Muhammad Asad, The Message of the Qur’ān; Translated and Explained by Muhammad Asad (1980)
Dost thou not know that God has the power to will anything? (107) Dost thou not know that God’s is the dominion over the heavens and the earth, and that besides God you have none to protect you or bring you succour?
(108) Would you, perchance, ask of the Apostle who has been sent unto you what was asked aforetime of Moses? But whoever chooses to deny the [evidence of the] truth, instead of believing in it,88 has already strayed from the right path.
(109) Out of their selfish envy, many among the followers of earlier revelation would like to bring you back to denying the truth after you have attained to faith – [even] after the truth has become clear unto them. None the less, forgive and forbear, until God shall make manifest His will: behold, God has the power to will anything.
(110) And be constant in prayer, and render the purifying dues; for, whatever good deed you send ahead for your own selves, you shall find it with God: behold, God sees all that you do.
(111) And They claim,89 “None shall ever enter paradise unless he be a Jew” – or, “a Christian”. Such are their wishful beliefs! Say: “Produce an evidence for what you are claiming,90 if what you say is true!”
(112) Yea, indeed: everyone who surrenders his
with another – there does not exist a single reliable Tradition to the effect that the Prophet ever declared a verse of the Qurʾān to have been “abrogated”. At the root of the so-called “doctrine of abrogation” may lie the inability of some of the early commentators to reconcile one Qurʾanic passage with another: a difficulty which was overcome by declaring that one of the verses in question had been “abrogated”. This arbitrary procedure explains also why there is no unanimity whatsoever among the upholders of the “doctrine of abrogation” as to which, and how many, Qur’an-verses have been affected by it; and, furthermore, as to whether this alleged abrogation implies a total elimination of the verse in question from the context of the Qurʾān, or only a cancellation of the specific ordinance or statement contained in it. In short, the "doctrine of abrogation” has no basis whatever in historical fact, and must be rejected. On the other hand, the apparent difficulty in interpreting the above Qurʾanic passage disappears immediately if the term āyah is understood, correctly, as “message”, and if we read this verse in conjunction with the preceding one, which states that the Jews and the Christians refuse to accept any revelation which might supersede that of the Bible: for, if read in this way, the abrogation relates to the earlier divine messages and not to any part of the Qurʾān itself.
88 Lit., “whoever takes a denial of the truth in exchange for belief” – i.e., whoever refuses to accept the internal evidence of the truth of the Qurʾanic message and demands, instead, an “objectives” proof of its divine origin (Manār I, 416 f.). – That which was “asked of Moses aforetime” was the demand of the children of Israel to “see God face to face” (cf. 2:55). The expression rendered by me as “the Apostle who has been sent unto you reads, literally, your Apostle”, and obviously refers to the Prophet Muhammad, whose message supersedes the earlier revelations.
89 This connects with verse 109 above: “Many among the followers of earlier revelation would like to bring you back to denying the truth”, etc.
90 Lit., “produce your evidence” – i.e., “from your own scriptures”.
