1. That is, verses of the Book which is full of wisdom and whose every teaching is based on wisdom.

2. That is, these verses give guidance to the right way and have been sent down as a mercy from God. But the people who can profit by this mercy and guidance are only those who adopt a righteous attitude, who wish to become good, who crave for their own well being, whose quality is that they avoid the evil when they are warned of it, and follow the good when they are shown the ways to it. As for the wicked and mischievous people, they will neither profit by this guidance nor receive any share from this mercy.

3. It does not mean that the righteous people bear only these three qualities. By using the common epithet of righteous for them, it has been pointed out that they refrain from all those evils which this Book forbids and practice all those good things which this Book enjoins. Then, the three qualities of the righteous person have been especially mentioned in order to show that all other good acts depend on these three things. They establish the Salat which engenders God worship and piety as a permanent habit with them. They pay the Zakat which strengthens the spirit of sacrifice in them, subdues the love of the world and arouses a desire for the goodwill of Allah. And they believe in the Hereafter, which instills the sense of responsibility and answerability. This does not allow them to live like an animal which is free to graze at will in the pasture, but allows a man who is fully conscious of the fact that he is not independent but the slave of a Master before Whom he is answerable for all his activities of life. Owing to these three qualities, these righteous people are not the kind of the righteous persons who happen to do good just by chance, who may commit evil as often and as freely as they would do good. Contrary to this, these qualities inculcate in them an enduring system of thought and morality owing to which goodness issues forth from them in a regulated and systematic manner, and the evil, if at all committed, is committed just by chance. They do not have any deeprooted motives, which might be arising from their own system of thought and morality and leading them on to the evil way under their own nature impulse.

4. At the time when these verses were sent down, the disbelieves of Makkah thought, and said so openly, that Muhammad (peace be upon him) and those who accepted his message were wasting and ruining their lives. Therefore, it was stated with full force and emphasis: “Those are the ones who will be successful.” That is, they will not ruin themselves as you seem to think in your ignorance, but they in fact are the ones who alone will attain true success, and the utter failures will be those who have refused to adopt this way. Here the one who regards true success as confined to the world, in the sense of material prosperity, will be fully missing the Quranic concept of it. To understand the real concept of the true success one should study the following verses of the Quran along with the relevant E.Ns: (Surah Al- Baqarah: Ayats 2-5), (Surah Aal-Imran: Ayats 102, 130, 200), (Surah Al-Maidah: Ayats 35, 90), (Surah Al-Anaam: Ayat 21), (Surah Al-Aaraf; Ayats 7, 8,157), (Surah At-Taubah: Ayat 88), (Surah Yunus: Ayat 17), (Surah An-Nahl: Ayat 116), (Surah Al-Hajj: Ayat 77), (Surah Al-Muminun: Ayat 117), (Surah An-Nur: Ayat 51), (Surah Ar-Rum: Ayat 38).

5. That is, on the one hand, there is this mercy and guidance sent down by Allah, of which some people are taking full advantage, and on the other hand, there are also some unfortunate people living side by side with the fortunate ones, who are adopting this sort of attitude as against the revelations of Allah.

6. The words lahv al-hadith in the text imply such a thing as may allure and absorb a listener completely and make him heedless of everything else around him. Lexically, there is nothing derogatory in these words, but in custom and usage they apply to evil and useless and vain things, such as gossip, nonsensical talk, joking and jesting, legends and tales, singing and merry making, etc.

“Purchases” alluring tales may also mean that the person concerned adopts falsehood instead of the truth, turns away from the guidance and turns to those things which can neither benefit him in the world nor in the Hereafter. But this is the metaphorical meaning. The real meaning of the sentence is that a person should purchase an absurd and useless thing for his money, and this is supported by many traditions. Ibn Hisham has related on the authority of Ibn Ishaq that when the disbelievers of Makkah could not stop the message of the Prophet (peace be upon him) from spreading in spite of their best efforts, Nadr bin Harith said to the people of Quraish: “The way you are counteracting this man will avail you nothing. He has lived a lifetime among you. Until now he was the best of your men morally: he was the most truthful and the most trustworthy person among you. Now you say that he is a sorcerer and enchanter and a poet and a madman. Who will believe all this? Don’t the people know the way the sorcerers talk? Don’t they know the enchanters and the way they conduct their business? Are they unaware of poetry and of the states of madness? Which of these accusations sticks to Muhammad (peace be upon him) by exploiting which you would turn the people’s attention away from him? Look! I will tell you how to deal with him.” Then he left Makkah for Iraq and managed to get from there legends and tales about the kings of Iran and Rustam and Isfandyar and started to arrange tale telling parties to distract the people from the Quran and to absorb them in the tales. The same tradition has been cited by Vahidi in Asbab un Nazul on the authority of Kalbi and Muqatil. And according to Ibn Abbas, Nadr had bough singing girls also for the purpose. Whenever he heard that someone was coming under the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) influence, he would impose a singing girl on him with the instruction: “Feed him and entertain him with your songs so that he is absorbed in you and distracted from the other side.” This was the same device which the arch criminals of the nations have been employing in every age. They try to get the common people so absorbed in fun and sport and musical entertainments in the name of culture that they are left with no time and sense to attend to the serious problems of life, and in their heedlessness they do not even feel what destruction they are being driven to.

