Ash-Shu'araa (The Poets)

72. “Said (Abraham): ‘Do they hear you when you call (them)?’”

73. “Or do they profit you, or harm you?”

In the method of propagation, we should awaken the consciences by asking questions, because man, by nature, is worshipper, and if he does not adorn the right, he tends to wrong.

(When the Qur’an refers to some matters of history, it usually does not point to the number, name, time, and place of the event, but it states its instructive content and message.)

When you want to forbid someone from doing evil, you may begin from important evils. (Yes, the most important evil is to associate something with Allah.) Reasoning and logic is the first step of propagation.

The motivation of worshipping is either giving benevolence or removing vice, and idols have neither of them.

However, we must have some clear and understandable reasonings when confronting ordinary people.

The idolaters also believe in futility of the idols very well, they only follow their ancestors

“... but we found our fathers so doing”.1

Anyway, through these two verses, Abraham, by hearing their words, protested them and condemned them by means of two severe logical sentences.

The Qur’an says:

“Said (Abraham): ‘Do they hear you when you call (them)?’”

Then he (as) continued saying:

“Or do they profit you, or harm you?”

The least thing that is necessary to be found in the object of worship is that the deity hears the call of its worshipper and hastens to help him in his difficulties, or there would be at least a kind of fear from opposition with its command.

But there is nothing seen in these idols to show that they have the slightest amount of understanding, or the least effect in the fate of men. They are some worthless pieces of metal, stone, and wood to which superstition and the power of delusion have given such situation.