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اَلْبَقَرَۃِ
The Cow

بِسْمِ اللّٰهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ۔

الٓمّٓ۔ ذٰلِكَ الْكِتٰبُ لَا رَيْبَ فِيْهِ هُدًى لِّلْمُتَّقِيْنَ۔ الَّذِيْنَ يُؤْمِنُوْنَ بِالْغَيْبِ وَ يُقِيْمُوْنَ الصَّلٰوةَ وَ مِمَّا رَزَقْنٰهُمْ يُنْفِقُوْنَ۔ وَ الَّذِيْنَ يُؤْمِنُوْنَ بِمَآ اُنْزِلَ اِلَيْكَ وَ مَآ اُنْزِلَ مِنْ قَبْلِكَ وَ بِالْاٰخِرَةِ هُمْ يُوْقِنُوْنَ۔ؕ اُولٰٓىِٕكَ عَلٰى هُدًى مِّنْ رَّبِّهِمْ وَ اُولٰٓىِٕكَ هُمُ الْمُفْلِحُوْنَ۔ اِنَّ الَّذِيْنَ كَفَرُوْا سَوَآءٌ عَلَيْهِمْ ءَاَنْذَرْتَهُمْ اَمْ لَمْ تُنْذِرْهُمْ لَا يُؤْمِنُوْنَ۔ خَتَمَ اللّٰهُ عَلٰى قُلُوْبِهِمْ وَ عَلٰى سَمْعِهِمْ ؕ وَ عَلٰٓی اَبْصَارِهِمْ غِشَاوَةٌ وَّ لَهُمْ عَذَابٌ عَظِيْمٌ۔

In the name of God—the most compassionate, the most merciful.

A.L.M. This is the Book which contains no doubt; it means guidance for those who do their duty, who believe in the unseen, keep up prayer, and spend something from whatever We [God] have provided them with; who believe in what has been sent down to you [Muhammad] as well as what was sent down before you, while they are convinced about the hereafter; such people hold on to guidance from their Lord; those will be successful.

It is all the same whether you warn those who disbelieve or do not warn them; they still will not believe. God has sealed off their hearts and their hearing, while over their sight there hangs a covering; they will have severe torment.

Because the chapter is quite long, it continues through two and a half of the thirty Parts into which the Koran is traditionally divided, and comprises more than one-tenth of the whole text of the holy Book.

Muqatta‘at, which in Arabic means abbreviated or shortened letters, are symbolic letter combinations. They appear respectively at the beginning 29 chapters of the Koran in the form of Alif Lam Mim [A.L.M.], Ha Mim [H.M.], Nun [N], Ayn Sin [E.S.], Qaf [Q], etc. They also appear as chapter names, such as Ta Ha, Ya Sin, Sad and Qaf. These were in common use in the Arabic literature of the period when the Koran was revealed. The poets and rhetoricians made use of this style, and instances of this can even be found in the pre-Islamic prose and poetry which has survived. As their significance was appreciated by all concerned, none objected to or questioned their use, because it was no enigma to them. Even the bitterest opponents of the Koran, who never missed an opportunity, did not raise any objection against their use. But as their use was abandoned with the passage of time it became difficult for the commentators to determine their exact meaning and significance. An ordinary reader, however, need not worry about their meanings because they make no difference as tar as the Guidance of the Koran is concerned.

“No doubt, this is the Book of God"; and/or “this is the Book which contains nothing doubtful.”

There is no doubt that the Koran is a book of guidance. It is not like the common books on metaphysics and religion which are based on mere speculation and guess-work. Therefore even their authors cannot be free from doubts concerning their own theories, in spite of their assertion that they are convinced of them. In contrast to them, this Book is based on the Truth: its Author is He Who possesses full knowledge of the Reality. Therefore, there is indeed no room for doubt about its contents. 

Though there is nothing but guidance in this Book, there are a few pre-requisites for benefiting from it. The first pre-requisite is that one should be inclined to avoid vice, and should seek and practice virtue. But there is no guidance in the Koran for the people who do not bother to consider whether what they are doing is right or wrong, who follow the ways of the world or their own whims and lusts or move aimlessly in the ways of life. But it guides only those who are sincere in their search for truth, and who are anxious to be guided. The search for truth is inherent in man’s nature; one has simply to uncover one’s own true nature in order to find it. True searching and true finding are but the initial and the advanced stages of the same journey. One who searches for truth unravels the closed faculties of his own inner self. Thus with God’s help, the vague yearnings of his nature begin to receive a definite response.

The second condition for obtaining guidance from the Koran is that one must believe in the ‘unseen’—those realities which cannot be perceived by the senses and which do not come within human experience and observation, e.g. the essence and attributes of God, Angels, Revelation, Heaven, Hell, etc. These things must be taken on trust from the experts (Prophets) just as we do in many cases in the physical world. Therefore, only such a person, who believes in the ‘unseen’, can benefit from the Guidance of the Koran. As for the one who believes only in those things which can be seen, tasted and smelt, or can be measured and weighed, cannot get any guidance from this Book.

The awakening within one of these sincere yearnings is an attempt to discern the world of meanings (the hidden world) behind the world of forms (the present world). When this leads to a discovery, it is transformed into faith in the unseen. That which is initially an urge to submit to some superior power, later takes on the form of bowing to the Almighty. That which is initially a wish to sacrifice oneself for some greater good, later takes the form of spending one’s wealth for the cause of God. That which is initially a quest to comprehend the final outcome of life beyond this world, finds an answer in the form of faith in the life to come.

