Al-Israa (The Night Journey)

38. “All of that, the sin of it, is hateful in the sight of your Lord.”

This noble verse re-emphasizes all of the afore mentioned divine commandments regarding the prohibition of paganism, homicide, adultery, the killing of one’s own offspring, usurping of the orphan’s belongings and property, and harming of one’s parents and the like. It proclaims: The sins committed with respect to all of these are abominable before Allah.

The verse says:

“All of that, the sin of it, is hateful in the sight of your Lord.”

One can deduce from this meaning that, contrary to the opinion of the followers of the school of determinism, the Lord has never decided that one should commit sin, for had He determined such a thing, it would have been incompatible with the hatred and inconvenience which is stressed in this verse.

In other words, one infers from this verse that the ideas of the fatalists are wrong, for, according to this verse, the Lord despises the evils and the wrong-doings of the people and, once He shuns such acts, how would He, then, compel people to commit these acts.

Obviously, one issue cannot be, at the same time, both considered as decent and indecent simultaneously by the Lord. It becomes, in the meantime, transparent that the term /makrūh/ ‘abominable’ in the Qur’anic literature is also applied in the case of the greatest of one’s sins.

In conclusion, we must note that the evil character of one’s deeds is a constant matter in all of the Divine religions, and man’s inherent characteristics tend to leave their impacts on his own behaviour.