5. Al-Maaida

The following was revealed when they began to ask the Prophet (s) too many questions: O you who believe, do not ask about things which, if disclosed to you, [if] revealed, would trouble you, because of the hardship that would ensue from them; yet if you ask about them while the Qur’ān is being revealed, during the time of the Prophet (s), they will be disclosed to you: meaning that if you ask about certain things during his lifetime, the Qur’ān will reveal them, but once these things are disclosed, it will grieve you. So do not ask about them; indeed: God has pardoned those things, you asked about, so do not ask again; for God is Forgiving, Forbearing.

Verily a people before you asked about them, that is, [they asked] their prophets about such things and they received the response in the form of [revealed] explications of the rules concerning them; and then they disbelieved in them, by neglecting to implement them.

God has not ordained, He has not stipulated [in His Law], anything such as a Bahīra, a Sā’iba, a Wasīla or a Hām, in the way that people did at the time of paganism. Al-Bukhārī reported [in a hadīth] from Sa‘īd b. al-Musayyab, who said: ‘The bahīra is that [camel] whose milk is consecrated to idols and whom no human may milk; the sā’iba is the one they would leave to roam freely for their gods and was forbidden to bear any load; the wasīla is the young she-camel that would give birth to a young female, as its first offspring, followed by another female, bearing one after the other without a male in between: she would then be left to roam freely for their idols; the hām is the mature male camel, which after completing a certain number of copulations with a female, would then be consigned to their idols and be exempt from bearing any load, and they would call it hāmī; but the disbelievers invent lies against God, in this matter, by attributing [the sanctioning of] such [practices] to Him; and most of them do not understand, that this is mendacity, for in this they have [merely] followed the example of their forefathers.

And when it is said to them, ‘Come to what God has revealed and to the Messenger’, that is, to His ruling concerning the permitting of what you have forbidden, they say, ‘What we have found our fathers following suffices us’, in the way of religion and laws. God, exalted be He, says: What, does that suffice them, even if their fathers knew nothing and were not guided?, to any truth (the interrogative is meant as a disavowal).

O you who believe, you are responsible for your own souls, in other words, preserve them and do what is in their best interest; he who is astray cannot hurt you, if you are rightly guided: it is said that this means, ‘None of those misguided ones from among the People of the Scripture can hurt you’; it is also said to mean others, on the basis of the [following] hadīth of Abū Tha‘laba al-Khushanī: ‘I asked the Messenger of God (s) about it [this verse] and he said, “Enjoin one other to decency and forbid one another indecency, and then if you see niggardliness being obeyed, whims being followed, this present world being preferred, and every intelligent person proud of his own opinions, then you are [still] responsible for [looking after] your own soul”,’ as reported by al-Hākim and others. Unto God you shall return, all together, and He will inform you of what you used to do, and requite you for it.

O you who believe, let testimony between you, when death, that is, [one of] its causes, draws near to one of you, at the time of a bequest, be that of two men of justice among you (ithnāni dhawā ‘adlin minkum, ‘two men of justice among you’, is the predicate expressed with the sense of an imperative, in other words, ‘let [two men] bear witness … [etc.]’; the genitive annexation of shahāda, ‘testimony’, and bayn, ‘between’, is meant to allow for a range [of alternatives]; hīn, ‘at the time of’, is a substitute for idhā, ‘when’, or an adverbial qualifier of time for [the verb] hadara, ‘draws near’); or of two others from another folk, that is, [from] other than your own religious community, if you are travelling in the land and the affliction of death befalls you. Then you shall empanel them, you shall detain them (tahbisūnahumā, ‘you shall empanel them’, is an adjectival qualification of ākharān, ‘two others’) after the, mid-afternoon, prayer and, if you are in doubt, [if] you are uncertain about it [their testimony], they shall swear by God, both of them saying: ‘We will not sell it, [our testimony] in [swearing by] God, for any price, [for] any compensation that we might take in exchange for it from this world, neither by swearing by Him [falsely], nor by testifying falsely for the sake of that [price]; even if he, the person before whom it is being sworn or the one for whose sake testimony is being given, be a near kinsman, a close relative of ours, nor will we hide testimony to God, which He has commanded us [to give], for then, if we were to hide it, we would surely be among the sinful’.

