The Holy Quran with Five Volume Commentary (Vol 4) — Page 149
shed it, then there was no sense or justification in punishing the sinners and rewarding the righteous. So the dogma of inherited sin is a baseless invention. Summary of Subject Matter The Surah opens with a warning to disbelievers that Divine punishment is fast approaching, but they are deluding themselves into a false sense of security. There never came into the world a Divine Messenger who was not jeered and scoffed at. But out of sympathy with and solicitude for the spiritual well-being of their peoples the Prophets of God invited them to accept truth and be saved. If sin formed a part of man's heritage, then of what avail was this invitation? The Sūrah then proceeds to cite some objections of disbelievers, one hackneyed and commonplace among them being that the Holy Prophet is an ordinary human being. Another is that his talk is alluring and enticing. A third one is that he sees confused dreams and calls them Divine revelations and even goes so far as to forge lies, and dresses glib lies with elegant poetry and thus, seeks to deceive people. The fourth objection is that if he is a Messenger of God, he should, like the Prophets of yore, bring down Divine punishment upon them. To all these objections the Quran returns with the one very effective reply that the Holy Prophet is no novelty among Divine Messengers. Like them he is but a man and like them he will succeed and like their enemies his enemies will come to grief. After this disbelievers are asked to consider, what new burden the Quran imposes upon them that they are bent upon rejecting its message. Its primary object is to exalt and raise them to moral eminence. As it is God's own revealed Word, its rejecters will not escape punishment. The Surah then goes on to ask disbelievers whether they have ever given the idea their serious consideration that an All-Knowing and Wise God could not have created the universe without a great and grim purpose, and that its creation was intended to serve a noble and sublime object and that those who stand in the way of its fulfilment are bound to fail. Next, the Surah deals with the all-important subject of the Unity and Oneness of God which forms the basic and most fundamental belief of all religions. When one uniform law, the Quran says again and again, pervades and governs the whole universe, how can the polytheists justify shirk (belief in the plurality of gods)? Belief in the plurality of gods implies disagreement on their part in regard to the management and control of the universe and as evidently there exists no such disagreement, and on the contrary there is perfect order in it, there should be only one Creator and Controller of the whole universe. And why should God have a son?—the Quran further asks, and proceeds to reply that a son is needed only when the father is likely to fall victim to decay or death or when he cannot perform his work single-handed 2063