The Holy Quran with Five Volume Commentary (Vol 3) — Page 90
CH. 10 YŪNUS PT. 11 وَلَوْ شَاءَ رَبُّكَ لَأمَنَ مَنْ فِي الْأَرْضِ And if thy Lord had. 100 enforced His will, surely, all كُلُّهُمْ جَمِيعًا أَفَأَنْتَ تُكْرِهُ النَّاسَ حَتَّى who are in the earth would have يَكُونُوا مُؤْمِنِينَ believed together. "Wilt thou, then, force men to become believers?1371 "6:150; 16:10. 2:257; 18:30. meaning thereby that he was the best of all mankind and the Head of the human race (Tirmidhi, ch. on al- Manaqib). The above saying of the Holy Prophet can also be explained in another way, which has a particular bearing on the verse under comment. The superiority referred to in this saying may not mean superiority in all respects but superiority in one respect only, viz. that all the people of Jonah finally believed in him—a distinction which till then was not shared by any other Prophet. Hence the Holy Prophet hesitated to ascribe unqualified superiority to himself over Jonah until he had seen the end of his people. But subsequent events conferred this distinction on him also, as, like the people of Jonah, all his people too finally believed in him. In the Bible, Jonah is spoken of as an Israelite Prophet (2 Kings 14:25), who was bidden to go to Nineveh and "cry" against it. But fearing that the Ninevites may repent, he fled to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. The Quran differs from the Bible on these points. The Prophets of God are, according to the Quran, incapable of disobeying Him in the way in which Jonah is represented to 1298 have done in the Bible. They are held out, in the Quran, as models whose example other people should follow (4:65 & 6:91). Disobedience to God is therefore the last thing of which a Prophet is capable. Again, it appears from the Quran that Jonah was sent to his own people, i. e. to a people to whom he belonged. According to Jewish tradition, however, he was a Jew but was sent to the people of Nineveh, which was the capital of Ashūr. So in the light of the Quranic version Jonah was either not an Israelite or he was sent not to Nineveh but to a section of his own people. Biblical scholars themselves are not agreed as to Jonah's being an Israelite. In the two points on which the Quran differs from the Bible, reason favours the Quran. 1371. Commentary: As the previous verse expressed a desire on the part of God that all men should believe, therefore there is likely to arise in the minds of some people the question why God, Who is All-Powerful, does not carry out His wish and force all men to believe. This question has been very beautifully answered in this verse, which says that if God had exercised compulsion to carry out His wish, He