Sura 4, al-Nisa, Medina 92

The Quranic text and Ali’s translation:

يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُواْ آمِنُواْ بِاللّهِ وَرَسُولِهِ ...   

4:136. O ye who believe! believe in God and His Messenger,

... وَالْكِتَابِ الَّذِي نَزَّلَ عَلَى رَسُولِهِ وَالْكِتَابِ الَّذِيَ أَنزَلَ مِن قَبْلُ...  

and the scripture which He hath sent to His Messenger and the scripture which He sent to those before (him).

... وَمَن يَكْفُرْ بِاللّهِ وَمَلاَئِكَتِهِ وَكُتُبِهِ وَرُسُلِهِ وَالْيَوْمِ الآخِرِ فَقَدْ ضَلَّ ضَلاَلاً بَعِيدًا ﴿١٣٦﴾  

And who denieth Allah, His angels, His Books, His Messengers, and the Day of Judgment, hath gone far, far astray.

Asad’s Translation

O you who have attained to faith! Hold fast unto your belief in God and His Apostle, and in the divine writ which He has bestowed from on high upon His Apostle, step by step, as well as in the revelation which He sent down aforetime: 151 for he who denies God, and His angels, and His revelations, and His apostles, and the Last Day, has indeed gone far astray. 152

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Ali’s comments:

C646. If your belief is by habit or birth or the example of those you love or respect or admire, make that belief more specific and personal to yourself. We must not only have faith, but realise that faith in our inmost being.

The chief objects of our Faith are God, His Messenger, and His Revelations.

To all these we must give a home in our hearts. The angels we do not see and realise as we realise Allah, who is nearer to us than the vehicle of our life-blood, and the Day of Judgment is for our future experience, but we must not deny them, or we cut off a part of our religious view.

Asad’s comments:-

151 What is meant here is belief in the fact of earlier revelation, and not in the earlier-revealed scriptures in their present form, which - as repeatedly stated in the

Qur'an - is the outcome of far-reaching corruption of the original texts.

1 52 Since it is through the beings or forces described as angels that God conveys His revelations to the prophets, belief in angels is correlated with belief in revelation as such.