Verses 15–25
Here, God relates some of the things that they say which cause them to be labelled as profligates and ingrates. This includes their preference of sons, while they call the angels God’s daughters, and the arguments they make for worshipping the angels. Then God takes them to task for these things.
Commentary
وَجَعَلُوا لَهُ مِنْ عِبَادِهِ جُزْءًا ۚ إِنَّ الْإِنْسَانَ لَكَفُورٌ مُبِينٌ ١٥
(43:15) They ascribe to Him an offspring from among His servants! Man is indeed a manifest ingrate.
The word God uses for “an offspring” in this verse is juzʾ, which literally means part, as a child is merely a part of her parents that has become separated from them and takes on their form. The reason God uses this word for child is to demonstrate the impossibility of their claim, as something can only be made a part of another thing—however we want to imagine this taking place—if the thing it is taken from composite (murakkab) in nature, while God is absolutely and indivisibly one from all aspects.
Based on the above, from among His servants (min ʿibādih) is to clarify the meaning of an offspring (juzʾ). There is no problem with this explanatory phrase coming before the clause it is explaining, or that this clause is singular while the phrase is plural.
أَمِ اتَّخَذَ مِمَّا يَخْلُقُ بَنَاتٍ وَأَصْفَاكُمْ بِالْبَنِينَ ١٦
(43:16) Did He adopt daughters from what He creates while He preferred you with sons?
Meaning: Did he single you out for sons while he has only daughters, and you think that daughters are worth less than sons? Meaning that you assign him the less valuable gender while preferring the more valuable one for yourselves? Even though such a claim is clearly impossible in and of itself, this question serves to disgrace this phenomenon and rebuke the faithless for their ingratitude.
God qualifies the phrase adopt daughters with from what He creates because the idolaters said that the angels—despite being endowed with lordship and divinity in their minds—were ultimately created by God. The transition in address (iltifāt) from the third-person (“they”) to the second person (you pl.) is to emphasize and intensify the rebuke. Also, in the Arabic, daughters is left indefinite (banātin) while sons is given the definite article to belittle and aggrandize respectively.
وَإِذَا بُشِّرَ أَحَدُهُمْ بِمَا ضَرَبَ لِلرَّحْمَٰنِ مَثَلًا ظَلَّ وَجْهُهُ مُسْوَدًّا وَهُوَ كَظِيمٌ ١٧
(43:17) When one of them is brought the news of that the like of which he ascribes to the All-beneficent, his face becomes darkened and he chokes.
A like (mathal) means something similar to and belonging to the same category of a thing; so that the like of which he ascribes to the All-beneficent is a female child.
“One who chokes” (kaẓīm) means one who is filled with distress and anger.
This means: At the same time as they ascribe daughters to God, when one of them is given news of a daughter, their face darkens with grief and their hearts are filled with distress and anger because they are displeased with being given a girl. They consider having a daughter to be a source of shame, yet they are satisfied that God should have daughters!
The transition in this verse from the second-person (“you”) to the third person (“they”) is as if to relate their woeful behavior and evil attitudes to an outsider so that he is shocked by them!
أَوَمَنْ يُنَشَّأُ فِي الْحِلْيَةِ وَهُوَ فِي الْخِصَامِ غَيْرُ مُبِينٍ ١٨
(43:18) What! One who is brought up amid ornaments and is inconspicuous in contests?
In other words, “Do they ascribe to God one who is raised amongst jewelry, grows up surrounded by finery and shows no promise in contests and arguments because she is unable to present her case?”
God only mentions these two attributes because women are naturally endowed with superior faculties of emotion and empathy than men, but are usually disadvantaged in reason, while men are the opposite. One of the most obvious signs of this is a woman’s strong appreciation of beautiful things coupled with her difficulty in formulating logical arguments.
وَجَعَلُوا الْمَلَائِكَةَ الَّذِينَ هُمْ عِبَادُ الرَّحْمَٰنِ إِنَاثًا ۚ أَشَهِدُوا خَلْقَهُمْ ۚ سَتُكْتَبُ شَهَادَتُهُمْ وَيُسْأَلُونَ ١٩
(43:19) And they have made the angels—who are servants of the All-beneficent—females. Were they witness to their creation? Their testimony will be written down and they shall be questioned.
This is the meaning of their claim that the angels are God’s daughters. Some tribes of pre-Islamic Arabs believed this. Other idolaters perhaps considered that their deities had a mother deity or a daughter deity, without necessarily claiming that all of the angels were females as the verse appears to suggest.
