Surah 57. Al-Hadid

36To understand this theme fully one should keep the following verses of the Qur'an in mind: Imran; 14- 15, Yunus: 24-25, Ibrahim: 18, AI-Kahf: 45-46, An-Nur: 39. In all those verses the truth that has been impressed on the mind is: The life of this world is a temporary life: its spring as well as its autumn is temporary, Them is much here to allure man. but this, in fact, consists of base and insignificant things which man because of his shallowness of mind regards as great and splendid and is deluded into thinking that in attaining them lies supreme success, The truth however is that the highest benefits and means of pleasure and enjoyment that one can possibly attain in the world, arc indeed bast and insignificant and confined to a few years of temporary life, and can be destroyed by just one turn of fate. Contrary to this, the lift hereafter is a splendid and eternal life: its benefits are great and permanent and its losses too are great and permanent. The one who attains Allah's forgiveness and His goodwill there, will indeed have attained the everlasting bliss beside which the whole wealth of the world and its kingdom become pale and insignificant. And the one who is seized in God's torment there, will come to know that he had made a bad bargain even if he had attained all that he regarded as great and splendid in the world.

37Musabagat (from which sabiqu of the original is derived) means to compete and vie with each other in order to excel. The meaning is: "Give up your rivalries with one another for amassing wealth, and pleasures and benefits, of the world and instead make the forgiveness of your Lord and Paradise the object of your struggle and rivalries.”

38Some commentators have taken the word ard in 'arduha ka- 'ard-is- sama '-i wal-ard in the sense of breadth, but actually this word has been used here in the meaning of spaciousness and extensiveness. In Arabic the word ard is not only used for breadth, as a counterpart of length, but also for spaciousness, as it has been used in Ha Mim As-Sajdah: 51: fa-dhu du'a in 'arid: "Then he is full of wordy supplications." Besides, one should also understand that the object here is not to foretell the area or extent of Paradise, but to give an idea of its vastness and extensiveness. Here its vastness has been described as the vastness of the heaven and earth, and in Surah . AI-'Imran it has been said: "Hasten to follow the path that leads to your Lord's forgiveness and to Paradise whose vastness is that of the universe, which has been prepared for the righteous "' (v. 133) When both these verses are read together, one gets the idea that the; gardens and palaces man will receive in Paradise will only serve as his dwelling-place t but the entire universe will be his home He will not be restricted to one place as be is in this world, where just for reaching the Moon, his nearest neighbor in space, he has had to struggle hard for years and expend excessive resources only to overcome the difficulties of a short journey. There the whole universe will be accessible to him: he will be able to see whatever he would desire from his station and be able to visit whichever place he would like easily.