Welcome to our weekly program "Path towards Enlightenment" in which we present you a fluent and easy-to-understand explanation of the ayahs of the holy Qur’an. We start from where we left you last Friday and here is ayah 42 of Surah Saba:

 “Today you have no power to benefit or harm one another,’ and We shall say to those who did wrong, ‘Taste the punishment of the Fire which you used to deny.”

Last week we said that on the Day of Resurrection the polytheists’ pleas to the angels to intercede on their behalf with God Almighty, will be rejected by the angels themselves who will point out to the polytheists that they chose to be misled by Satan and followed his temptations, instead of heeding the monotheistic message of the Prophets.

As is clear by the ayah that we recited now, that on the Day of Resurrection, no one will have power to harm or benefit others. In the Hereafter both sovereignty and ownership belong to Allah only, which means that none of the objects that the polytheists used to worship, such as the Jinn, the angels, and others, has any power. Neither the object of worship can do anything for its worshipper, nor can a worshipper do anything for the object of worship.

This ayah means to say that on that Day the hope of the polytheists will change into despair and this fact will be clearly made manifest for them that their objects of worship will not be able to work for them the slightest, but, on the contrary, they will hate them. Hence the All-Merciful God tells them to taste the punishment of hell.  In fact, in the Hereafter, they receive both the punishment of their own polytheism and the punishment of the denial of Resurrection, and both of these meanings are compiled in the sentence:

From this ayah we learn that:

1. The conditions on the Day of Resurrection will be entirely different from the power that God had granted human beings in the transient world, and none will be of benefit or harm to the other on that day.
2. Worship of idols and imaginary things, as well as denial of God, is nothing but injustice and oppression of one’s own self.
3. The intermediaries or means of intercession with the One and Only God, are Prophets, Imams, and Saints, to whom God has granted power.

Now we listen to ayah 43 of Surah Saba:

 “When Our manifest signs are recited to them, they say, ‘This is just a man who desires to keep you from what your fathers used to worship.’ And they say, ‘This is nothing but a fabricated lie.’ The faithless say of the truth when it comes to them: ‘This is nothing but plain magic.”

This ayah refers to the denial of the ayahs of the holy Qur’an by the disbelievers and their rejection of the Prophet as an ordinary man during the mortal life of the transient world. They mislead others by saying that the Prophet desires to keep you away from what your forefathers used to worship. Instead of pondering on the logic of the holy Qur’an called it fabrication and sorcery, since those who used their brains to ponder on Divine Words, were certainly impressed and renouncing polytheism, became Muslims. Thus, the polytheists levelled three accusations. Once they said that it was only a manifest sorcery; in another place they said it was but a lie; and, finally, in the third place they said that the Prophet wants to bar them from the objects of worship of their ancestors. This has been the case of infidels and infidels throughout history.

From this ayah we learn that:

1. Insisting on the heritage of the past, even though it is clearly wrong, is capital sin, since the deviated ways of the forefathers cannot be an inspiration for the next generation.
2. Prophets are the epitome of honesty and purity and they never lie or attribute false things to others, let alone fabricating a book and attributing it to God.
3. The Prophets are not magician, and are in fact emissaries from God to guide the people, sometimes through performance of miracles which magicians cannot do.  

Now we listen to ayahs 44 and 45 of Surah Saba:

“We did not give them (i.e. pagan Arabs) any scriptures that they might have studied, nor did We send them any warner before you.”

“Those who were before them denied [the Prophets], and these have not received one-tenth of what We had given them. But they denied My prophets, so how was My rebuttal!”

In response to the accusations of the polytheists against the holy Qur’an and the Prophet, these ayahs clearly state that before Prophet Mohammad (blessings of God upon him and his progeny), neither any messenger had been sent to the pagan Arabs of Hijaz nor was any heavenly scripture revealed to them; so how come they are trying to justify their worshipping of idols, which no divine messenger would ever preach.

The next ayah refers to the arrogance and pride of the Qoreishite Arabs concerning their material wealth and worldly power, by asking them: what are they proud of! They cannot stand against the Prophet of Islam, since their power is not even one-tenth of what was given to the earlier nations, who because of their defying of God’s commandments and their sinful ways, were destroyed despite being rich and very powerful.

From these ayahs we learn that:

1. Those who stand against truth are deceiving themselves and will bring upon themselves divine wrath.
2. The wealth and power of the enemies of God and humanity, are nothing in the face of Divine Power. So one should not be afraid of them but one should stand firm on the right path with full trust in God.
3. Reflection on the fate of the nations of the past that were destroyed because of their sinful ways, helps the modern man to properly mold his behaviour by avoiding the pitfalls of satanic temptations and striving towards the straight and unwavering path of the One and Only Creator of the universe.

AS/ME