And God describes the angels as who are servants of the All-beneficent to refute their claim that the angels are feminine, as the word “servants” (ʿibād) is not used for females. At the same time, however, this does not necessitate their being masculine in the same way that we describe living things as masculine. Being male or female is a corollary of our material existence and a means by which material creatures are able to procreate and multiply. The angels are far removed from all of that.
Were they witness to their creation? Their testimony will be written down and they shall be questioned: This refutes their claim that the angels are females, because the only way they could know that is if they had seen the angels visibly, which they had no way of doing; so they were not present at their creation to discern this for themselves!
When God says Were they witness to their creation? This is a rhetorical question meant as a rebuke and a warning against their speaking without knowledge. In other words: They did not witness their creation, and what they fabricate will be written against them in the record of their deeds so that they may be questioned about it on the Day of Resurrection.
وَقَالُوا لَوْ شَاءَ الرَّحْمَٰنُ مَا عَبَدْنَاهُمْ ۗ مَا لَهُمْ بِذَٰلِكَ مِنْ عِلْمٍ ۖ إِنْ هُمْ إِلَّا يَخْرُصُونَ ٢٠
(43:20) They say, “Had the All-beneficent wished, we would not have worshipped them.” They do not have any knowledge of that, and they do nothing but surmise.
This is one of the foolish arguments the Qur’an relates from them. We can read it as justifying the worship of idols as follows: “Had God willed, we would not have worshipped associates with Him. We would have necessarily not worshipped them because we could not go against the will of God. But we worshipped them, so this means He did not will for us not to worship them, which is tantamount to saying that He allowed us to do it. This means He has no problem with us worshipping associates, including the angels.” And this same argument is what comes to mind when we read the verse, The polytheists say, “Had God wished, we would not have worshiped anything besides Him— neither we, nor our fathers—nor would we have held anything holy besides Him” (), based on the context immediately before and after it.
But we can also read this argument as an attempt to refute a form of prophethood which says “God has made such-and-such obligatory for you, and made such-and-such forbidden for you.” This argument functions as follows: “Had God wished us not to worship associates, or for us not to permit or prohibit anything, we would not have worshipped these associates or made up any of our own laws, because it is impossible to oppose God’s will. But we do worship them and make up our own laws, so clearly God has not willed anything from us. So when you say that God wants us to do this or does not want us to do that—in short, that He wills such a thing—this is false!”
And this second argument comes to mind when we read the verse: The polytheists will say, “Had God wished we would not have ascribed any partner [to Him], nor our fathers, nor would we have forbidden anything” (). This is again with regards to the context.
But when we look at the verse under discussion—Had the All-beneficent wished, we would not have worshipped them—and the context of the verses that surround it, this reads more like the first argument than the second. In other words, they are justifying their worship of the angels. So this verse is in the sense of the verse from Sūrat al-Naḥl, and actually more specific in its tenor.
They do not have any knowledge of that: In other words, this argument they make rests on ignorance. It is based on fallacious reasoning that confuses the creative aspect of the Divine Will (al-irādah al-tawkīniyyah) with its moral aspect (al-irādah al-tashrīʿiyyah), putting the former in the place of the latter. The implication of their argument is that there is no creative will against them worshipping angels, but even though this may be the case, it does not necessarily follow that there is no moral will against their worship of them!
This is because, insofar as God did not will for them not to worship partners with His creative will, they have free-will and are not compelled in their actions. They can choose to do something or not to do it. Instead, He willed that they should believe in His Divine Unity and not worship any associates with Him using His moral will. But, unlike the creative will, it is possible to contravene God’s moral will, because it is something conceptual rather than real; it only exists in the form of religious codes, laws, moral obligations, and its essence is whether a particular action is conducive to human good or human harm.
Based on this, the error of those who argue as follows becomes clear: Their argument rests on two premises. The first is that their worship of the angels is by God’s will. The second is that this necessarily implies that He is pleased with the action. In the first, they were correct. But in the second they erred, as they were unaware that the Divine Will refers to some contingent phenomena—whatever they may be—being given preponderance over others, without this telling us anything about God’s pleasure or displeasure in either group of phenomena.
Their error is as follows: The thread of the idolaters’ argument is that God did not will them to not worship the angels. However, just because He did not will them to not do one thing does not imply that He willed them to do it. Rather the most this implies is permission (idhn), meaning that there is nothing preventing them from doing it. Then, moreover, it seems as though the above commentator restricts the Divine Will to its creative aspect and neglects its moral aspect, around which revolve all our divinely-imposed duties, and this is an error on his part.
