The Promise of Succession
وَعَدَ ٱللَّهُ ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ مِنكُمْ وَعَمِلُوا۟ ٱلصَّـٰلِحَـٰتِ لَيَسْتَخْلِفَنَّهُمْ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ كَمَا ٱسْتَخْلَفَ ٱلَّذِينَ مِن قَبْلِهِمْ وَلَيُمَكِّنَنَّ لَهُمْ دِينَهُمُ ٱلَّذِى ٱرْتَضَىٰ لَهُمْ وَلَيُبَدِّلَنَّهُم مِّنۢ بَعْدِ خَوْفِهِمْ أَمْنًا ۚ يَعْبُدُونَنِى لَا يُشْرِكُونَ بِى شَيْـًٔا ۚ وَمَن كَفَرَ بَعْدَ ذَٰلِكَ فَأُو۟لَـٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلْفَـٰسِقُونَ
(24:55) Allah has promised those of you who have faith and do righteous deeds that He will surely make them successors in the earth, just as He made those who were before them successors, and He will surely establish for them their religion which He has approved for them, and that He will surely change their state to security after their fear, while they worship Me, not ascribing any partners to Me. Whoever is ungrateful after that—it is they who are the transgressors.
The question
“Allah has promised those of you who believe and do good that He will most certainly make them successors in the land … establish for them their religion … give them security after their fear; they shall serve Me, not associating anything with Me” — to whom, and when, is this promise fulfilled?
Views answered: those who say it refers to the Companions and the first caliphs, those who say it refers to the whole Muslim nation, the view that the comparison is with the Israelites, al-Ālūsī (Rūḥ al-Maʿānī) and the narration from Ḥudhayfah
Al-Mizan's argument
Al-Mizan reads the promise as one made to a society of believers who do good: God will make them inherit the land, establish their religion so firmly that no disagreement shakes it, replace all their fear with security against every enemy within and without, and they will worship God alone, with no association whatever. He answers the view that the comparison is with the Israelites after Pharaoh, whose society was never free of disbelief and hypocrisy, and sets out the exegetes' views — the Companions and the rightly guided caliphs, the whole nation, or the society of the promised Mahdī. Such a pure society, he argues, has not existed since the Prophet's time, so only the society to be formed after the appearance of the Mahdī fully matches the verse, as the narrations of the Ahl al-Bayt say; he answers the objection that no one addressed then would live to see it by distinguishing individual from collective address, and shows that even a looser reading cannot be limited to the time of the four caliphs. In the narrations he answers the reports used to apply the verse to the Companions, including al-Ālūsī's use of one, and a report from Ḥudhayfah.
Reading guide
Each part opens the commentary at that point.
- “Those of you who believe and do good”
- Two meanings of “successors”
- The Israelites as the comparison?
- Why that comparison fails
- Establishing their religion
- Security after fear
- “They shall serve Me, not associating anything with Me”
- The exegetes' views: the Companions
- The whole nation
- The promised Mahdī
- What the verse itself shows
- A society that has not yet existed
- An objection: who was being addressed?
- Individual and collective address
- The society after the Mahdī's appearance
- Even the looser reading is not limited to the four caliphs
- Narrations: the Ahl al-Bayt
- Reports applying it to the Companions
- Al-Ālūsī's use of a report
- The report from Ḥudhayfah