096
Muhammad Asad
AL-ALAQ (THE GERM-CELL)
THE NINETY-SIXTH SURAH
Total Verses: 19
Introduction
THERE IS no doubt
that the first five verses of this surah represent the very beginning of
the revelation of the Qur'an. Although the exact date
cannot be established with certainty, all authorities agree in that these five
verses were revealed in the last third of the month of Ramadan, thirteen years
before the hijrah (corresponding to
July or August, 610, of the Christian era). Muhammad was then forty years old.
At that period of his life "solitude became dear unto him, and he used to
withdraw into seclusion in a cave of
IN THE NAME OF
GOD, THE MOST GRACIOUS, THE DISPENSER OF GRACE:
1) READ 1 in the name of thy Sustainer, who has created –
(2) created man out of a germ-cell!
2
(3) Read - for thy Sustainer is the Most Bountiful One
(4) who has taught [man] the use of
the pen –
(5) taught man what he did not
know! 3
(6) Nay, verily, man becomes grossly overweening
(7) whenever he believes himself to
be self-sufficient:
(8) for, behold, unto thy Sustainer
all must return. 4
(9) HAST THOU ever considered him who tries to prevent
(10) a servant [of God] from
praying? 5
(11) Hast thou considered whether he is on the right way,
(12) or is concerned with
God-consciousness? 6
(13) Hast thou considered whether he may [not] be giving the
lie to the truth and turning his back [upon it]? 7
(14) Does he, then, not know that God sees [all]?
(15) Nay, if he desist not, We
shall most surely drag him down upon his forehead 8 –
(16) the lying, rebellious
forehead! –
(17) and then let him summon [to
his aid] the counsels of his own [spurious] wisdom, 9
(18) [the while] We shall summon
the forces of heavenly chastisement!
(19) Nay, pay thou no heed to him, but prostrate thyself
[before God] and draw close [unto Him]!
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1 Sc.,
"this divine writ". The
imperative iqra' may be rendered as "read" or
"recite". The former rendering is, to my mind, by far the preferable
in this context inasmuch as the concept of "reciting" implies no more
than the oral delivery - with or without understanding - of something already
laid down in writing or committed to memory, whereas "reading"
primarily signifies a conscious taking-in, with or without an audible utterance
but with a view to understanding them, of words and ideas received from an
outside source: in this case, the message of the Qur'an.
2 The past tense in which the verb
khalaqa appears in these two verses is meant to
indicate that the act of divine creation (khalq) has
been and is being continuously repeated. It is also noteworthy that this very
first Qur'anic revelation alludes to man's embryonic
evolution out of a "germ-cell.' - i.e., out of a fertilized female ovum -
thus contrasting the primitiveness and simplicity of his biological origins
with his intellectual and spiritual potential: a contrast which clearly points
to the existence of a conscious design and a purpose underlying the creation of
life.
3 "The pen" is used here
as a symbol for the art of writing or, more specifically, for all knowledge
recorded by means of writing: and this explains the symbolic summons
"Read!" at the beginning of verses 1 and 3. Man's unique ability to
transmit, by means of written records, his thoughts, experiences and insights
from individual to individual, from generation to generation, and from one
cultural environment to another endows all human knowledge with a cumulative
character; and since, thanks to this God-given ability, every human being
partakes, in one way or another, in mankind's continuous accumulation of
knowledge, man is spoken of as being "taught by God" things which the
single individual does not - and, indeed, cannot - know by himself. (This
double stress on man's utter dependence on God, who creates him as a biological
entity and implants in him the will and the ability to acquire knowledge,
receives its final accent, as it were, in the next three verses.) Furthermore,
God's "teaching" man signifies also the act of His revealing, through
the prophets, spiritual truths and moral standards which cannot be
unequivocally established through human experience and reasoning alone: and,
thus, it circumscribes the phenomenon of divine revelation as such.
4 Lit., "is the return (ar-ruj‘a)". This noun has here a twofold implication:
"everyone will inescapably be brought before God for judgment", as
well as "everything that exists goes back to God
as its source". In ultimate analysis, the statement expressed in verses
6-8 rejects as absurd the arrogant idea that man could ever be self-sufficient
and, hence, "master of his own fate"; furthermore, it implies that
all moral concepts - that is, all discrimination between good and evil, or
right and wrong - are indissolubly linked with the concept of man's
responsibility to a Supreme Power: in other words, without such a feeling of
responsibility - whether conscious or subconscious - the concept of
"morality" as such loses all its meaning.
5 Lit., "who forbids a
servant [of God] when he prays", implying an attempt at preventing. Since
this seems to refer to praying in public, most of the classical commentators
see in this passage (which was revealed at least a year later than the first
five verses) an allusion to Abu Jahl, the Prophet's
bitterest opponent in Mecca, who persistently tried to prevent Muhammad and his
followers from praying before the Kabah. However, there is no doubt that the
purport of the above passage goes far beyond any historical incident or
situation inasmuch as it applies to all attempts, at all times, to deny to
religion (symbolized in the term "praying") its legitimate function
in the shaping of social life - attempts made either in the conviction that
religion is every individual's "private affair" and, therefore, must
not be allowed to "intrude" into the realm of social considerations,
or, alternatively, in the pursuit of the illusion that man is above any need of
metaphysical guidance.
6 Lit., "or enjoins
God-consciousness (taqwa)" - i.e., whether his
aim is to deepen his fellow-men's God-consciousness by insisting that religion
is a purely personal matter: the obvious implication being that this is not his
aim, and that he is not on the right way in thinking and acting as he does. -
Throughout this work, the term taqwa - of which the
present is the earliest instance in the chronology of Qur'anic
revelation - has been rendered as "God-consciousness", with the same
meaning attaching to the verbal forms from which this noun is derived. (See
also surah 2, note 2.)
7 Sc., "because in his
arrogance he cannot face it".
8 Or: "by his forelock"
- an ancient Arabian expression denoting aa person's utter subjection and
humiliation (see
9 Lit.,
"'his council". According to
the commentators who tend to interpret verses such as this in purely historical
terms, this may be a reference to the traditional council of elders (dar an- nadwah) in pagan Mecca;
but more probably, I think, it is an allusion to the arrogance which so often
deludes man into regarding himself as "self-sufficient" (verses 6-7
above).