Good by God’s grace and bad by one’s own choice

4. Sura an-Nisa

Medina 92 [Hijra 4]

The Quranic Text & Ali’s Version:

مَّا أَصَابَكَ مِنْ حَسَنَةٍ فَمِنَ اللّهِ وَمَا أَصَابَكَ مِن سَيِّئَةٍ فَمِن نَّفْسِكَ...   

4: 79. Whatever good, (O man!) happens to thee, is from Allah; but whatever evil happens to thee, is from thy (own) soul.

... وَأَرْسَلْنَاكَ لِلنَّاسِ رَسُولاً ...

And We have sent thee as a Messenger to (instruct) mankind:

C598. To blame a man of God for our misfortunes is doubly unjust. For he comes to save us from misfortune, and it is because we flout him or pay no heed to him, that our own rebellion, brings its own punishment.

If we realise this truth we shall be saved from two sins:

1.     the sin of injustice to Allah's Messengers, who come for our good, and not for our harm:

2.     the sin of not realising our own shortcomings or rebellion, and thus living in spiritual darkness.

If the Message is from Allah, that carries its own authority:

"enough is Allah for a witness."

Asad’s Version:

4: 79 Whatever good happens to thee is from God; and whatever evil befalls thee is from thyself. 94

[[Asad’s note -94 There is no contradiction between this statement and the preceding one that "all is from God". In the world-view of the Qur'an, God is the ultimate source of all happening: consequently, all good that comes to man and all evil that befalls him flows, in the last resort, from
God's will. However, not everything that man regards as "evil fortune" is really, in its
final effect, evil - for, "it may well be that you hate a thing the while it is good for you,
and it may well be that you love a thing the while it is bad for you: and God knows,
whereas you do not know" (2:216). Thus, many an apparent "evil" may sometimes be no more
than a trial and a God-willed means of spiritual growth through suffering, and need not
necessarily be the result of a wrong choice or a wrong deed on the part of the person thus
afflicted. It is, therefore, obvious that the "evil" or "evil fortune" of which this verse
speaks has a restricted connotation, inasmuch as it refers to evil in the moral sense of
the word: that is to say, to suffering resulting from the actions or the behaviour of the
person concerned, and this in accordance with the natural law of cause and effect which
God has decreed for all His creation, and which the Qur'an describes as "the way of God"
(sunnat Allah). For all such suffering man has only himself to blame, since "God does not
wrong anyone by as much as at atom's weight" (4:40). ]]