The Hundred-Ninth Surah

Sura- 109 [Al-Kafirun Mecca 18]

The Quranic Text & Ali’s version:

قُلْ يَا أَيُّهَا الْكَافِرُونَ (١)

109:1. Say: O ye that reject Faith!

C6289. Faith is a matter of personal conviction, and does not depend on worldly motives.

Worship should depend on pure and sincere Faith, but often does not: for motives of worldly gain, ancestral custom, social conventions or imitative instincts, or a lethargic instinct to shrink from enquiring into the real significance of solemn acts and the motives behind them, reduce a great deal of the world's worship to sin, selfishness, or futility.

Symbolic idols may themselves be merely instruments for safeguarding the privileges of a selfish priestly class, or the ambitions, greed, or lust of private individuals.

Hence the insistence of Islam and its Prophet on the pure worship of the One True God. The Prophet firmly resisted all appeals to worldly motives, and stood firm to his Message of eternal Unity.

Asad’s Version:

REVEALED shortly after surah 107.

In The Name of God, The Most Gracious, The Dispenser of Grace:

109:1 SAY: "O you who deny the truth! (2) "I do not worship that which you worship, (3) and neither do you worship that which I worship! 1 (4) "And I will not worship that which you have [ever] worshipped, (5) and neither will you [ever] worship that which I worship. 2 (6) Unto you, your moral law, and unto me, mine !" 3

[[ Asad’s notes -

1 In the above rendering, the particle ma ("that which") alludes, on the one hand, to all positive concepts and ethical values - e.g., belief in God and the believer's self-surrender to Him - and, on the other, to false objects of worship and false values, such as man's belief in his own supposed "self- sufficiency" (cf 96:6-7), or his overriding, almost compulsive "greed for more and more" (surah 102).

2 Sc, "so long as you are unwilling to abandon the false values which cause you to deny the truth

3 Lit., "unto me, my moral law". The primary significance of din is "obedience"; in particular, obedience to a law or to what is conceived as a system of established - and therefore binding - usages, i.e., something endowed with moral authority: hence "religion", "faith. 1 or "religious law" in the widest sense of these terms (cf. first half of note 249 on 2:256); or simply "moral law", as in the above instance as well as in 42:21, 95:7, 98:5 or 107:1. ]]

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The Ninety-Fifth Surah

At-Tin (The Fig)

Mecca Period

فَمَا يُكَذِّبُكَ بَعْدُ بِالدِّينِ ﴿٧﴾    

95:7.  Then what can, after this, contradict thee; as to the Judgment (to come)?

C6201. Thee: may refer to the holy Prophet, or to man collectively. After this: i.e., when it is clearly shown to you that Allah created man true and pure, that He guides him, and that those who rebel and break His law will be punished and brought down in the Hereafter, who can doubt this, or contradict the Prophet when he gives warning?

(5) and thereafter We reduce him to the lowest of low 3 (6) excepting only such as attain to faith and do good works: and theirs shall be a reward

unending! (7) What, then, [O man,] could henceforth cause thee to give the lie to this moral law? 4 (8) Is not God the most just of judges?

[[Asad’s notes:-

4 I.e., to the validity of the moral law - which, to my mind, is the meaning of the term din in this context - outlined in the preceding three verses. (For this specific significance of the concept of din, see note 3 on 109:6.) The above rhetorical question has this implication: Since the moral law referred to here has been stressed in the teachings of all monotheistic religions (cf verses 1-3 and note 1 above), its truth ought to be self-evident to any unprejudiced person; its negation, moreover, amounts to a negation of all freedom of moral choice on man's part and, hence, of justice on the part of God, who, as the next verse points out, is - by definition - "the most just of judges".