Muhammad Asad, The Message of the Qur’ān; Translated and Explained by Muhammad Asad (1980)
and call upon any other than God to bear witness for you 15 – if what you say is true! (24) And if you cannot do it – and most certainly you cannot do it-then be conscious of the fire whose fuel is human beings and stones 16 which awaits all who deny the truth!
(25) But unto those who have attained to faith and do good works give the glad tiding that theirs shall be gardens through which running waters flow. Whenever they are granted fruits therefrom as their appointed sustenance, they will say, “It is this that in days of yore was granted to us as our sustenance!” – for they shall be given something that will recall that [past].17 And there shall they have spouses pure, and there shall they abide.
(26) Behold, God does not disdain to propound a parable of a gnat, or of something [even] less than that.18 Now, as for those who have attained to faith, they know that it is the truth from their Sustainer – whereas those who are bent on denying the truth say, “What could Gbd mean by this parable?”
In this way does He cause many a one to go astray, just as He guides many a one aright: but none does He cause thereby to go astray save the iniquitous, (27) who break their bond with God after it has been established [in their nature],19 and cut asunder what
15 Lit., “come forward with a sūrah like it, and call upon your witnesses other than God”– namely, “to attest that your hypothetical literary effort could be deemed equal to any part of the Qurʾān.” This challenge occurs in two other places as well (10:38 and 11:13, in which latter case the unbelievers are called upon to produce ten chapters of comparable merit); see also 17:88.
16 This evidently denotes all objects of worship to which men turn instead of God – their powerlessness and inefficacy being symbolized by the lifelessness of stones – while the expression “human beings” stands here for human actions deviating from the way of truth (cf. Manār I, 197): the remembrance of all of which is bound to increase the sinner’s suffering in the hereafter, referred to in the Qurʾān as “hell”.
17 Lit., “something resembling it”. Various interpretations, some of them of an esoteric and highly speculative nature, have been given to this passage. For the manner in which I have translated it I am indebted to Muḥammad ʿAbduh (in Manār I, 232 f.), who interprets the phrase, “It is this that in days of yore was granted to us as our sustenance” as meaning: “It is this that we have been promised during our life on earth as a requital for faith and righteous deeds.” In other words, man’s actions and attitudes in this world will be mirrored in their “fruits”, or consequences, in the life to come – as has been expressed elsewhere in the Qurʾān in the verses, “And he who shall have done an atom’s weight of good, shall behold it; and he who shall have done an atom’s weight of evil, shall behold it” (99:7–8). As regards the reference to “spouses” in the next sentence, it is to be noted that the term zawj (of which azwāj is the plural) signifies either of the two components of a couple – that is, the male as well as the female.
18 Lit., “something above it”, i.e., relating to the quality of smallness stressed here – as one would say, “such-and-such a person is the lowest of people, and even more than that (Zamakhsharī). The reference to “God’s parables”, following as it does immediately upon a mention of the gardens of paradise and the suffering through hell-fire in the life to come, is meant to bring out the allegorical nature of this imagery.
19 The “bond with God” (conventionally translated as “God’s covenant”) apparently refers here to man’s moral obligation to use his inborn gifts – intellectual as well as physical – in the way
