Al-Furqaan (The Criterion)

21. “And those who do not hope to meet Us (for Judgment) say: ‘Why are not the angels sent down to us, or (why) do we not see our Lord?’ Certainly they are too proud of themselves and have revolted in great revolt.”

The Arabic word /‘utuww/ means the worst kind of oppression.¹ The day of Resurrection is called the day of /liqa’/ (meeting), because in that day all ignorance, negligence and obstacles will be removed fully and people can see Allah’s magnificence.

(“...and they will know that Allah, He is the (very) Manifest Truth.”)2

In order to relinquish duties and responsibilities that believing in Allah and Resurrection would put on polytheists’ shoulder, they stated some pretexts, one of which was why the Prophet (S) eats like us and walks in markets, which we read its answer in the former verses.

The concerned verse completes two other parts of their pretexts and answers them.

It first says:

“And those who do not hope to meet Us (for Judgment) say: ‘Why are not the angels sent down to us, or (why) do we not see our Lord?’...”

Their statement means that suppose it is accepted that the Prophet (S) can have a common life like other people, but it is not accepted that the bringer of revelation comes only to him and that it cannot be seen by other people. What is the problem if the angel appears and certifies his prophethood or retells some of his revelation while people are present?

What is the matter if man sees Allah by his own eye? If this happens, no doubt remains for him. These are the arouse questions which prevent them accepting the call of the Prophet (S).

It is important that the holy Qur’an introduces these pretext-seeking persons as:

“...those who do not expect the meeting with Us...”.3

This shows that these baseless words originate from unbelief in resurrection and also the lack of undertaking responsibility to Allah.

In verse 7 of Surah Al-Hijr, No. 15 we read words like this, where they said:

“If you are of the truthful ones, why do you not bring to us the angels?”

In the beginning of this Surah also we read:

“...Why is not an angel been sent down to him, to be a warner with him?”4

But a person who seeks truth only demands reason for proving a matter and he does not care about the sort of reason whatever kind it may be. When by performing miracles, including the holy Qur’an itself, the Prophet (S) has proved that his call and invitation is right, what do these pretexts mean?

The best reason that these words were not uttered for the sake of researching on the prophethood of the holy Prophet (S) is that they asked to see Allah and by this demand they reduced Him to a visible object. This groundless demand was asked by the Children of Israel and its decisive answer has been given them in the Qur’an which is explained in Surah Al-’A‘raf, No. 7, verse 143.

Thus, the Holy Qur'an answers these demands in this way:

“...Certainly they are too proud highly of themselves and have revolted in great revolt.”

The Arabic word /‘utuww/ means to restrain to obey an order stubbornly and with enmity. The Qur’anic phrase /fi ’anfusihim/ may mean that they were proud of themselves and were also self-conceited, or it may mean that they concealed their conceit and pride in their own heart and proposed such demands and pretexts.

In our age there are also some persons who repeat the logic of former polytheists and say that they do not believe in Allah unless they see Allah in their laboratory and experiment the soul with Himself in surgery operation. The source of both is one thing: arrogance and delusion.

Basically, all the persons who know sense and experience as the only means of recognition implicitly repeat this very matter. All materialists and the money-minded ones do have the same opinion, while our sense can perceive only a small part of this world.

Anyway, all materialists count everything unspiritual and earthy and they try to see Allah with their own physical eyes and this is their great mistake.