In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
Chapter 2.
“Children of Israel, remember the favours I have bestowed upon you. Keep your covenant, and I will be true to mine. Me you must fear. Have faith in my revelations, which confirm your Scriptures, and do not be the first to deny them. Do not sell My revelations for a paltry price and guard yourselves from Me. Do not confound truth with falsehood, nor knowingly hide the truth. Attend to your prayers, pay the poor-due, and bow down with those that bow down. Would you enjoin righteousness on others and forget it yourselves? Yet you read the Scriptures. Have you no sense? Fortify yourselves with patience and prayer. This may indeed be an exacting discipline, but not to the devout, who know that they will meet their Lord and that to Him they will return.” (Quran, 2:40-46)
The greatest favour that God bestows upon a people is to send His Prophet to them, thus opening for them the road to eternal salvation. Before the Prophet Mohammad—the last of the Prophets—this favour was the privilege of the Children of Israel. Soon, however, their religion ceased to be a conscious discovery of their own, and deteriorated into a set of rituals passed on from one generation to the next. With the coming of the Prophet Mohammad, may peace be upon him, the reality came to light. Those who still had a feeling for truth recognized the veracity of his prophethood and followed him. But those for whom religion had become a hereditary tradition did not recognize the truth when they heard it; they rejected it and turned against the Prophet.
In the face of clear prophecies of the coming of the Arab Prophet in the Torah, it was not difficult for the Jews to recognize the truth of his prophethood and believe in him; but belief in him was not in their worldly interests. An ecclesiastical structure had developed over hundreds of years, in which Jews held pride of place. People looked to them, the successors of saints and prophets, for spiritual leadership. People paid tribute and presented offerings to them all the year round. It appeared to them that if they accepted the Arab Prophet, their privileged religious position would come to an end; their whole profit structure would be demolished.
The Jews were considered representatives of revealed religion in the Arab world. People used to ask them about the Prophet Mohammad. They would say something in an innocuous manner, to turn people away from the Prophet and his mission. They used to preach to people, exhorting them to follow the truth and live their lives according to it; in practice, however, they failed to believe when their turn came to do so.
When a positive response to the call of God means demolishing the structure on which one has based one’s life, when it involves relinquishing positions of high honour and prestige, then those who have gained religious rank through worldly glory find it extremely difficult. For the truly devout, however, these things are no hindrance. The fulfillment that others find in worldly pleasures, true believers find in remembering God, in spending for His cause, in obeying His commandments and being steadfast in His path. They know well that it is God’s punishment that is to be feared, not worldly loss.
“Children of Israel, remember the blessing I have bestowed on you, and that I have exalted you above the nations. Guard yourselves against the day when no soul can avail another in the least; when neither intercession nor ransom shall be accepted from it, nor will they be helped. Remember how We delivered you from Pharoah’s people who had oppressed you cruelly, slaying your sons and sparing your women. Surely that was a great trial from your Lord. We parted the sea for you and, taking you to safety, drowned Pharoah’s men before your very eyes. We made a covenant with Moses over forty nights, but in his absence you took up the calf and worshipped it, thus committing evil. Yet after that We pardoned you, so that you might give thanks. And recall when we gave Moses the Scriptures and knowledge of right and wrong, so that you might be rightly guided; and when Moses said to his people: ‘You have wronged yourselves, my people, in worshipping the calf. Turn in repentance to your creator and slay the culprits among you. That will be best for you in His sight.’ And He relented towards you. He is the Forgiving One, the Merciful. And when you said to Moses; ‘We will not believe in you until we see God with our own eyes,’ a thunderbolt struck you whilst you were looking on. Then We raised you after your death, so that you may give thanks. We caused the clouds to cast their shadow over you and sent down for you manna and quails, saying: ‘Eat of the good things We have given you.’ Indeed they did not wrong Us, but they wronged themselves.” (Quran, 2:47-57)
The Jews were favoured by God. He selected them for a special task: They were to receive God’s Scriptures and pass His commandments on the rest of mankind. In relation to this office, they were granted many other blessings and facilities: victory over their enemies, forgiveness of their sins, special help in times of peril, divine provision for their physical needs and so on. This misled later generations of Jews into thinking that they were God’s chosen people, and were assured of salvation in the next world. But salvation is a matter between the individual and God; such matters are not hereditary. Later generations are not judged individually. On the Day of judgement people will be judged according to their actions. To think that anything other than good deeds will avail one then is to underestimate the rigours of that day.
True piety is to worship God alone, to believe in Him though one has not seen Him, to live in fear of Judgement Day, to subsist on the pure things of the earth, to prevent whomsoever one can from falling into sin. It is those who adopt this way of life who will be successful in the next world. □
