Tazkirul Quran, Qur’an 47:7–11

Translation

(7) Believers! If you succour God, He will succour you and make your footsteps firm. (8) But as for those who are bent on denying the truth, destruction will be their lot, and [God] will make their deeds come to nothing. (9) It is because they are averse to what God has revealed that He has rendered their deeds futile. (10) Have they not travelled the earth and seen how those before them met their end? God destroyed them utterly: a similar fate awaits those who deny the truth. (11) That is because God is the protector of the believers, and those who deny the truth have no protector at all.

Commentary

(a) Here, disbelievers or rejectors refers to those who did not embrace the Faith despite compelling arguments having been put forward in its favour. Moreover, they unjustifiably waged war against the Prophet Muhammad and thus compelled the Prophet to take defensive steps. As regards such people, it has been ordained that in case of confrontation with them, they should be fought against and crushed, so that they should not be able to place impediments in the way of the mission of Truth.

It has ever been the rule of God that those who rejected their Prophet would be destroyed after the conclusion of arguments. But in case of the last prophet, it was the will of God that, through him and his companions, the age of polytheism should be brought to an end and a new era of history should be brought into existence on the strength of the oneness of God. For this, epoch-making men were needed and their selection could be done only under the most trying circumstances: this purpose was achieved by sending the companions of the Prophet of God into the war waged by his opponents.

Paradise is the most familiar and best known concept for a believer. He not only hears about it from the Prophet, but also, by means of his developed inner knowledge (ma‘rifah), gains an intuitive understanding of it. It is still this deep understanding of the unseen, hidden Paradise that inspires and encourages man to seek it, regardless of the sacrifices to be made. Had it not been so, nobody would have sacrificed today’s world in the hopes of entering tomorrow’s Paradise.

(a) The One who causes events to occur is God. But He does so through the chain of cause and effect. Such is the case with religion also. It is God’s desire that the force of falsehood should be destroyed and Truth should eternally prevail throughout the world. But in order that this should happen, Almighty God requires certain individuals to serve as the human medium for this Divine Action. This process is termed here as ‘assisting God’.

When a group rises to assist God it simultaneously performs another task, i.e. it proves unbelievers to be such. The individuals assisting God with extreme seriousness and sincere well-wishing call the people towards God. Distancing themselves from such behaviour as is opposed to the Truth, they bear testimony to the truth of religion (din). They establish the Truth as such to the ultimate degree. In this way, the process of the conclusion of argument in missionary work is completed; this is required by Almighty God for His judgement in the Hereafter.

The upholders of truth become dominant over the upholders of untruth, provided the former do dawah work which is a prerequisite for seeking divine support.

(a) The people of Arabia, who had rejected the Prophet of God, were forewarned by him that they should not imagine that they would remain unscathed, simply because they were free to eat and drink at that time. They were completely within the grip of God and the proof of this was that if they persisted in rejecting the truth, they would be destroyed in accordance with the system of God.

Things happened exactly according to the prediction. The upholders of Truth became dominant, while the rejectors of Truth were destroyed.