Ali 'Imran 3:92–120

According to the Jews’ self-made set of religious laws, eating the meat of the camel and the rabbit was illegal, while it was quite licit in Islam. So the Jews would ask, if Islam was a revealed religion, why it was that the lawful and the unlawful were different in Islam from what had been laid down in the former revealed religions. Similarly, they would ask how it was that a religion revealed by God could command the direction of prayer to be the Ka‘bah instead of al-Bayt al-Maqdis (Jerusalem), which had remained the direction for prayer in the teachings of all the prophets up till then. They in fact refused to believe that God could reveal a religion in which the Ka‘bah was held to be the direction for prayer.

When the call of truth comes in all its purity, the interests of those who contrived to convince others that their self-styled religion had indeed been revealed by God are put at risk. People serving their own interests oppose the new messenger by raising different kinds of objections based on fallacies in order to turn others away from the true message. In their self-styled religion the basics of faith are not stressed. Instead, by giving importance to hair-splitting arguments on the relative aspects of religion, the acme of virtue is equated with full adherence to a man-made religious form. For example, they would shun rabbit’s meat, saying that it was not consumed by their saints, although along with this, many illegal things would have been legalized by them. They would consider it of the utmost importance to face exactly in the direction of al-Bayt al-Maqdis, like a compass needle pointing to the pole. But they would show no interest in making their daily activities God-oriented. Virtue, however, hinges upon the making of sacrifices and not on the mere fact of opting for a religious form. God’s true servant is one who offers his Lord the gift of love, and for whom no material thing is dearer than God. He is ever ready to pay the price of losing his prestige by recognizing the truth; he is ever ready to spend his wealth for the cause of God. Whoever is ready to pay the price of sacrificing his most cherished ambitions will be counted among the virtuous and considered a God-worshipper in the eyes of God.

This world is a place of trial. Here, man is forever exposed to Satan’s evil temptations. So there is always the possibility of Satan’s succeeding in turning one from belief to unbelief. Then, while in this state—devoid of the true spirit of faith—one’s time of departure from this world might come, making it almost impossible for one to make amends. That is why it is always necessary for man to be cautious: he must become his own keeper. The actual mainspring of religion is fear of God (taqwa), that is, adopting till one’s dying day an unshakeable sense of accountability to God for all of one’s actions. This is the true and straight path. Any turning away from this path occurs when certain parts of the religion are modified in order to change the order of priorities, e.g. what is important is relegated to a secondary place, and vice versa. Such deviation mostly occurs when some secondary aspect is taken to be a fundamental part of religion and is stressed in a manner which should be reserved for the fear of God and concern for the Hereafter. Whenever such alterations are made in a religion, it necessarily results in differences which lead to serious schisms, with one group stressing one particular secondary aspect and another group stressing another particular secondary aspect—all of which culminates in the community splitting up into a number of sects. While an attitude inspired by the fear of God (taqwa) focuses all attention on the one and only God, in the absence of such fear, it is purely trivial matters which are thrust to the forefront. When peripheral issues are thus given importance, the upshot is disunity—and this is what brings on all the evils that push man to the brink of Hell. Disunity in a group must, therefore, be eschewed at all costs, for it will lead to calamity both in this world and in the Hereafter. It must be conceded that it is only when all of the emphasis is on taqwa that unity is a natural consequence.

Before the advent of Islam there were two tribes, the Aws and Khazraj, inhabiting Madinah. Both were Arabs, but they continuously waged war against each other. Attacks and counter-attacks had considerably weakened them. When they accepted Islam, all hostilities ended: they became like brothers. The reason for this is that one who denies the truth is faithful only to his own self, while a believer gives his allegiance solely to God. In a society where individuals are faithful only to their own selves or to their groups, many allegiances naturally come into existence. The result is strife and dissension. On the contrary, in a society where all its members bow only to one God, everyone is directed towards a single focal point. All being bound by one and the same cord, mutual clashes and strife cease altogether.

This command pertains, on the one hand, to the common man and on the other to the intellectuals and the educated class. The educated should be strenuous in their efforts to enjoin goodness and forbid wrong in the community. Their keen awareness of the need for reform should ensure their continuing concern with the state of the people: they must encourage everyone to follow the path of goodness and shun the path of evil. However, for such an effort to succeed, the public must be submissive; they must be willing to listen to their elders. They must show respect for them, follow them as they are bid and stop where they are told to stop, thus surrendering themselves to their religious reformers. A Muslim community’s success thus depends respectively upon the attitudes of the religious elders and of the public. It is in an atmosphere of listening and obeying that society can be reformed, ensuring success both in this world as well as in the next. In short, elders motivated by the true religious spirit, should never shirk their responsibility towards their community of enjoining goodness upon them and forbidding evil.

