30. Surah Ar Rum
The Quranic Text & Ali’s Version:
ظَهَرَ
الْفَسَادُ
فِي الْبَرِّ
وَالْبَحْرِ
بِمَا كَسَبَتْ
أَيْدِي النَّاسِ...
30:41 [Ali]. Mischief has appeared on land and sea because of (the meed) that the hands of men have earned,
C3556. Allah's Creation was pure and good in itself. All the mischief or corruption was introduced by Evil, viz., arrogance, selfishness, etc. See n. 3541 to 30:30 above.
As soon as the mischief has come in, Allah's mercy and goodness step in to stop it.
The consequences of Evil must be evil, and this should be shown in such partial punishment as "the hands of men have earned," so that it may be a warning for the future and an invitation to enter the door of repentance.
...لِيُذِيقَهُم بَعْضَ الَّذِي عَمِلُوا لَعَلَّهُمْ يَرْجِعُونَ ﴿٤١﴾
that (Allah) may give them a taste of some of their deeds: in order that they may turn back (from Evil).
C3557. The ultimate object of Allah's justice and punishment is to reclaim man from Evil, and to restore him to the pristine purity and innocence in which he was created.
The Evil introduced by his possession of a limited free-will should be eliminated by the education and purification of man's own will. For, with his will and motives purified, he is capable of much greater heights than a creature not endowed with any free-will.
Asad’s Version:
30:41
[Since they have become oblivious of God,] corruption has appeared on land and in the sea as an outcome of what men's hands have wrought: and so He will let them taste 38 [the evil of] some of their doings, so that they might return (to the right path]. 39
[[Asad’s note - 38 The prefix Ii in li-yudhiqahum does not indicate here a purport or intent ("so that" or "in order that"), but is a lam al-'aqibah, i.e., a prefix expressing a factual consequence (best rendered as "thereupon" or "and so").
39 Thus, the growing corruption and destruction of our natural environment, so awesomely - if as yet only partially - demonstrated in our time, is here predicted as "an outcome of what men's hands have wrought", i.e., of that self-destructive - because utterly materialistic - inventiveness and frenzied activity which now threatens mankind with previously unimaginable ecological disasters: an unbridled pollution of land, air and water through industrial and urban waste, a progressive poisoning of plant and marine life, all manner of genetic malformations in men's own bodies through an ever-widening use of drugs and seemingly "beneficial" chemicals, and the gradual extinction
of many animal species essential to human well-being. To all this may be added the rapid deterioration and decomposition of man's social life, the all-round increase in sexual perversion, crime and violence, with, perhaps, nuclear annihilation as the ultimate stage: all of which is, in the last resort, an outcome of man's oblivion of God and, hence, of all absolute moral values, and their supersession by the belief that material "progress" is the on- thing that matters. ]]