and enable the translations of your choice.
No translation has been selected yet. Please click on the (Compare) link at the top and enable the translations of your choice.
I.e., in accordance with the organic functions which man's body and mind are to fulfil, and the natural conditions to which he will have to adapt himself. Verses {18-22}, although formulated in the past tense, obviously describe a recurrent phenomenon.
Cf. lxxvi. 2, and n. 5832. The origin of man as an animal is lowly indeed. But what further faculties and capacities has not Allah granted to man? Besides his animal body, in which also he shares in all the blessings which Allah has bestowed on the rest of His Creation, man has been granted divine gifts which entitle him to be called the Vicegerent on earth: ii. 30. He has a will; he has spiritual perception; he is capable of divine love; he can control nature within certain limits, and subject nature's forces to his own use. And he has been given the power of judgment, so that he can avoid excess and defect, and follow the middle path. And that path, as well as all that is necessary for his life in its manifold aspects, has been made easy for him.
No translation has been selected yet. Please click on the (Compare) link at the top and enable the translations of your choice.
Lit., "He makes easy the way for him". This is an allusion to man's being endowed with the intellectual equipment enabling him to discern between good and evil and to make fruitful use of the opportunities offered to him by his earthly environment.
The way to true guidance or the way out of their mothers’ wombs.
No translation has been selected yet. Please click on the (Compare) link at the top and enable the translations of your choice.