The Holy Quran with Five Volume Commentary (Vol 4) — Page 251
PT. 17 AL-HAJJ Allah firmly establishes His Signs. And Allah is All- Knowing, Wise. 2482 long run. The enemies of truth have never been able to impede its onward march. They cannot frustrate the Divine plan that truth must prevail. 2482. Important Words: (he sought or desired to obtain). means, he desired the thing. CH. 22 they Holy Prophet and when find none, they invent one and impute it to him. They say that the verse under comment refers to the above incident. We shall deal at length with the relevant verse i. e. 53:21. Suffice it whole episode when we come to the here to say that the whole story is تمنى الكتاب. means, the man lied تمنى الرجل means, he read or recited the book. (plural) means, what is desired; a lie; an object of wish (Aqrab). Commentary: This verse has been subjected to much conjecture and speculation by some ignorant and careless commentators and has been deliberately misinterpreted and its meaning purposely distorted by prejudiced Christian writers. It is said that one day at Mecca when the Holy Prophet recited the Quranic verse, consensus of belied by the fact that 53rd chapter was, according to scholarly opinion, revealed in the 5th year of the Call at Mecca while the present Surah was revealed at Medina or on the eve of his departure from Mecca. It is inconceivable that God should have waited for eight long years to refer in this verse to that incident. Moreover, the story has been rejected as totally unfounded by all learned commentators of the Quran, Ibn Kathir, being one of them. ie "now | It appears to have been based on أفرأيتم اللات والعزى و مناة الثالثة الاخرى tell me about Lāt and '‘Uzzā, and Manāt, the third one, another goddess" (53:21), Satan put in his تلك الغرانيق العلى وان شفا عتهن mouth the words i. e. these are exalted goddesses and their intercession is hoped for. They call it the 'lapse of Muḥammad' or his 'compromise with idolatry'. In fact the Holy Prophet never made any compromise with idolatry nor was there any lapse on his part. The lapse, if any, occurred in the minds of these hostile critics of Islam. It is a case of wish being father to the thought. These people are always on the lookout to discover a lapse in the some reports narrated by Wāqidī, whom all competent authorities regard as quite untrustworthy. It seems strange that the utterance of this blasphemy should have been attributed to that great and uncompromising iconoclast i. e. the Holy Prophet, whose whole life was spent in denouncing and condemning idolatry and idol worship. Besides this the whole context of 53:21 belies this story. The verses preceding and succeeding 53:21 contain an unsparing denunciation of idolatry. In fact the whole Surah (53) is a condemnation of (idol worship). 2165