So too is the error of the following reading apparent: Some commentators are supposed to have said that the meaning of their words Had the All-beneficent wished, we would not have worshipped them is to excuse their worshipping of the angels by attributing it to God’s will, while admitting that it is an improper thing to do.
This is an erroneous reading because the idolaters did not accept that it was improper for them to worship their deities. In fact, they argue the opposite below: We found our fathers following a creed, and we are indeed guided in their footsteps.
…and they do nothing but surmise. “To surmise” (kharṣ)—according to what Rāghib says—means to claim something on the basis of conjecture or guesswork. But it has also been interpreted to mean “to lie.”
أَمْ آتَيْنَاهُمْ كِتَابًا مِنْ قَبْلِهِ فَهُمْ بِهِ مُسْتَمْسِكُونَ ٢١
(43:21) Did We give them a Book before this, so that they are holding fast to it?
Before this means before the Qur’an. And this verse negates the possibility of their actions having any scriptural basis, just as the verse immediately before this negates the possibility of their actions having any rational basis. In short, the two verses say that they have no basis for worshipping the angels, whether from reason or revelation. Therefore God does not permit them to do so.
بَلْ قَالُوا إِنَّا وَجَدْنَا آبَاءَنَا عَلَىٰ أُمَّةٍ وَإِنَّا عَلَىٰ آثَارِهِمْ مُهْتَدُونَ ٢٢
(43:22) Rather they say, “We found our fathers following a creed, and we are indeed guided in their footsteps.”
A “creed” (ummah) means a path that one follows and is led by, in other words a “religion” (dīn). God says “rather” (bal) to signify that this is in contrast to the above two verses. In other words, they have no evidence for the authenticity of their worship, so instead they say they found their fathers following a religion and they are guided in their footsteps. In other words, they are doing nothing more than clinging to blindly following their fathers.
وَكَذَٰلِكَ مَا أَرْسَلْنَا مِنْ قَبْلِكَ فِي قَرْيَةٍ مِنْ نَذِيرٍ إِلَّا قَالَ مُتْرَفُوهَا إِنَّا وَجَدْنَا آبَاءَنَا عَلَىٰ أُمَّةٍ وَإِنَّا عَلَىٰ آثَارِهِمْ مُقْتَدُونَ ٢٣
(43:23) And so it has been that We did not send any warner to a town before you, without its affluent ones saying, “We found our fathers following a creed and we are indeed following in their footsteps.”
This means that their adherence to blindly following their forefathers is not something unique to them. In fact, this was the habit of their ancestors amongst idolatrous nations. We did not send any warner, meaning a prophet, to a town before you except that the affluent amongst them held fast to blindly following their forefathers. They said: “We found our ancestors upon a religion and we are guided in their footsteps. We will not forsake it nor contravene them.”
The fact that this statement is attributed to the wealthy amongst them shows that it is their wealth and affluence that motivates them to blindly follow their forefathers and prevents them from considering the truth.
قَالَ أَوَلَوْ جِئْتُكُمْ بِأَهْدَىٰ مِمَّا وَجَدْتُمْ عَلَيْهِ آبَاءَكُمْ ۖ قَالُوا إِنَّا بِمَا أُرْسِلْتُمْ بِهِ كَافِرُونَ ٢٤
(43:24) He would say, “What! Even if I bring you a better guidance than what you found your fathers following?!” They would say, “We indeed disbelieve in what you are sent with.”
The one speaking is the warner from the previous verse. He is addressing the affluent ones, but this includes others as well. And the conjunction even if I… is connected to what they said above. So this means: “You will follow in your forefathers’ footsteps even if I brought you a better guidance than what you found them following?” In other words, “Will you cling to your religion even if I brought you a better one?” And the speaker says the religion he brings them “a better guidance” not because their religion contains any guidance at all (as it is false), but merely for the sake of argument.
Their response to the warner’s question is: We indeed disbelieve in what you are sent with. But this is an arbitrary rejection that does not offer any argument.
فَانْتَقَمْنَا مِنْهُمْ ۖ فَانْظُرْ كَيْفَ كَانَ عَاقِبَةُ الْمُكَذِّبِينَ ٢٥
(43:25) Thereupon We took vengeance on them; so observe how was the fate of the deniers.
Meaning: After having sent a warner to challenge them for blindly following their forefathers and their rejecting him, we destroyed them because of their denial. So look what became of the people of those towns who came before you. And this is a warning directed towards the Prophet’s own people.