6. Al-An'aam

Say: ‘Shall we call upon, shall we worship, instead of God, that which neither profits us, if we worship them, nor hurts us, if we neglect [to worship] them — these are the idols; and so be turned back, [and so] return to idolatry, after God has guided us, to Islam? — Like one whom the devils have lured, led astray, in the earth, bewildered, confused, not knowing where to go (hayrān, ‘bewildered’, is a circumstantial qualifier referring to the [suffixed pronoun] hā’ [of istahwat-hu, ‘whom they have lured’]); he has companions, a group, who call him to guidance, that is to say, [they are there] in order to guide him to the [right] path, saying to him: “Come to us!”’, but he does not respond to them, and he perishes (the interrogative statement is meant as a disavowal; the comparative statement [beginning with ka’lladhī, ‘like one whom’] is a circumstantial qualifier referring to the subject [of the verb] nuraddu, ‘be turned back’). Say: ‘Truly, God’s guidance, which is Islam, is [the true] guidance, everything else being error, and we have been commanded to submit to the Lord of the Worlds,

and to, that is, [to submit] by, establishing prayer and fearing Him, exalted be He; He it is to Whom you shall be gathered’, you shall be brought together, on the Day of Resurrection for reckoning.

He it is Who created the heavens and the earth in truth, that is to say, with the purpose of [manifesting] truth. And, mention, the day He says, to a thing, ‘Be’, and it is — this is the Day of Resurrection, when He says to creatures, ‘Rise up’, and they do. His words are the truth, the truth that will doubtless come to pass; and His is the Kingdom the day when the trumpet, the horn, is blown, the second blast by [the angel] Isrāfīl, when there shall be no kingdom for any other than Him: ‘Whose is the Kingdom today? God’s’ [Q. 40:16]. He is the Knower of the Unseen and the visible, what is hidden and what may be seen. He is the Wise, in His creation, the Aware, of things inwardly hidden and outwardly manifest.

And, mention, when Abraham said to his father Āzar, which was his cognomen, his [first] name being Terah (Tārikh): ‘Do you take idols as gods, to worship? (an interrogative meant as a rebuke). I see you and your people, by [this act of] taking them [as gods], in manifest error’, far from the truth.

And so, just as We show him the misguidance of his father and his people, We show Abraham the kingdom of the heavens and the earth, that he might infer thereby [the truth of] Our Oneness, and that he might be of those knowing, it, with certainty (the sentence beginning with wa-kadhālika, ‘and so’, and what follows it, is a parenthetical statement and a supplement to [the one beginning with] qāla, ‘he said’).

When night descended, [when] it darkened, upon him he saw a star — said to have been Venus — and said, to his people, who were astrologers: ‘This is my Lord’, as you [are wont to] claim. But when it set, when it disappeared, he said, ‘I love not those that set’, to take them as lords, because it is not possible for a [true] Lord to be transformed or to change place, as such [attributes] pertain to accidents — but this had no effect on them.

And when he saw the sun rising, he said, ‘This is my Lord; this is greater!’ than the star and the moon (the masculine [demonstrative pronoun] hādhā, ‘this’, is used [for the feminine shams, ‘sun’] because the predicate [rabbī, ‘my Lord’] is masculine). But when it set, and the argument against them had become stronger and they still had not repented, he said, ‘O my people, surely I am innocent of what you associate, with God, in the way of idols and accidental bodies, which require an originator. They then asked him, ‘What do you worship?’

He said: Verily I have turned my face to, I am seeking in worship, Him Who originated, created, the heavens and the earth, namely, God; a hanīf, inclining towards the upright religion, and I am not of those that associate others’, with Him.

But his people disputed with him, they argued with him about his religion and threatened him that the idols would strike him with evil if he abandoned them. He said, ‘Do you dispute with me (read a-tuhājjūnnī, or a-tuhājūnī where one of the two letters nūn is omitted, the nūn which grammarians refer to as nūn al-raf‘, ‘the nūn of [modal] independence’, and which the Qur’ānic reciters refer to as nūn al-wiqāya, ‘the nūn of preservation’); do you argue with me, concerning, the Oneness of, God when He, exalted be He, has guided me, to it? I have no fear of what you associate with Him, in the way of idols, that they might strike me with some evil, since they have no power to do anything, unless my Lord wills something, harmful to befall me and it does. My Lord encompasses all things through His knowledge; will you not remember, this and believe?