Sura-23 [Al-Muminun mecca 74]

The Quranic text and Ali’s version

23:53. But people have cut off their affair (of unity), between them, into sects:

...كُلُّ حِزْبٍ بِمَا لَدَيْهِمْ فَرِحُونَ ﴿٥٣﴾

each party rejoices in that which is with itself.

C2910. The people who began to trade on the names of the prophets cut off that unity and made sects; and each sect rejoices in its own narrow doctrine, instead of taking the universal teaching of Unity from Allah. But this sectarian confusion is of man's making. It will last for a time, but the rays of Truth and Unity will finally dissipate it.

فَذَرْهُمْ فِي غَمْرَتِهِمْ حَتَّى حِينٍ ﴿٥٤﴾

23:54. But leave them in their confused ignorance for a time.

أَيَحْسَبُونَ أَنَّمَا نُمِدُّهُم بِهِ مِن مَّالٍ وَبَنِينَ ﴿٥٥﴾

23:55. Do they think that because We have granted them abundance of wealth and sons,

نُسَارِعُ لَهُمْ فِي الْخَيْرَاتِ...

23:56. We would hasten them on in every good?

...بَل لَّا يَشْعُرُونَ ﴿٥٦﴾

Nay, they do not understand.

C2911. Worldly wealth, power, and influence may be but trials. Let not their possessors think that they are in themselves things that will necessarily bring them happiness.

Asad’s version

23:53 But they [who claim to follow you] have torn their unity wide asunder, 29 piece by piece, each group delighting in [but] what they themselves possess [by way of tenets]. 30

(23:54) But leave them alone, lost in their ignorance, until a [future] time. 31

[[ Asad’s notes - 29 Cf. 21:93.

30 Lit.; "in what they have [themselves]". In the first instance, this verse refers to the various religious groups as such: that is to say, to the followers of one or another of the earlier revelations who, in the course of time, consolidated themselves within different "denominations", each of them jealously guarding its own set of tenets, dogmas and rituals and intensely intolerant of all other ways of worship (manasik, see 22:67). In the second instance, however, the above condemnation applies to the breach of unity within each of the established religious groups; and since it applies to the followers of all the prophets, it includes the latter-day followers of Muhammad as well, and thus constitutes a prediction and condemnation of the doctrinal disunity prevailing in the world of Islam in our times - cf. the well- authenticated saying of the Prophet quoted by Ibn Hanbal, Abu Da'ud, Tirmidhi and Darimi: "The Jews have been split up into seventy-one sects, the Christians into seventy-two sects, whereas my community will be split up into seventy-three sects. " (It should be remembered that in classical Arabic usage the number seventy" often stands for "many" -just as "seven" stands for "several" or "various" - and does not necessarily denote an actual figure; hence, what the Prophet meant to say was that the sects and divisions among the Muslims of later days would become many, and even more numerous than those among the Jews and the Christians.)

31 I.e., until they themselves realize their error. This sentence is evidently addressed to the last of the apostles, Muhammad, and thus to all who truly follow him. ]]