Surah An-Nahl 16:51-60 - Quran Translation Commentary

52. To Him alone belongs whatever is in the heavens and the earth and devotional obedience⁷⁴ is essentially His forever. Will you then fear any other than Allah.

53. Whatever blessing you enjoy; it is from Allah. Then, when misfortune touches you, to Him you cry for help.⁷⁵

54. Afterwards, when He rids you of the misfortune, a group⁷⁶ of you attribute partners to their Lord.⁷⁷

55. So as to deny what We have given them. Then enjoy, for soon will you come to know.

56. And they allot a portion of what We have given them to what (gods) they know not. By Allah! You will surely be asked concerning all that you invent;⁷⁸

57. And they assign to Allah daughters —Immaculate is He!—and to themselves what they desire;⁷⁹

58. When the good tidings of the birth of a female is given to one of them, his face grows dark and he is stricken by inward gloom.

59. He hides himself from the people because of the evil of what tidings he has been given, (asking himself): Should he keep her with disgrace or bury here under the dust?⁸⁰ Lo! How evil is their judgment!

60. For those who do not believe in the Hereafter is an evil example,⁸¹ and for Allah are the sublime attributes.⁸² He is the Mighty, the Wise.

Commentary

73. This has been a constant command of Allah and He has preserved it completely in the Qur’an.

The belief of more than one god is false from every aspect, though any person may be believing in dualism, or any person in trinity or any person may have invented umpteen number of gods—all these inventions are the example of ignorance and folly.

The concept of dualism (two gods) is particularly found among the Parsis (Zoroastrians). They have Yazdan as their god of good and Ahrman as their god of evil. The struggle between the good and the evil in the world has been philosophically interpreted by them in this way that the god of good is separate and the god of evil is separate, as if there is a constant struggle between the two gods and man is unaccountably being hit in their crossfire. When these two gods have not stopped their fighting as yet, how can then man be free from fighting in the world? This concept brings to fore the weakness of both the gods, for neither of the gods is powerful enough to subdue the other one, and therefore, nothing then remains for man except disappointment. What a poor concept of god that can be found in a religion! Immaculate is He and above what they say, Exalted and Great! (For further explanation, please see Note No.3 Surah Al-An’am).

74. In the text the word used is ‘Ad-Deen’, which here means obedience with the full sincerity of heart, and ‘Wasib’ used here means essential and permanent. It means that the essential and consistent obedience is our obligation to Allah. This obedience is neither temporary, casual nor dependent on anybody’s choice, but as a slave of Allah man’s relation with Him must be of this nature only, and it must be from the bottom of his heart, and not merely a formal, ceremonial or mechanical following of the rule.

75. Please see Note No.71, Surah Al-Ana’m.

76. That is: A group of mankind.

77. When Allah removes your misfortune, then instead of acknowledging Allah’s obligation, you acknowledge someone else’s saying that you were relieved by favours from such and such a person, etc.

The polytheists consider it to be the favour of some gods or goddesses, and among Muslims, those who indulge in polytheistic practices, think that it was due to the favour from ‘Aulia’ (Saints) or ‘peers’, they offer ‘nazr’ and ‘niaz’ in their names. This kind of polytheism among the Muslims was not found in the first century of Islam. This was invented later on, and now it has become so common that a large number of the present day Muslims do not consider it polytheism at all. If only they could see their faces in the mirror of these ayat!

78. For associating others as partners in Allah’s godhood, they have absolutely no proof. Even then they consider them as Allah’s associates and allot a portion of their income for spending in the presents and offerings (nazr-o-niaz) to these associates. (See Note No.247 Surah Al-Ana’m).

79. The Arab idolaters used to consider angels as the daughters of Allah, which was a baseless assumption. To have daughters was a disgraceful thing for them, as they liked to have only sons and having a daughter was thought to be a disgraceful situation. Thus they had set a lower standard for Allah than what standard they had set for themselves. This evil mentality of theirs is reproached here.

And Allah sent down water from the sky and with that revived the earth after her death. Verily in that there is a sign for the people who listen. And verily in the cattle there is a lesson for you. We give you to drink of what is in their bellies, from between the refuse and the blood, pure milk, a pleasant beverage for those who drink it. ( Al-Quran)

80. The Arabs followed the tribal system, in which security and defence had special importance. This aspect was strong in their thinking that birth of daughters was unwelcome for them. The mentality of the society was so corrupt that it considered the birth of a daughter as something to be abhorred to such an extent that whenever a man received the news that a daughter was born to him, his face used to darken with sorrow and he used to be overtaken by gloom. If he brought her up, he did so thinking it to be a disgrace, or to avoid this he used to bury her alive. The image of this brutal practice of the Arabs is drawn in these ayat, so that they may realize how wrong is their mentality!

81. That is: Those who have no belief in the Hereafter do essentially develop in themselves bad attributes, e.g. false beliefs, evil intentions, tendency to show off, jealousy and rancour, ill-gotten earnings, usurping other’s rights, wasteful spending, wrong doing and excesses etc. Therefore, they deserve to be compared with bad examples so that their condition may become clear to them. Accordingly in the Qur’an their belief of making someone other than Allah their master and controller has been likened to the weakest house, that of a spider (Surah Ankaboot - 41), they have been compared to blind and deaf persons (Surah Hood, 240), they are said to be like animals, which do not understand a thing. (Surah A’raf, -179).

82. For Allah no simile can be considered proper which would reflect any kind of defect or weakness attributable to Him. His attributes are excellent and sublime, therefore, about Him only what may express His grandeur and excellence can be stated. To say that the angels are Allah’s daughters is to attribute to God something which is very much below His dignity. Similarly to consider Allah like worldly kings, to say that people cannot present their needs before Him and that is necessary to obtain some ‘Wasila’ or agency for this purpose, is nothing else but inventing false and improper examples for God.