The same commentary of lahv al-hadith has been reported from a large number of the companions and their immediate followers. Abdullah bin Masud was asked, “What does lahv al-hadith mean in this verse?” He said thrice emphatically: “By God! it means singing.” (Ibn Jarir, Ibn Abi Shaibah. Hakim, Baihaqi). Similar traditions have been reported from scholars like Abdullah bin Abbas, Jabir bin Abdullah, Mujahid, Ikrimah, Said bin Jubair, Hasan Basri, and Makhul. Ibn Jarir, Ibn Abi Hatim and Tirmidhi have related on the authority of Abu Umamah Baheli that the Prophet (peace be upon him) said, “It is not lawful to buy and sell and trade in singing girls nor is it lawful to take their price.” In another tradition, the last sentence is to the effect: “It is unlawful to eat their price”. Yet another tradition from Abu Umamah is to the effect: To teach music to slave girls and to trade in them is not lawful and their price is forbidden. All these Ahadith also elucidate that the verse containing lahv al-hadith was sent down in this very connection. Qadi Abu Bakr Ibn alArabi has related in the Ahkam alQuran a Hadith from Abdullah bin Mubarak and Imam Malik on the authority of Anas, saying, that the Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “He who hears the song of a singing girl in a musical concert, will have molten lead poured into his ear on the Day of Judgment” (In this connection, one should also note that the culture of music in those days flourished almost entirely through the slave girls: Free women had not yet become “artists”. That is why the Prophet (peace be upon him) spoke about trading in slave girls, and described their wages and earnings as their price, and used the word qaynah for the singing girl, which is specifically used for a slave girl in Arabic).

7. “Without knowledge” may be connected with “buys” and also “lead astray”. In the first case, it would mean: The ignorant foolish person buys this alluring thing and does not know that he is buying a ruinous thing at the cost of a highly valuable thing. On the one hand, there are the divine verses which are full of wisdom and guidance, which he can obtain without any cost, but he turns away from them. On the other hand, there are these absurd things, which are disastrous for his morals and he is expending his wealth to obtain them. In the second case, it would mean: He has come out to guide the people without any knowledge: he does not know what burden of sin he is taking on himself by trying to lead the people astray from Allah’s Way.

8. That is, this person wants to make fun of the divine revelations by alluring and absorbing the people in legends and tales and music. He intends that the invitation of the Quran should be derided and ridiculed and laughed away. He plans to fight the religion of God with the strategy that as soon as Muhammad (peace be upon him) should come out to recite revelations of God to the people, there should be a charming, sweet-voiced damsel giving her performance in a musical concert. On the one hand, a glibtongued story teller telling tales and legends of Iran, on the other hand, the people should become so absorbed in these cultural activities that they may not be in a mood to hear anything about God and the morals and the Hereafter.

9. This punishment will be in accordance with their crime. They want to debase and disgrace God’s religion, His revelations and His Messenger; God will take His vengeance on them by giving them a disgraceful torment.

10. Instead of saying “There are blessings of Paradise (Gardens) for them,” it has been said, there “are blissful Gardens for them.” In the first case, it would have meant this: “They will enjoy the blessings but the Gardens will not belong to them.” In the second case, “it automatically becomes evident that the whole Gardens will be handed over to them, and they will take advantage of their blessings as an owner does of his own possession, and not like the one who is allowed to use something without giving him ownership rights over it.”

11. That is, “Nothing can withhold Him from fulfilling His promise, and whatever He does is strictly according to the demands of wisdom and justice. The object of mentioning these two attributes of Allah after saying: “This is a true promise of Allah”, is to stress that Allah neither violates His promise willfully nor is there in this universe any such power as can prevent Him from fulfilling His promise. Therefore, there can be no chance that one may not receive what Allah has promised to give as a reward for faith and righteous deeds. Moreover, Allah’s open promise to bestow this reward is entirely based on His wisdom and His justice. He does not misjudge: it cannot be that He may deprive a deserving person of his reward, and reward a nondeserving one instead. The people characterized by true faith and righteous deeds indeed deserve this reward and Allah will bestow this on them only.”

12. After the above introductory sentence, the discourse now turns to the real theme, i.e. the refutation of shirk and the invitation to Tauhid.

13. The actual words bi-ghair i amad-in tarauna-ha in the text may have two meanings:

(1) “You can see for yourself that they stand without pillar”; and

(2) “They stand on the pillars which you cannot see”

Ibn Abbas and Mujahid have favored the second meaning, and many other commentators take the first meaning. If the meaning is expressed in terms of the natural sciences of the present day, it can be said that the countless stars and planets in the heaven have been established in their positions and orbits without any visible support and prop: there are no strings and wires which might have tied them together; there are no iron bars which might be withholding them from falling on one another. It is the law of gravitation which is supporting the system. This interpretation is according to the present-day knowledge. It may be that tomorrow some new addition to our knowledge enables us to interpret the reality better.

14. For explanation, see (E. N. 12 of Surah An-Nahl).

15. “Those other than” “the beings whom you have set up as your deities, whom you regard as makers and un-makers of your destinies, whom you have been worshiping as such persistently.”

16. That is, “When they do not point out in this universe any creation of anyone else than Allah, and obviously they cannot, their setting up the non creators as associates in Godhead and bowing before them in worship and invoking them for help, is nothing but mere stupidity, because their foolish conduct cannot be explained in any other way. Unless a person has taken leave of his senses, he cannot commit the folly that he should himself admit before you that his deities are non-creators and that Allah alone is the Creator, and yet insist on their being the deities. If somebody has a little of the common sense, he will inevitably think how the one who has no power to create anything, and who has no share whatever in the creation of anything in the earth and heavens, can be our deity. Why should man bow before it and adore it as a deity? Does it possess any power that it could fulfill one’s needs and requirements? Even if it hears one’s prayers, what could it do to answer them when it did not have any power to create anything? For, evidently, afflictions can be removed only by him who can create something and not by him who can create nothing.”