Al-Ahzaab (The Clans)

4. “Allah has not made for any man two hearts within him, nor has He made your wives whom you divorce by Zihar your mothers: nor has He made your adopted sons your (real) sons these are the words of your mouths, and Allah tells you the Truth, and He guides unto the (right) way.”

The heart and nature of man both incline to one thing, and whatever a person says or acts against it is his own personal hypocrisy, not the will of Allah.

(Allah has not made …)

In relation to the former holy verses that commanded the Prophet (S) that he should follow the Divine revelations, not from the pagans and hypocrites, the verses under discussion point to the result of obeying them indicating that following them invites man to a series of superstitions, falsehoods, and deviations, three of which have been stated in the verse under discussion.

At first, it says:

“Allah has not made for any man two hearts within him…”

Some of the commentators have cited upon the occasion of revelation of this part of the verse that at the Age of Ignorance there was a man named ‘Jamil-ibn-Mu‘ammar’ who had a very strong memory. He claimed that there were two hearts within him that by either of them he could understand better than Muhammad (S), therefore, the pagans of Quraysh called him in Arabic: /ŏul qalbayn/ (The possessor of two hearts).

On the day of the Battle of Badr, when the pagans ran away, Jamil-ibn-Mu‘ammar was also among them. Abusufyan saw him in the case that he was escaping while he was wearing one shoe on his foot and he had another one in his hand.

Abusufyan asked him what news he had, and he answered:

“The army ran away.”

He said:

“Why do you have one shoe on your foot and just the other in your hand?”

Then Jamil-ibn-Ma‘ammar answered:

“Verily I did not care it. I thought I had worn both of them on my feet. (It became clear that, with that abundant claim, he was so giddy that he could not understand things as much as having even one heart). Of course, the purpose of heart in these instances is wisdom.”1

However, following pagans and hypocrites and leaving the obedience from Divine revelations, usually invites man to these superstitious subjects.

But besides these, this sentence has a deeper meaning, too, and it is that man has not more than one heart and it does not have capacity save for the love of one object of worship. Those who invite to polytheism and to numerous objects of worship must have numerous hearts in order to appoint each of them as a centre for the love of either of objects of worship.

In principle, a safe and sound person naturally has a single personality, and the line of his thought is a single line. He is the same in solitude and in society; in manifest and hidden; in outward and inward, and in thought and action, all of them must be the same.

The existence of any sort of hypocrisy and duality in the entity of man is an imposition upon him which contrasts the requirement of his nature.

Since man has no more than a heart, he must be a single centre of emotions, he must submit to one Law, he must have the love of one beloved, he must follow only one proper path in his life; he must parallel his manner with one party, otherwise, the variety of numerous ways and scattered aims may draw him to vanity and deviation from the path of natural Monotheism.

Upon the commentary of this verse, Amir-ul-Mu’mineen Ali (as) in a tradition said:

“The love of us and the love of our enemy do not assemble in one’s heart, since Allah has not appointed for a man two hearts within him, that he loves with one and hates with another. Then our lovers are sincere in the love for us in the same manner that gold becomes pure by fire. Whoever desires to know this fact he may test his heart. Then if there is anything of the love of our enemy mixed with the love of us (in his heart) he is not of us and we, too, are not of him.”2

Therefore, a single heart is the place of a single belief and it also performs a single program, because man, in fact, can not believe in something but, in action, he separates from it.

In our time, there are some persons who have taken numerous personalities for them and say that they have done, for example, that action from the political view, and another action from the religious view, and something else from the social view and, thus, they often adjust their own contradictory deeds.

They are some hypocrites with ugly behaviour who intend to tread on the law of creation by these words. It is true that the sides of man’s life are different, but there should govern a single line over all of them.

Then, the Qur’an refers to another superstition of the Age of Ignorance, which is Zihar.

When they became inconvenient from their wife and wanted to express their hatred to her, they used to say:

“You are to me like my mother’s back.”,

and by this saying they considered her as their own mother and it was a divorce.

In the continuation of this verse, the Qur’an says:

“…nor has He made your wives whom you divorce by Zihar your mothers:…”

Islam has not agreed with this program of Ignorance, and has not appointed the ordinances of mother in respect of them, but it appointed a punishment for it.

The person who says this statement is not allowed to copulate with her wife until when he pays the necessary atonement, and if he did not give the atonement nor did he go to his wife either, by going to the religious judge, the wife can force him to do one of two things: either he must formally and according to the law of Islam divorce her and separate from her, or he must pay the atonement and continues their matrimonial life as before.

What a kind of statement is this that a man by saying:

“You are to me like my mother’s back”

to his wife she becomes as his mother? The relation of the mother and child is a natural relation and it never becomes true by a mere saying.

So, in Surah Al-Mujadalah, No. 58, verse 2 the Qur’an, in this regard, explicitly says:

“…their mothers are no others than those who gave them birth, and verily they utter a hateful word and a falsehood…”

And if their aim in saying those words was to separate from the wife, that was so in the Age of Ignorance and some of them divorced their wives in this way, separation from one’s wife needs not these ugly words. Can not the divorce be uttered by a proper statement?

Some of the commentators have said that in the Age of Ignorant, the act of Zihar did not work as a cause for the separation of a man and a woman from each other, but it caused woman to be in a state of an absolute suspense.

If it had been so, the criminality of this action would have been made clearer, because by uttering a meaningless saying he would absolutely cut the matrimonial relation with his wife without that the woman could be divorced.¹

Then the verse refers to the third superstition of the Age of Ignorance, where it says:

“…nor has He made your adopted sons your (real) sons…”

Explanation: In the Age of Ignorance there was a custom that some people would take some other children as their own children and adapted them as their own sons, and then, after it, they considered all the rights that a boy might have from his father for themselves.

For example, that by could inherit from his adopted father and the adopted father would be his heir, too, and the prohibition of step-mother (father’s wife) or daughter-in-law (son’s wife) was current among them.

Islam severely negated these illogical and superstitious rules, and as we will see later, in order to condemn this wrong custom, even the Prophet (S) married the wife of his adopted son, Zayd-ibn-Harithah, after that she obtained her divorce from Zayd in order to make it clear that these empty sayings could not change the facts, because the relation between father and son is a natural relation and it can never be obtained by utterances, agreements, and hollow claims.

Later we will explain that the Prophet’s marriage with the divorced wife of Zayd caused a great tumult among the enemies of Islam and they used it in their evil propaganda against Islam, but those tumults were worthy in comparison with condemning that custom of the Age of Ignorance.

So, next to this sentence, the Holy Qur’an says:

“…these are the words of your mouths…”

You utter that so and so is my son, while you know in your heart that surely it is not so. These sound waves turn only in the vacant space of your mouth and come out and they never originate from your heartily belief. These are not any things but some falsehood, while the word of Allah is the Truth.

The verse continues saying:

“…and Allah tells you the Truth, and He guides unto the (right) way.”

A true statement is a statement which adapts to a concrete reality or it is an agreement consistent with the interests of the whole matter, and we know that the reprobated subject of Zihar in the Age of Ignorance, or the subject of ‘adapted son’, which considerably ruined the rights of other children, was neither a concrete reality nor was it an agreement to protect the common interest.