The Guiding Light — Page 341
S u rah al-Baqarah, Verse 255-258 341 Here arises a very important question. What is the teaching of Islam about ﺷﻔﺎﻋﺔ ( shaf a ‘a h ) intercession? Does Islam hold it to be quite useless and unlawful, as would appear from the verse under comment, or does it hold certain forms of ﺷﻔﺎﻋﺔ ( shaf a ‘a h ) to be useful and lawful and others to be useless and unlawful? From the teachings of the Qur’ a n and the H ad i th it appears that the latter view is correct and we proceed to discuss it accordingly. It should be stated at once that the word “intercession” is a very imperfect rendering of the word ﺷﻔﺎﻋﺔ ( shaf a ‘a h ). It conveys only a part of the meaning of ﺷﻔﺎﻋﺔ ( shaf a ‘a h ) and that too very imperfectly. The root meaning of the word ﺷﻔﺎﻋﺔ ( shaf a ‘a h ) is to attach or connect or join a thing, or, for that matter, to connect or join oneself with another thing or person so as to form a pair or a couple on the basis of similarity. The Qur’ a n uses the different derivations of this word in no less than 29 different places and in all of them the root meaning of the word is retained in one form or another. The word is used in the sense of “intercession” because the person who intercedes for somebody must have a twofold connection: -