The third condition to benefit from the Koran is that one should be willing and ready to put into practice the teachings of the Koran. As the Salat (Prayer) is the first and foremost obligatory duty enjoined by the Koran, it is the practical proof and permanent test of the sincerity of one’s Faith. Therefore, after a person's profession of Islam, the moment he hears the call to the Prayer (which sounds regularly five times a day from every mosque in the Muslim world), he should join the congregation for the Salat, because this determines whether he is sincere in his profession or not. If he does not attend to the call and join the congregation, it is an indication that he is not sincere in his profession. It must also be noted that ‘iqama-tus-Salat’—the establishment of Prayer is a comprehensive term. It means that Salat (Prayers) should be performed in congregation and that permanent arrangements should be made for it in every habitation; otherwise Salat will not be considered to have been established, even if every inhabitant of a place offers the Salat individually. 

To discover truth is to raise one’s consciousness to the level of the supreme reality. Those who find truth in this way become complex-free souls. They come to see truth as it really is. Wherever truth is, and whoever proclaims it, they immediately recognize and accept it. No rigidity, convention or prejudice, can come between them and the truth. God gives His protection to people having this nature. His universal order embraces them, so that they may be guided on a sure course in this world. Heaven will be their final destination in the life to come. Only those who seek truth can find it. Those who seek it shall surely find it. On this path, there is no divide between seeking and finding.

If one closes one’s eyes, one will not be able to see. If one blocks one’s ears, one will not be able to hear. However clear the call of truth may be, it can be understood and accepted only if one opens one’s mind to it. God’s inaudible call present in the universe, and the audible expression of that call by the preacher of God’s word, cannot touch those who have closed minds.

The fourth condition to benefit from the Koran is that one should be willing to part with one’s money according to the instructions of the Book in order to render the rights of Allah and Man and should make monetary sacrifices for the cause of Islam which he has accepted.

The fifth condition is that one should believe in the truth of all those Books which God sent down by Revelation to the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ (upon whom be His peace and blessings) and the Prophets before him at different times in different countries. Those who do not believe in any kind of guidance from God, cannot at all benefit from the guidance of the Koran. Likewise those who profess to believe in the necessity of guidance from God but do not turn to Revelation and the Prophets for it, or who dub their own theories as “divine light”, cannot obtain any guidance from it. Moreover, guidance is also denied to those who believe only in that revealed Book or Books in which their forefathers believed and reject all other guidance received from the same Source. Apart from all such people, the Koran guides only those who believe that they stand in need of Divine Guidance as well as admit that it does not come to every man individually but reaches humanity only through the Prophets and revealed Books. Then those who want guidance should not be slaves to any racial or national prejudices but should be seekers after truth and should submit to it wherever and in whatever form they find it.

The sixth and last condition is belief in the ‘Hereafter’. It is a comprehensive word which applies to the collection of many beliefs, which are as follows:

1. Man has not been created irresponsible in the world but he is answerable to God for all his deeds here.

2. The present world order is not everlasting, but has to come to an end at a time only known to God.

3. After the present order has been brought to an end, God will create a new world, when He will bring back to life all human beings, born from the beginning of creation till Resurrection, simultaneously and will call them to account for their deeds, and then will reward them justly accordingly to what they had done in the world.

4. Those, who will be judged as good by God, will go to Paradise, and those who will be judged as bad will be cast into Hell.

5. The criterion of success or failure is not the prosperity or adversity of this worldly life, but successful in actual fact will be he who comes out successful in God’s final judgement, and failure he who is a failure there.

Those who do not believe in the life-after-death with the above implications, cannot benefit from the Koran because the one who entertains even the slightest doubt about these; not to speak of rejecting them, can never follow the way of life which the Koran prescribes. They refuse to believe and fulfil all or any of the above mentioned six conditions.

The call of truth in its pure, unadulterated form is founded on reality; it is in accord with nature. When it is made, none can fail to recognize it. If one hears it with an open mind, one will know in one’s heart that it is nothing else but truth. However, where society is rigidly bound by age-old conventions, people are less concerned with opening their minds to divine realities than they are with supporting the vested interests of the existing system.

As God’s emissary, the preacher is neither a representative nor a supporter of the conventional structures of society. His call, being new and unfamiliar, poses itself as a threat to material security. Much as people are urged by him to submit to the will of God, they baulk at doing so, because it would mean demolishing the world they have made for themselves. It is difficult also for him to convey his message to highly placed individuals who are afraid that, if they follow an ‘insignificant’ person, they will thereby suffer some diminution of their own personal glory. The two greatest obstacles then to the success of the preacher are people’s worldliness and arrogance.

It is these mental states, which prevent people from accepting the truth; the Koran has called them ‘seals’ over people’s hearts. The minds of those who do not consider the call of truth seriously, who are proud and worldly in their attitude, are covered with an invisible veil which makes them impervious to the truth. When one is prejudiced against something, one cannot see its rationality, even if there are clear signs in support of it.

It does not mean that God had sealed up their hearts, so they refused to believe. But it means that when they rejected the above-mentioned pre-requisites of belief and chose and adopted for themselves a way contrary to the one presented by the Koran, God sealed up their hearts and ears. The Koran simply states a law of Nature: if one takes a biased view of something and deliberately nourishes prejudices against it in his mind, he can neither see any virtue in it nor hear anything in its favor nor open his heart to consider it dispassionately. This is the law of Nature and, as it is God’s law, the act of sealing up of the hearts and the ears and the covering of the eyes has been attributed to Him.