Bees (Al-Nahl)

Commentary

(a) When God’s messenger calls for the truth, his addressees feel that his call is clashing with their traditional religion. Now, since they are familiar with this traditional religion and since many of their interests are attached to this religion, they want to continue to adhere to it. At the same time Satan furnishes them with beautiful words by which they can prove that rejecting the Prophet’s religion and adhering to their traditional religion is justified. If a man accepts the word of the prophet in a straightforward manner, this amounts to making God his companion. On the contrary, if he takes the help of beautiful interpretations, to reject it, this amounts to making a friend of Satan. By sending the last of the prophets, God has arranged for people to find the true divine path amidst the jungle of religious differences. This situation prevails even today. If a person is in search of the way of God and for this purpose he studies the different religions, he will definitely become confused, as the teachings of other religions, in the form they exist today, have serious differences among themselves. The seeker of Truth is therefore unable to understand what he should treat as correct or incorrect. This being so, the religion brought by the last of the prophets is a blessing for the subjects of God, because unlike other religions, his religion is the ‘preserved’ one. From the point of view of history, it is completely authentic. It can, therefore, be taken for granted that the religion brought by the Prophet is, in reality, the religion which God desires his subjects to adopt.