Saad (The letter Saad)

5. “Has he made gods (all) into One God? This is indeed a strange thing!”

6. “And the chiefs from them departed, (saying:) ‘Go! and be steadfast to your gods; this is a thing to be desired.”

7. “We never heard (the like) of this in the former creed; this is nothing but a made up tale.”

The first action of the prophet is the negation of the false objects of worship and proving the One God.

When the Prophet (S) openly revealed his theistic invitation, the disbelievers looked and said to others to come and hear the things they had not heard ever before.

They said:

“Has he made gods (all) into One God? This is indeed a strange thing!”

Yes, sometimes pride, self-loving, absolutism, and the aberration of the environment change the man’s insight and judgment so violently that he wonders from the clear facts while he is seriously bond to some superstitions and vain conjectures.

The Arabic term /‘ujab/, in this verse, denotes to an exaggerative meaning and is used for some very strange affairs.

These empty-minded persons used to think the more their objects of worship could be, the more power and influence of credit they would have, and that was why Allah, the One, seemed a little thing to them, while we know that, from the point of philosophy, the numerous things are always limited, and the unlimited Essence is not more than One.

That is why all the studies in theology end to the line of monotheism.

In the second verse, the Qur’an indicates: when the leaders of them become hopeless from Abutalib and his mediation, they came out from his place and said that they should walk away and remain constant to their gods since Muhammad (S) wanted to destroy their society and to cease the bounties of the gods from them by turning away from their idols and he himself would govern over them.

The verse says:

“And the chiefs from them departed, (saying:) ‘Go! and be steadfast to your gods; this is a thing to be desired.”

The Arabic term /’intalaqa/ is derived from /’intilaq/ in the sense of: ‘going out quickly together with leaving the former affairs’. Here it means: ‘Leaving Abutalib’s meeting angrily’.

The Qur’anic term /mala’/ refers to the nobles and well known members of Quraysh who came to Abutalib, and after coming out from that meeting they told each other, or their followers, not to leave their idols and to be steadfast to their gods.

The Qur’anic phrase /lišay’in yurad/ means: ‘this issue is something desired’, and since it is an ambiguous sentence, commentators have delivered many commentaries upon it.

Among them is that some of them have said: it refers to the invitation of the Prophet of Islam (S) and its purpose is that this invitation is a plot the aim of which is we people. It has an appearance which is invitation to Allah, and it has an innate purpose which is to govern over us and to be a chief upon Arabs and all of these are pretexts for this matter.

So you people go away and be steadfast to your belief, and let us, the leaders, analyse about this plot.

This is the thing that the leaders of falsehood always refer to in order to make quiet the sound of the followers of the path of truth and call it ‘plot’, a plot that only politicians must analyse carefully and arrange a program to struggle against it, but the common people must pass by it heedlessly, and be careful of what they have in their hands.

In the third verse, the Qur’an implies that for deceiving people, or for satisfying themselves, they said:

“We never heard (the like) of this in the former creed; this is nothing but a made up tale.”

If the claim of Unity and negation of idols were really true, our ancestors, with that greatness and personality should perceive it and we would hear it from them, but this is only a false and baseless statement.

The application of the Qur’anic phrase: /fil-millat-il-’axirah/ may be a hint to the group of their fathers who were the last people with respect to them, as we said in the above.

And it may be a hint to the People of the Book, specially the Christians who were counted as the last nation and had the last religion before the advent of the Prophet of Islam (S).

This sentence means that there is nothing about the words of Muhammad (S) in the Book of the Christians, because they believe in trinity (three gods) and the monotheism of Muhammad (S) is a new matter.

But as the tone of the Qur’an in other different verses shows, the Arab of the Age of Ignorance did not rely on the Books of the Jews and Christians. All their reliance was on the custom and religion of their ancestors, and this is a good reference for the first commentary.

The Qur’anic word /’ixtilaq/ is derived from /xalaqa/ which originally means the creation of something with no trace. Afterward, this word has been used for ‘falsehood’, too, because, in many cases, falsehood refers to some matters that have no trace.

Therefore, the objective meaning of the word /’ixtilaq/ mentioned in the verse under discussion is that the claim of Unity which Muhammad (S) refers to, is a new claim with no former trace, and it had been completely unknown to the former nations, and this itself is a proof for its falseness.