The Family of ‘Imran (Al-‘Imran)

Commentary

(a) The concept of monotheism is not only a basic teaching of the Prophet Muhammad but is also enshrined as an established reality, even in the interpolated versions of the Torah and the Bible. Judged on this established criterion, Islam, unlike Judaism and Christianity, is proved to be a perfectly true religion. Monotheism implies belief in only one God. He alone should be worshipped. No one should be associated with Him. No man should be accorded that special place which is the sole prerogative of the Lord of the Universe. This concept of monotheism is preserved in its pure form only in Islam in the Quran. Other religions, while accepting monotheism ideologically, also adopted almost everything that ran counter to it. While believing in God as the Sustainer, in practice they accorded that status to their saints. (a) The Makkan polytheists called their religion the faith of Abraham. Jews and Christians too bracketed their religious history with that of Abraham. In every age people have used the names of their prophets and saints to justify their own additions to and inventions in religion. After the passage of time, people fail to differentiate between the original religion and its later version. The later version is ultimately taken to be the real religion. The atmosphere surrounding it is such that, when the call to return to true and pure religion is given, its opponents find the easiest way to discredit it is by making public allegations that the caller is against the religion handed down to them by their saints. One who is the true representative of the religion of ‘saints’ is now rejected in the name of former saints. This is because what his opponents hold up as their yardstick is not actually the original version of religion as given by the saints of the past. Instead it is the body of alterations and additions made by later followers and subsequently accepted as the ‘religion of the saints’. This is like drawing a veil of falsehood over the truth. That is, making pronouncements which are invalid from the religious and logical point of view. But since the public does not have the ability to analyze them, it deems them to be right and is thus distanced from the truth. The hanif (monotheist) is one who treads the straight path of monotheism and the non-hanif is one who deviates from the straight path, going instead into by-lanes. Sometimes the secondary aspects of religion are so emphasized by the interpretation put upon them that they appear to be the main foci, the actual core of religion. In this way its fundamentals lose their significance and people stray from the straight thoroughfare of monotheism into the byways of unimportant issues.