The Holy Quran with Five Volume Commentary (Vol 4) — Page 932
taken so much care to provide for the material needs of man and for his physical comforts, it is inconceivable that He should have neglected or ignored to make similar provision for his moral and spiritual needs. It is to meet man's moral needs that God sends a new Prophet and a new revelation. But such is man's ingratitude that instead of giving thanks to God for His multifarious and multitudinous favours and instead of acknowledging His Unity, he, in his ignorance and folly, begins to set up equals to God in various shapes and forms; and even goes so far as to shift his responsibility for his idolatrous practices to God, brazenly saying that if God had so willed, he would not have worshipped idols. To this blasphemy the Surah gives a devastating reply to the effect that not only do human intelligence and common sense revolt at this impudent reasoning of disbelievers, there is no Scriptural evidence either in their possession that might support their false beliefs. Their stock argument consists in the fact that their beliefs and practices came down to them from their forefathers and that they were not prepared to give up the time-honoured ways of their ancestors for the sake of a man who was just an ordinary mortal like them. The argument is absurd. Yet, this was the foolish plea on which all the Prophets of God were rejected in their respective times. And the result was that the rejecters were punished. In order to expose the absurdity of this plea and to accuse the disbelieving Quraish, from their own mouths, the Surah cites the example of the Prophet Abraham. It seems to say to them, "If you cannot give up the faith of your forefathers; and you must follow them, then why do you not follow Abraham, your great ancestor, who was an uncompromising iconoclast and a strict and sincere believer in the Oneness of God. He was so firm a believer in Divine Unity and preached this belief to his children and grandchildren with such perseverance and sincerity that it stayed in his posterity for a very long time. But, says the Sūrah, the plea of following ancestral beliefs put forward by disbelievers is a false pretext. The real cause of their disbelief lies in their wealth which has made them proud and arrogant, and in their pride they say that the Quran should have been revealed to a man of some consequence in one of the two great cities of Arabia. In answer to this arrogant assumption of superiority the disbelievers receive a severe rebuke and are told: Since when have they arrogated to themselves the right to be the distributors of God's grace and mercy and to decide who is deserving of it and who not? By implication they are further told that what they call greatness carries no weight in the sight of God. Material wealth and power are trash compared to the great spiritual wealth which the Holy Prophet possesses. In order to drive home to them the paltriness of the things of this world, the Surah proceeds to say, that were it not that the obliteration of disparity of wealth, position and status would have made existence of social order impossible and created 2846