The Holy Quran with Five Volume Commentary (Vol 3) — Page 127
PT. 12 HŪD CH. 11 قَالَ يُقَوْمِ اَرَءَيْتُمْ إِنْ كُنْتُ عَلَى بَيِّ 29. "He said, “O my people, tell me if I stand on a clear proof مِّن رَّبِّي وَأَتُنِي رَحْمَةً مِّنْ عِنْدِم from my Lord and He has bestowed upon me from فَعُمِّيَتْ عَلَيْكُمُ الْزِمُكُمُوهَا Himself a great mercy which وَأَنْتُمْ لَهَا كَرِهُونَ has been rendered obscure to you, shall we force it upon you, while you are averse thereto? 1410 "11:64; 47:15. opponents of Noah might possibly have shown to him pictures of their holy men having extraordinary exteriors, such as the Hindu saints are believed to possess, for instance, a number of heads and several hands. In olden days, men could not conceive that a Prophet was like ordinary mortals in appearance. So the enemies of Noah, arguing that the outward must correspond with the inward and that there must be harmony between the two, raised against him the objection that if he was really a true Prophet, his outward appearance must have been different from theirs. Silly though the argument is, it must have won endorsement from the contemporaries of Noah. The enemies of Noah further reinforce their argument by saying that while he himself possessed no special powers, and was a mortal like themselves, his followers were even worse than him. What success could he achieve, they asked, with adher- ents who, to all outward appearance, were the meanest of the society? The enemies of Noah thus argued that neither his own personal qualities nor those of his followers gave him the appearance of "superiority" over them. The words, we believe you to be liars, embody the result of the arguments brought forward by Noah's opponents, which is that he was a liar, for he had asserted his truth and superiority without any basis proof. or It is a pity that men test the claims of a heavenly Messenger by their self-devised standards and, when he does not satisfy those standards, they deceive themselves with the idea that they had weighed up his claims dispassionately and with an open mind and had found them to be false. Even in the present age when man has made great progress in knowledge, science and culture and has known many Prophets, he presumes to test the claims of God's Messengers' not by criteria laid down by Him but by his own false standards, 1335 1410. Important Words: (shall we force it upon you) انلزمكموها is derived from which is derived from J. They sayi. e. he kept close or held fast to the thing. y oj means, the order became binding. |