Muhammad Asad, The Message of the Qur’ān; Translated and Explained by Muhammad Asad (1980)
path; and if they turn away, it is but they who will be deeply in the wrong, and God will protect thee from them: for He alone is all-hearing, all-knowing.
(138) [Say: “Our life takes its] hue from God! And who could give a better hue [to life] than God, if we but truly worship Him?”
(139) Say [to the Jews and the Christians]: “Do you argue with us about God?113 But He is our Sustainer as well as your Sustainer – and unto us shall be accounted our deeds, and unto you, your deeds; and it is unto Him alone that we devote ourselves.
(140) Do you claim that Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and their descendants were ‘Jews’ or ‘Christians’?”114 Say: “Do you know more than God does? And who could be more wicked than he who suppresses a testimony given to him by God?115 Yet God is not unmindful of what you do.
(141) “Now those people have passed away; unto them shall be accounted what they have earned, and unto you, what you have earned;'and you will not be judged on the strength of what they did.”
(142) The weak-minded among people will say, “What has turned them away from the direction of prayer which they have hitherto observed?”116
113 I.e., about God’s will regarding the succession of prophethood and man’s ultimate salvation. The Jews believe that prophethood was a privilege granted to the children of Israel alone, while the Christians maintain that Jesus – who, too, descended from the children of Israel – was God’s final manifestation on earth; and each of these two denominations claims that salvation is reserved to its followers alone (see 2:111 and 135). The Qurʾān refutes these ideas by stressing, in the next sentence, that God is the Lord of all mankind, and that every individual will be judged on the basis of his own beliefs and his own behaviour alone.
114 Regarding the term asbāṭ (rendered here as well as in verse 136 as “descendants”), see note 111 above. In the above words the Qurʾān alludes to the fact that the concept of “Jewry” came into being many centuries after the time of the Patriarchs, and even long after the time of Moses, while the concepts of “Christianity” and “Christians” were unknown in Jesus’ time and represent later developments.
115 A reference to the Biblical prediction of the coming of the Prophet Muḥammad (see note 33 on verse 42 of this sūrah), which effectively contradicts the Judaeo-Christian claim that all true prophets, after the Patriarchs, belonged to the children of Israel.
116 Before his call to prophethood, and during the early Meccan period of his ministry, the Prophet – and his community with him – used to turn in prayer towards the Kaʿbah. This was not prompted by any specific revelation, but was obviously due to the fact that the Kaʿbah – although it had in the meantime been filled with various idols to which the pre-Islamic Arabs paid homage – was always regarded as the first temple ever dedicated to the One God (cf. 3:96). Since he was aware of the sanctity of Jerusalem – the other holy centre of the unitarian faith – the Prophet prayed, as a rule, before the southern wall of the Kaʿbah, towards the north, so as to face both the Kaʿbah and Jerusalem. After the exodus to Medina he continued to pray northwards, with only Jerusalem as his qiblah (direction of prayer). About sixteen months after his arrival at Medina, however, he received a revelation (verses 142–150 of this sūrah) which definitively established the Kaʿbah as the qiblah of the followers of the Qurʾān. This “abandonment” of Jerusalem obviously displeased the Jews of Medina, who must have felt gratified when they saw the Muslims praying towards their holy city;
