The Holy Quran with Five Volume Commentary (Vol 4) — Page 347
PT. 18 AN-NŪR CH. 24 وَلَوْلَا إِذْ سَمِعْتُمُوهُ قُلْتُمْ مَّا يَكُونُ لَنَا And wherefore did you not. 17 اَنْ نَتَكَلَّمَ بِهَذَا سُبْحَنَكَ هَذَا بُهْتَان. not proper for us to talk about it عَظِيمٌ) say, when you heard of it, 'It is Holy art Thou, O God, this is a grievous calumny!' يَعِظُكُمُ اللهُ اَنْ تَعُودُ وَ الِمِثْلِهِ اَبَدًا إِنْ Allah admonishes you never. 18 كُنتُم مُّؤْمِنِينَ ® to return to the like thereof, if you are believers. وَيُبَيِّنُ اللهُ لَكُمُ الْآيَتِ وَاللهُ عَلِيمٌ And Allah explains to you. 19 حكيم اِنَّ الَّذِينَ يُحِبُّونَ أَنْ تَشِيعَ الْفَاحِشَةُ that فِي الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا لَهُمْ عَذَابٌ أَلِيمٌ في among the believers, will have a الدُّنْيَا وَالْآخِرَةِ وَاللهُ يَعْلَمُ وَاَنْتُمْ لَا تَعْلَمُونَ the commandments; and Allah is All-Knowing, Wise. 20. Those who love immorality should spread painful punishment in this world and the Hereafter. And Allah knows, and you know not. 2603 must avoid. The wages of sin is death. This is the supreme lesson which this verse teaches. 2603. Commentary: In the foregoing few verses, the Quran has severely condemned scandal-mongering. It has taken as serious a view of the spreading and circulation of false accusations as that of crimes in the community, thus shaking the whole moral foundation of society. It is this sense of pessimism which the verse under comment seeks to eradicate. Whereas on the one hand the Quran has severely condemned scandal- mongering and has enjoined that sexual misconduct should be reported to the concerned authorities and not freely talked about in public, on the other it has encouraged that good and virtuous acts should be given wide publicity and proper appreciation. These Quranic injunctions conduce to the creation of a very healthy atmosphere and to the eradication and extermination of the evil of sexual immorality. The words "Allah knows and you know not" signify that God alone knows the sources of evil and it is He Who alone can direct us as to how an evil can be successfully resisted and eradicated. It is not given to man to find out the genesis and source of evil. Moral philosophers and psychologists have discussed and debated as to what is vice, but none of them has been able so far to trace 2261