6. Al-An'aam

How should I fear what you have associated, with God, when it can neither profit nor harm, and you fear not, God [in], that you have associated with God, in worship, that for which He has not revealed to you any warrant?’, [any] argument or proof, when He has power over all things. Which of the two parties has more right to security, is it us or you, if you have any knowledge, of who has more right? In other words: it is us, so follow Him. God, exalted be He, says:

Those who believe and have not confounded, mixed, their belief with evildoing, that is, idolatry — explained as such by a hadīth in the two Sahīhs [of Bukhārī and Muslim] — theirs is security, from chastisement; and they are rightly guided.

That (tilka is the subject [of the sentence] and is substituted by [the following hujjatunā]) argument of Ours, with which Abraham inferred God’s Oneness, as in the case of the setting stars and what came afterwards; (the predicate is [what follows]) We bestowed upon Abraham, We guided him to it, as an argument, against his people. We raise up in degrees whom We will (read this as [a genitive] annexation, darajāti man nashā’, or as [accusative] nunation, darajātin man nashā’), [degrees] in knowledge and wisdom; surely your Lord is Wise, in His actions, Knowing, of His creation.

And We bestowed upon him Isaac and, his son, Jacob; each one, of the two, We guided. And Noah We guided before, that is, before Abraham, and of his seed, that is, Noah’s [seed], David and, his son, Solomon, and Job and Joseph, son of Jacob, and Moses and Aaron; and so, in the same way that We have requited them, We requite the virtuous.

And Zachariah and, his son, John, and Jesus, son of Mary — this shows that [the term] ‘seed’ (dhurriyya) can include offspring from the female [side] — and Elias, the paternal nephew of Aaron, brother of Moses; all, of them, were of the righteous.

And Ishmael, son of Abraham, and Elisha (Ilyasa‘, the lām is extra), and Jonah and Lot, son of Hārān, brother of Abraham, all, of them, We preferred above all the worlds, through prophethood.

And of their fathers, and of their seed, and of their brethren (this [clause] is a supplement either to [the previous] kullan, ‘all of them’, or to Nūhan, ‘Noah’; min, ‘of’, is partitive, because some of them did not have offspring, while others had disbelievers among their offspring); and We chose them and We guided them to a straight path.

That, religion to which they were guided, is God’s guidance wherewith He guides whom He will of His servants; had they, hypothetically speaking, been idolaters, all that they did would have been in vain.

They are the ones to whom We gave the Scripture, meaning the Books [of God], judgement, wisdom, and prophethood; so if these, people of Mecca, disbelieve therein, that is, in these three, then indeed We have entrusted it to, We have set aside for it, a people who do not disbelieve in it, namely, the Emigrants (Muhājirūn) and the Helpers (Ansār).

They are the ones whom God has guided; so follow their guidance, their way of affirming God’s Oneness and of [exercising] patience (read iqtadih, ‘follow’, with the silent hā’, whether pausing or continuing the recitation; a variant reading omits it in continuous recitation). Say, to the people of Mecca: ‘I do not ask of you, to give me, any wage for it, the Qur’ān; it, the Qur’ān, is only a reminder, an admonition, to all the worlds’, of mankind and jinn.