The Cattle (Al-An‘am) الأنعام 146–147
146
وَعَلَى الَّذِينَ هَادُواْ حَرَّمْنَا كُلَّ ذِي ظُفُرٍ وَمِنَ الْبَقَرِ وَالْغَنَمِ حَرَّمْنَا عَلَيْهِمْ شُحُومَهُمَا إِلاَّ مَا حَمَلَتْ ظُهُورُهُمَا أَوِ الْحَوَايَا أَوْ مَا اخْتَلَطَ بِعَظْمٍ ذَلِكَ جَزَيْنَاهُم بِبَغْيِهِمْ وِإِنَّا لَصَادِقُونَ
We forbade the Jews all animals with claws and the fat of sheep [and goats] and oxen, except what is on their backs and in their intestines and what adheres to their bones. That is the penalty We imposed on them for their disobedience. And We assuredly are true to Our word.
147
فَإِن كَذَّبُوكَ فَقُل رَّبُّكُمْ ذُو رَحْمَةٍ وَاسِعَةٍ وَلاَ يُرَدُّ بَأْسُهُ عَنِ الْقَوْمِ الْمُجْرِمِينَ
So, if they accuse you of lying, say, ‘The mercy of your Lord is all-encompassing. His punishment cannot be averted from sinful men.’
No class discussions published for this verse group yet.
(a) According to the divine Shariah (Islamic regulations), the truly forbidden things have always been the same as mentioned in the foregoing verse, viz. carrion, out- pouring blood, the meat of pigs and animals slaughtered in the name of any thing or being other than God. Anything else which is forbidden falls into a sub-group of the above-mentioned as a matter of detail. But along with this, among God’s prohibitory laws, another principle is at work, namely, that when a community blessed with His Book adopts the way of arrogance instead of obedience, it is subjected to new difficulties by way of punishment, i.e. such things as were not originally forbidden them in the Divine Shariah are now banned. One way in which this change comes about is that in such a community, leaders arise who are completely ignorant of the reality of the religion. They are conversant only with its outward formalities. The meticulousness which they should apply to the meaningful realities of religion is reserved by them for outward formalities and rites. The result is that unnecessary hair-splitting over externals becomes a set pattern in religion. Such leaders devise self-made outward standards of religion. By a process of extreme exaggeration, they make a simple commandment complicated and a legitimate thing unlawful. For instance, when arrogance set in among the Jews, certain scholars arose among them who, by their hair-splitting arguments, made the rule that for an animal to be deemed fit to eat, it should possess two qualities—one, that its hooves should be cloven or divided, and second, that it should be a cud-chewing animal. Even if one of these conditions was not fulfilled, that animal, according to them, was forbidden. Due to this self-imposed condition, even animals like the camel and the rabbit, etc., were unnecessarily banned. Similarly, by taking up an extreme position about the importance attached to claws, they unnecessarily placed ostriches, swans and ducks in the forbidden category. These unnatural restrictions narrowed their lives, whereas God had intended to give them wider latitude. After rejecting the Truth, man is not immediately seized upon by God. He finds himself free and his life as full as before. For this reason, he erroneously imagines that he is not going to lose anything by not accepting the Truth. He forgets that if he remains safe, it is simply because of the merciful forbearance of God. In spite of man’s arrogance, God gives him the opportunity to redeem himself till the very last moment. Finally, when he has not changed his behaviour, all of a sudden God swoops down on him—sometimes in this world and sometimes both in this world and the Hereafter.