5. Al-Maaida

O you who believe remember God’s favour upon you when a people namely Quraysh purposed to extend their hands against you in order to attack you but He restrained their hands from you and protected you from what they intended to do to you; and fear God; and in God let the believers put their trust.

God had made a covenant with the Children of Israel for what will be mentioned shortly and We raised up there is a shift of address away from the third to the first person from among them twelve leaders from each tribe one leader to be responsible for his people’s fulfilment of the covenant as a way of binding them to it. And God said to them ‘I am with you helping and assisting. Surely if la-in the lām is for oaths you establish the prayer and pay the alms and believe in My messengers and succour them help them and lend to God a goodly loan by expending in His way I will absolve you of your evil deeds and I will admit you to gardens underneath which rivers flow. So whoever of you disbelieves after that covenant surely he has strayed from the right way’ he has erred from the path to Paradise al-sawā’ originally means ‘the middle way’. And they broke the covenant.

God says So because bi-mā the mā is extra of their breaking their covenant We cursed them We removed them from Our mercy and made their hearts hard unyielding to the acceptance of faith; they pervert words pertaining to the descriptions of Muhammad (s) in the Torah and other things from their contexts those in which God has placed them in other words they substitute them; and they have forgotten they have abandoned a portion a part of what they were reminded of of what they were enjoined to in the Torah in the way of following Muhammad (s); and you — addressing the Prophet s now — will never cease to discover some treachery on their part in the way of breaking a covenant or some other matter except for a few of them who have submitted themselves to Islam. Yet pardon them and forgive; surely God loves the virtuous this was abrogated by the ‘sword’ verse Q. 95.

And with those who say ‘We are Christians’ this is semantically connected to what follows We made a covenant just as We did with the Children of Israel the Jews and they have forgotten a portion of that they were reminded of in the Gospel pertaining to faith and other matters and they too broke the covenant. So We have stirred up We have caused among them enmity and hatred until the Day of Resurrection on account of their schisms and differing whims each sect charging the other with unbelief; and God will assuredly tell them in the Hereafter of what they wrought and requite them for this.

O People of the Scripture Jews and Christians now there has come to you Our Messenger Muhammad (s) making clear to you much of what you used to conceal of the Scripture the Torah and the Gospel such as the ‘stoning’ verse and the description of the Prophet Muhammad (s) and pardoning much of it which he does not reveal since this would not be of any benefit serving only to disgrace you. There has verily come to you from God a light namely the Prophet s and a Book a Qur’ān lucid plain and manifest

whereby that is the Book by which God guides whoever follows His good pleasure by believing to the ways of peace the paths of safety and brings them forth from the shadows from unbelief into the light into belief by His leave by His will and He guides them to a straight path the religion of Islam.

They indeed are disbelievers those who say ‘God is the Messiah son of Mary’ insofar as they make him Jesus a god and these were the Jacobites a Christian sect. Say ‘Who then can do anything who then can defend against the chastisement of God if He desires to destroy the Messiah son of Mary and his mother and all those who are on earth?’ that is to say none can do anything of the sort since if Jesus were a god he would be able to do so. And to God belongs the kingdom of the heavens and the earth and all that is between them. He creates what He will. God has power over everything which He wills.

The Jews and Christians both of them say ‘We are the sons of God that is we are like his sons in terms of closeness and rank and He is like a father to us in terms of compassion and care and His beloved ones’. Say to them O Muhammad (s) ‘Why then does He chastise you for your sins? if what you say is true. For the father does not punish his son nor the loving his beloved; but He has punished you and therefore you are saying lies. Nay; you are mortals from among all those mortals He created you shall be rewarded as they are rewarded and you shall be requited as they are requited. He forgives him for whom He wills forgiveness and He chastises him for whom He wills’ chastisement and there can be no objection thereto. For to God belongs the kingdom of the heavens and of the earth and all that is between them; to Him is the journey’s end the final return.

O People of the Scripture there has verily come to you Our Messenger Muhammad (s) making clear to you the laws of religion after an interval between the messengers for there was no messenger between him and Jesus an interval of 569 years; lest you should say if you are punished ‘There has not come to us any bearer of good tidings min bashīr the min is extra nor any warner’. Indeed there has come to you a bearer of good tidings and a warner and so you shall have no excuse. God has power over all things including punishing you for not following him the Messenger.