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Pharaoh and his hosts were blotted out, and became as a tale of the past. Their story is an instructive warning and example to future generations.
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When 21:98 was revealed, warning the polytheists that all false gods will be in Hell, ’Abdullâh ibn Az-Ziba’ra, a poet who always attacked Islam, argued with the Prophet (ﷺ) that if what the verse says is true, then Jesus will be in Hell as well! The polytheists, who were present, laughed in agreement with this argument. The Prophet (ﷺ) replied that the verse was talking exclusively about idols, adding that Jesus himself did not ask anyone to worship him. Verse 21:101 was later revealed in support of the Prophet’s argument. Eventually, ’Abdullâh accepted Islam.
Jesus was a man, and a prophet to the Children of Israel, "though his own received him not." Some of the churches that were founded after him worshipped him as "God" and as "the son of God", as do the Trinitarian churches to the present day. The orthodox churches did so in the time of the holy Prophet. When the doctrine of Unity was renewed, and the false worship of others besides Allah was strictly prohibited, all false gods were condemned, e.g., at xxi. 98. The pagan Arabs looked upon Jesus as being in the same category as their false gods, and could not see why a foreign cult, or a foreign god, as they viewed him, should be considered better than their own gods or idols. There was no substance in this, but mere mockery, and verbal quibbling. Jesus was one of the greater prophets: he was not a god, nor was he responsible for the quibbling subtleties of the Athanasian Creed.
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Objecting to the Qur'anic condemnation of their idolatrous worship of angels - whom they describe here as "our deities" - the pagan Quraysh pointed to the parallel Christian worship of Jesus as "the son of God", and even as "God incarnate", and argued more or less thus: "The Qur'an states that Jesus was purely human - and yet the Christians, whom the same Qur'an describes as 'followers of earlier revelation' (ahl al-kitab), consider him divine. Hence, are we not rather justified in our worshipping angels, who are certainly superior to a mere human being?" The fallacy inherent in this "argument" is disposed of in the sequence.
Since the Qur'an condemns explicitly, and in many places, the deification of Jesus by the Christians, this unwarranted deification cannot be used as an argument in favour of the pagan worship of angels and, thus, against the Qur'an: in the words of Zamakhshari, such an argument amounts to "applying a false analogy to a false proposition" (qiyas basil bi-batil).
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A reference to the limited mission of the prophet Jesus, whose Gospel to the Jews only survives in uncertain fragmentary forms.
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Implying not only that Jesus was not a supernatural being, but that the angels, too, are mere created beings finite in their existence - as indicated by the phrase "succeeding one another" - and, therefore, utterly removed from the status of divinity (Baydawi).
Or “We could have easily produced angels from you …”
If it were said that the birth of Jesus without a father sets him above other prophets, the creation of angels without either father or mother would set them still higher, especially as angels do not eat and drink and are not subject to physical laws. But angels are not higher.
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Whereas most of the commentators regard the pronoun hu in innahu as relating to Jesus and, consequently, interpret the above phrase as "he is indeed a means to know [i.e., an indication of the coming of] the Last Hour", some authorities - e.g., Qatadah, Al-Hasan al-Basri and Sa'id ibn Jubayr (all of them quoted by Tabari, Baghawi and Ibn Kathir) - relate the pronoun to the Qur'an, and understand the phrase in the sense adopted in my rendering. The specific mention of the Last Hour in the above context is meant to stress man's ultimate responsibility before the Creator and, therefore, the fact that worship is due to Him alone: and so this parenthetic passage follows logically upon the mention of the false deification of Jesus.
This is understood to refer to the second coming of Jesus in the Last Days before the Resurrection, when he will destroy the false doctrines that pass under his name, and prepare the way for the universal acceptance of Islam, the Gospel of Unity and Peace, the Straight Way of the Qur-an.
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I.e., with divine revelation.
According to Tabari, the restrictive allusion to "some of that . . .", etc., bears on the realm of faith and morals alone, since it was not a part of Jesus' mission to deal with problems of his people's worldly life. This observation coincides with the image of Jesus forthcoming from the (admittedly fragmentary) description of his teachings available to us in the Synoptic Gospels.
True wisdom consists in understanding the unity of the Divine purpose and the Unity of the Divine Personality. The man Jesus came to reconcile the jarring sects in Israel, and his true teaching was just the same as that which was expounded in a wider form by Islam. He did not claim to be God: why should not the Christians follow the doctrine of Unity rather than what has become their ancestral and traditional custom?
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In verses 26-28 an appeal is made to the pagan Arabs, that Islam is their own religion, the religion of Abraham their ancestor; in verses 46-54, an appeal is made to the Jews that Islam is the same religion as was taught by Moses, and that they should not allow their leaders to make fools of them; in verses 57-65 an appeal is made to the Christians that Islam is the same religion as was taught by Jesus, and that they should give up their sectarian attitude and follow the universal religion, which shows the Straight Way.
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Sc., regarding the nature of Jesus and the inadmissibility of worshipping anyone but God: an allusion to subsequent developments in Christianity.
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Cf. xii. 107. What is there to wait for? The Hour of Judgment may come at any moment. It will come all of a sudden before they realise that it is on them. They should make up their minds to give up misleading disputations and come to the Straight Path.
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I.e., they will hate one another - those who realize that they have been led astray by their erstwhile friends, and the latter, because they see that they will be held responsible for the sins of those whom they have led astray.
The hatred and spite, which are associated with evil, will be felt with peculiar intensity in that period of agony. That itself would be a punishment, from which the righteous will be free. The righteous will have passed all perils of falling into wrong frames of mind.
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The devotion and service to Allah result in the soul being made free from all fear and sorrow, as regards the past, present, and future, if we may take an anology from Time for a timeless state. Such devotion and service are shown by (1) believing in Allah's Signs, which means understanding and accepting His Will, and (2) by merging our will completely in His universal Will, which means being in tune with the Infinite, and acting in all things to further His Kingdom.
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The Garden is the type of all that is beautiful to eye, mind, and soul, all that is restful and in tune, a complete state of bliss, such as we can scarcely conceive of in this troubled world. Several metaphors indicate how we can try to picture that bliss to ourselves in "this muddy vesture of decay."
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