The Holy Quran with Five Volume Commentary (Vol 2) — Page 87
PT. 3 ĀL-E-‘IMRĀN CH. 3 مُوسَى وَعِيسَى وَالنَّبِيُّ مِن and the Tribes, and that which ص was given to Moses and Jesus لَا نُفَرِّقُ بَيْنَ أَحَدٍ and other Prophets from their مِّنْهُمْ وَنَحْنُ لَهُ مُسْلِمُونَ Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and to Him we submit. '373 وَمَنْ يَبْتَغِ غَيْرَ الْإِسْلَامِ دِينًا فَلَنْ تُقْبَلَ And whoso seeks a religion. 86 مِنْهُ ۚ وَهُوَ فِي الْآخِرَةِ مِنَ الْخَسِرِينَ accepted from him, and in the other than Islam, it shall not be life to come he shall be among the losers. 374 373. Commentary: "3:20; 5:4. The Jews refused to believe in non- Israelite Prophets as the words, obey none but him who follows your religion (3:74) show. In the present verse, the charge has been pressed home to Jews that whereas they rejected all but the Israelite Prophets, Islam requires its followers to believe in all the Prophets of God, irrespective of the country or the race or the community to which they belonged or of the time in which they lived. Again, Islam requires them not only to believe in the Prophets that have passed away but also in any that may appear in future. A great contrast indeed, between the catholicity of Islam and the narrow-mindedness of Judaism! The words, We make no distinction between any of them, should not be understood to mean that Islam considers all Prophets to be of equal spiritual rank. This view is contrary to 2:254 in which some Prophets have been declared to possess a 527 higher spiritual rank than others. So the words refer only to discrimination as regards believing in them and not as regards their rank. 374. Commentary: The Jews and Christians used to say that they were not bound to accept Islam because it was the Quran that verified the Torah and the Gospel, and not the Torah and the Gospel that verified the Quran. Apart from the fact that the Quran does not "verify" the previous scriptures in the sense in which they understood it, their sense of false security has been shattered in this verse and it has been declared unequivocally that Islam is now the only religion acceptable to God. Even if the word (Islam) is here taken to signify not "the Religion of Islam" but "submission and resignation to the will of God", the present verse makes it binding on the People of the Book to accept Islam as it alone now represents the will of the Supreme Being.