3. Aal-i-Imraan

How can you disbelieve (this is an interrogative of amazement and rebuke) while you have God’s verses recited to you, and His Messenger is in your midst? Whoever holds fast to, clings to, God, he is guided to a straight path.

O you who believe, fear God as He should be feared, so that He is obeyed and not disobeyed, thanked and not shown ingratitude, remembered and not forgotten. They said, ‘Who, O Messenger of God, is strong enough for this [task]?’ But it was then abrogated by His statement: So fear God as much as you can [Q. 64:16]; and do not die, except as Muslims, professing the Oneness of God.

And hold fast to, clutch, God’s bond, namely, His religion, together, and do not scatter, after submitting [to Islam]; remember God’s grace, His bestowing of favours, upon you, O companies of the Aws and the Khazraj, when you were enemies, and He brought your hearts together, through Islam, so that by His grace you became brothers, in religion and comradeship; and you were upon the brink, the edge, of a pit of fire, such that to fall into it you only had to die disbelieving; but He delivered you from it, through belief. So, just as He has made clear for you what has been mentioned, God makes clear to you His signs that you might be guided.

Let there be one community of you calling to good, to Islam, and enjoining decency, and forbidding indecency; those, that call, bid and forbid, are the successful, the victorious (the particle min, ‘of’, [in minkum, ‘of you’] is partitive, since what is mentioned is a collective obligation [fard kifāya], and is not incumbent upon every individual of the community, for not every person, such as the ignorant, is up to it. However, it is also said that this particle is extra, and what is meant is, ‘so that you are a community [calling to good and so on]’).

Be not as those who scattered, in their religion, and disputed, over it, after the clear proofs came to them, and these are the Jews and the Christians, those there awaits a mighty chastisement.

The day when some faces are blackened, and some faces whitened, that is, the Day of Resurrection. As for those whose faces are blackened, these being the disbelievers, who are thrown into the Fire and to whom it is said in rebuke: ‘Did you disbelieve after you had believed, on the day the covenant was made? Then taste the chastisement for what you disbelieved!’

But as for those whose faces are whitened, and these are the believers, they shall be in God’s mercy, that is to say, in Paradise, abiding therein.

Those, that is to say, these verses, are the verses of God which We recite to you, O Muhammad (s), in truth, and God desires not any injustice for the worlds, punishing them for no crime.

To God belongs all that is in the heavens and in the earth, as possessions, creatures and servants, and to Him all matters are returned.

You, O community of Muhammad (s), are the best community brought forth, manifested, to men, according to God’s knowledge, enjoining decency, and forbidding indecency, and believing in God. Had the People of the Scripture believed, it, their belief, would have been better for them; some of them are believers, such as ‘Abd Allāh b. Salām, may God be pleased with him and his companions; but most of them, the disbelievers, are wicked.