Muhammad Asad, The Message of the Qur’ān; Translated and Explained by Muhammad Asad (1980)
been lifeless, and causing all manner of living creatures to multiply thereon: and in the change of the winds, and the clouds that run their appointed courses between sky and earth: [in all this] there are messages indeed for people who use their reason.130
(165) And yet there are people who choose to believe in beings that allegedly rival God,131 loving them as [only] God should be loved: whereas those who have attained to faith love God more than all else.
If they who are bent on evildoing could but see – as see they will when they are made to suffer 132 [on Resurrection Day] – that all might belongs to God alone, and that God is severe in [meting out] punishment!
(166) [On that Day] it will come to pass that those who had been [falsely] adored 133 shall disown their followers, and the latter shall see the suffering [that awaits them], with all their hopes 134 cut to pieces! (167)
And then those followers shall say: “Would that we had a second chance [in life],135 so that we could disown them as they have disowned us!”
Thus will God show them their works [in a manner that will cause them] bitter regrets; but they will not come out of the fire.136
(168) O mankind! Partake of what is lawful and good on earth, and follow not Satan’s footsteps: for, verily, he is your open foe, (169) and bids you only to do evil, and to commit deeds of abomination, and to attribute unto God something of which you have no knowledge.137
130 This passage is one of the many in which the Qurʾān appeals to “those who use their reason” to observe the daily wonders of nature, including the evidence of man’s own ingenuity (“the ships that speed through the sea”), as so many indications of a conscious, creative Power pervading the universe.
131 Lit., “there are among the people such as take [to worshipping] compeers beside God”. Regarding the term andād, see note 13 on verse 22 of this sūrah.
132 Lit., “when they see the suffering” (or “chastisement”).
133 Lit., “followed” – i.e., as saints or alleged “divine personalities”.
134 Asbāb (sing, sabab) denotes, in its primary meaning, “ties” or “attachments”, and in a tropical sense, “means [towards any end]” (cf. Lisān al-ʿArab, and Lane IV, 1285). In the above context, asbāb obviously refers to means of salvation, and may thus be rendered as “hopes”.
135 Lit., “Would that there were a return for us”.
136 Sc., back to the life of this world, with a second chance before them (Manār II, 81).
137 This refers to an arbitrary attribution to God of commandments or prohibitions in excess of what has been clearly ordained by Him (Zamakhsharī), Some of the commentators (e.g., Muḥammad ʿAbduh in Manār II, 89 f.) include within this expression the innumerable supposedly “legal” injunctions which, without being clearly warranted by the wording of the Qurʾān or an authentic Tradition, have been obtained by individual Muslim scholars through subjective methods