The benefit the intellectuals have of being imbued with this spirit is that all their attention remains focussed on goodness, that is, on the basics of religion. They have thus no time for hair-splitting arguments about secondary aspects of religion. Those who become the heralds of God’s greatness and arise both as warners and as harbingers of glad tidings have not the time to waste their expertise on matters of no significance. In this way, the task of exhorting people to lead a life of righteousness and forbidding evil engages them in finding solutions to real problems. Verbal jousting over supposed problems seems to them meaningless and futile, just as a farmer finds the game of chess a futile exercise, a waste of time. In showing willingness to be obedient to well-intentioned religious elders, the people are saved from schism and strife. Submitting to an authority unites all of them. Unity becomes a common attribute of believers, and unity, without doubt is the greatest of all powers in this world.

Subsequently, God sent His religion in its original form through the Prophet Muhammad. Now the Muslims have undertaken the obligation of guiding people to the true religion of submission to God. The assignment of this role demands that they be true believers in God. It devolves upon them to enjoin goodness upon the world and to inform mankind of whatever is evil in the eyes of God. Since this is a mission assigned by Almighty God, He Himself has guaranteed to help His emissaries surmount all obstacles to their performing this task. Those who come forward for this divine mission have God’s pledge that their opponents will not be able to inflict any real harm upon them.

This refers here to the conduct of the People of the Book (believers in former revealed scriptures), and their immediate recognition and acceptance, in all humility, of the divine truth as proclaimed from the lips of the Last Prophet. At that time there was, on the one hand, the religion of Moses, invested with all the strength of historical grandeur and sanctity of tradition. On the other hand stood the religion of the Prophet Muhammad, which had yet to acquire the force of argument, historical grandeur and traditional sanctity to support it. This difference between Moses’ religion and the religion of the Prophet of the time posed the greatest obstacle to the acknowledgment of the latter’s religion. Yet this obstacle was successfully overcome and the religion of the contemporary Prophet was welcomed.

The love of wealth and children becomes an obstacle to accepting a religion, which entails all kinds of sacrifices. And adherence to God’s religion is not a matter of engaging in hollow pretences of piety carried out in the public eye. Just as a gust of chill air ravages the whole harvest, so will the tempest of the Last Day (qiyamah) render valueless all such ostentatious acts. There were some among the Jews who believed in the Prophet Muhammad. And a few God-fearing people are more precious in the eyes of God than a host of ungodly people. But merely being a member of a community formed of one race in the name of a prophet, is not enough to earn one salvation. What is actually required of an individual is that he binds himself by a covenant with God. By ‘covenant’ is meant faith—the sacred bond between God and man. That is to say, personal actions and not community relationship make one deserving of God’s mercy and blessings. All the responsibilities that faith implies are included in this pledge. Remembering God in one’s solitude, worshipping Him, leading one’s life keeping in view the Hereafter, enjoining goodness upon the people around one, discouraging people from committing evil, working unstintingly for the cause of God—all such actions fulfill the divine covenant. Those who follow such a course are upright people in the eyes of God. God has full knowledge of their actions, for which He will reward them, and He will greatly honour them on the Day of Judgement.

This refers only to people whose enmity has become apparent from their behaviour and their utterances (Tabari). The Muslims believed in the same divine faith as was given to the former People of the Book by their prophets. The religion of both was one in terms of actual reality, but the People of the Book opposed the believers. The reason being that they had formed a self-styled religion, which they attributed to their prophets. It was due to this self-styled religion that they had been enjoying a position of leadership with the people. In a true religion of God, all attention remains centred on God, whereas in a self-styled religion, people's attention is diverted to the founders of the religion and the commentators. Upholders of the latter form of faith never tolerate the call of true religion, because this would amount to displacing themselves from their position of eminence. In such a situation, true believers should refrain from negative reaction and adhere steadily to the path of patience and piety 'taqwa'. Patience 'sabr' entails holding fast to the truth under all circumstances, and taqwa entails regarding God, and no other, as the only decisive power. If believers give proof of maintaining this kind of positive attitude, no enmity, however great, can harm them.

This refers to the contemporary Jews or Christians.

The existence of love in the hearts of true believers for the People of the Book and the lack of love in the hearts of the latter for the believers shows who really subscribes to the truth and who does not. God is all mercy and justice. God is the Creator and Sustainer of all human beings, so whoever finds God in the real sense of the word, will open his heart to all God’s creatures. For him all human beings equally become the family of God. Then he begins to like for everyone what he likes for himself. But those who have not found God in the real sense of the word, those who have not subordinated their will to the will of God and who live only on the plane of the self, regard life’s possessions as paramount, both at the personal and the communal level. This mentality makes them inimical to anyone who appears to be against their interests—who is not, in short, a member of their own community. In spite of believing in God, they tend to forget that this world was made by God, and that no strategy can be effective here without God’s approval.