Tafheem ul Quran

Surah 55 Ar-Rahman, Ayat 56-56

فِيۡهِنَّ قٰصِرٰتُ الطَّرۡفِۙ لَمۡ يَطۡمِثۡهُنَّ اِنۡسٌ قَبۡلَهُمۡ وَلَا جَآنٌّ​ۚ‏  ﴿55:56﴾

(55:56) In the midst of these shall be maidens with modest, restrained glances;45 maidens whom no man or jinn has ever touched before.46


Notes

45. This is the real character of the woman. She should neither be shameless nor immodest, but should have modesty in her looks. That is why Allah while making a mention of women among the blessings of Paradise has first of all praised their modesty and chastity and not their beauty and physical charms. Beautiful women can get together in mixed clubs and film studios and beauty contests where only the beautiful women are admitted, but a person of only low taste and mentality can show any interest in them. No noble person can find any charm in the beauty that attracts every evil look and is ready to fall in every lap.

46. This means that in the worldly life whether a woman died a spinster, or as the wife of somebody, or died young, or as an old woman, in the Hereafter when all the righteous women enter Paradise, they will be made young and virgins. And any of the women who is made a life-partner of a righteous man, will not have been possessed by anyone before that husband, in Paradise.

This verse also shows that the righteous jinn too will enter Paradise like the righteous men. Men will have women from their own kind and the jinn their wives from their own kind: both the kinds will have their mates from their own particular kind. No person of one kind will be made a partner of a member of another kind with whom he cannot live as husband or wife naturally. The words of the verse “...whom neither man nor jinn will have touched before them,” do not mean that the women there will only be of human species and they will not have been touched by any man or jinn before their husbands, but its real meaning is: In Paradise there will be women of both the jinn and the human species; they all will he modest and untouched: neither a jinn female will have been touched by a jinn male before her husband in Paradise, nor a human female will have been touched by a human male before her husband in Paradise.