But if it be discovered, [if] it be ascertained after they have sworn their oaths, that both of them have merited [the suspicion of] sin, that is, that they have done something to incur it, in the way of a breach of faith or perjury in the testimony; for example, if what they are accused of is found with them and then they claim that they had bought it from the deceased or that he had bequeathed it to them, then two others shall take their place, so that the oaths are to be taken from them, being the nearest (al-awlayān is a substitution for ākharān, ‘two others’; a variant reading has al-awwalīn, plural of awwal, as an adjectival qualification of, or a substitution for, alladhīna, ‘of those’), in kinship to the deceased, of those most concerned, with the bequest, namely, the inheritors, and they shall swear by God, to the breach of faith of the two witnesses, and they shall both say, ‘Verily, our testimony, our oath, is truer, is more faithful, than their testimony, their oath, and we have not transgressed, we have [not] overstepped the [bounds of] truth in our oaths, for then we would assuredly be among the evildoers’: meaning, let the one about to die call two men as witnesses to his bequest, or let him instruct in his bequest that the two be from among his co-religionists or from among others, if he cannot find any [from among the former] because he is travelling or for some similar reason. If the inheritors have doubts about the two men and claim a breach of faith on the part of the two for having taken something or given it to some other person — alleging that the deceased bequeathed it to him — then let the two men swear in full [in the way mentioned above]. If then some indication surfaces that the two men have been lying and these two then claim some motivation for this action [of theirs], the nearest of the inheritors in kinship [to the deceased] shall swear to the perjury of the two men and to the truth of what they [the inheritors] suspected. This stipulation holds for the two trustees, but is abrogated in the case of the two witnesses. Likewise, the testimony of non co-religionists is abrogated. The reason for [stipulating] the mid-afternoon prayer is to consecrate the oaths. The specification in this verse that the oath be from the two inheritors nearest in kinship concerns the incident regarding which it was revealed. This [incident], as reported by al-Bukhārī, involved a man from the Banū Sahm who had set out on a journey with Tamīm al-Dārī and ‘Adiyy b. Baddā’, when they were both [still] Christians. The man from the Banū Sahm died in a place where there were no Muslims. When the two came back with his bequest, they [his relatives] found that a silver bowl plated with gold was missing and so the two were brought before the Prophet (s); thereupon this verse was revealed. The Prophet (s) made the two swear oaths. The bowl was later discovered in Mecca, where the owners said that they had bought it from Tamīm and ‘Udayy. The next verse was then revealed, after which two of the Sahmī man’s close kin came to swear their oaths; in al-Tirmidhī’s version, ‘Amr b. al-‘Ās, who was closer to the deceased man, stood up with one other …

That, ruling mentioned, where the oath devolves to the inheritors, [makes it] likelier, brings closer [the eventuality], that they, the witnesses or the trustees, will bear the testimony in its true form, [the form] in which they have been charged to bear it, without distortion or breach of faith, or, it is likelier, that they will be afraid that after their oaths other oaths may be taken, from the inheritors, the plaintiffs, who would swear to the two men’s breach of faith or perjury, in which case they would be disgraced and would incur penalties, and so [because of this] they will not lie. Fear God, by refraining from betrayal and perjury, and listen, to what you have been commanded, listening in acceptance. God does not guide the wicked people, those rebelling against obedience to Him; [He does not guide the wicked] to the way of goodness.

Mention, the day when God shall gather the messengers, which is the Day of Resurrection, and He will say, to them, as a rebuke for their peoples: ‘What answer were you given?’, when you summoned [them] to proclaim God’s Oneness; they shall say, ‘We have no knowledge, of this; You, only You, are the Knower of things unseen’, those things which are hidden from [God’s] servants and that which they [the messengers] have forgotten all knowledge of on account of the great terror of the Day of Resurrection and their fright; but when they have calmed down, they [proceed to] bear witness against their communities.

Mention, when God said, ‘O Jesus, son of Mary, remember My favour to you and to your mother, be thankful for it; when I strengthened you with the Holy Spirit, Gabriel, to speak to people (tukallimu’l-nāsa is a circumstantial qualifier referring to the [suffixed pronoun] kāf in ayyadtu-ka) in the cradle, that is, as a child, and in maturity — this implies that he will descend before the Hour, since he was raised up [to God] before middle age, as has already been mentioned in [sūrat] Āl ‘Imrān [Q. 3:55], and when I taught you the Scripture, and wisdom, and the Torah, and the Gospel; and how you create out of clay the likeness (ka-hay’at: the kāf here functions like a noun and is a direct object), the image, of a bird by My permission, and you breathe into it and it becomes a bird by My permission, by My will, and you heal the blind and the leper by My permission, and you raise the dead, from their graves back to life, by My permission; and how I restrained the Children of Israel from you, when they intended to kill you, when you brought them clear proofs, miracles, and the disbelievers among them said, “This, what you have done, is nothing but manifest sorcery” (a variant reading [for sihrun, ‘sorcery’] has sāhirun, ‘sorcerer’, in other words, [he] Jesus [is nothing but a manifest sorcerer]).