The Message of the Qur'an by Asad Muhammad

Author:Asad, Muhammad [Asad, Muhammad]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: The Book Foundation
Published: 2008-12-16T13:00:00+00:00

663 I.e., to the followers of the Bible, both the Jews and the Christians.

664 The present participle la-musrifūn indicates their “continuously committing excesses” (i.e., crimes), and is best rendered as “they go on committing” them. In view of the preceding passages, these “excesses” obviously refer to crimes of violence and, in particular, to the ruthless killing of human beings.

665 The term “apostle” is evidently generic in this context. By “making war on God and His apostle” is meant a hostile opposition to, and willful disregard of, the ethical precepts ordained by God and explained by all His apostles, combined with the conscious endeavour to destroy or undermine other people’s belief in God as well.

666 In classical Arabic idiom, the “cutting off of one’s hands and feet” is often synonymous with “destroying one’s power,” and it is possibly in this sense that the expression has been used here. Alternatively, it might denote “being mutilated,” both physically and metaphorically – similar to the (metonymical) use of the expression “being crucified” in the sense of “being tortured.” The phrase min khilāf – usually rendered as “from opposite sides” – is derived from the verb khalafahu, “he disagreed with him,” or “opposed him,” or “acted contrarily to him”: consequently, the primary meaning of min khilāf is “in result of contrariness” or “of perverseness.”

667 Most of the classical commentators regard this passage as a legal injunction, and interpret it, therefore, as follows: “The recompense of those who make war on God and His apostle and spread corruption on earth shall but be that they shall be slain, or crucified, or that their hands and feet be cut off on opposite sides, or that they shall be banished from the earth: such shall be their ignominy in this world.” This interpretation is, however, in no way warranted by the text, and this for the following reasons:

(a) The four passive verbs occurring in this sentence – “slain,” “crucified,” “cut off,” and “banished” – are in the present tense and do not, by themselves, indicate the future or, alternatively, the imperative mood.

(b) The form yuqattalū does not signify simply “they are being slain” or (as the commentators would have it) “they shall be slain,” but denotes – in accordance with a fundamental rule of Arabic grammar – “they are being slain in great numbers”; and the same holds true of the verbal forms yuṣallabū (“they are being crucified in great numbers”) and tuqaṭṭa`a (“cut off in great numbers”). Now, if we are to believe that these are “ordained punishments,” it would imply that great numbers – but not necessarily all – of “those who make war on God and His apostle” should be punished in this way: obviously an inadmissible assumption of arbitrariness on the part of the Divine Law-Giver. Moreover, if the party “waging war on God and His apostle” should happen to consist of one person only, or of a few, how could a command referring to “great numbers” be applied to them or to him?

(c)

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