Overview  (Verses 102 -103)

Brotherhood After Hostility
 
God warns the Muslim community that it cannot hope to implement the Islamic way of life or fulfil the great trust God has placed in it, unless it acquires the two basic qualities of faith and brotherhood. It must have a faith which keeps the fear of God ever present in its mind. It must also make brotherhood in Islam a reality. Only through this brotherhood can the Muslim community acquire its strength and be able to play its most important role in human life and history, namely, the role of enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong. In other words, it promotes every good thing in human life and purges it from every evil.
 
Believers! Fear God as you rightly should, and do not allow death to overtake you before you have surrendered yourselves truly to Him. Hold fast, all of you together, to the bond with God and do not be disunited. And remember the blessings God has bestowed on you: how, when you were enemies (to one another] He united your hearts and, by His grace, you have become brothers; and how, when you were on the brink of an abyss of fire, He saved you from it. Thus God makes clear His revelations to you, so that you may be rightly guided. (Verses 102-103)
 
Faith and brotherhood are the two pillars upon which the structure of the Muslim community is built. If either of them collapses, the very existence of the Muslim community is undermined, and its great role comes to nothing. The first pillar is that of having faith and fear of God. It is only through such fear that man can fulfil his duties towards God because it makes him always alert. He does not lose sight of his duty for a moment of day or night.
 
“Believers! Fear God as you rightly should.” This command is given in general terms so as to heighten its effect. It thus makes the believer keen to achieve this goal of fearing God as He should rightly be feared, according to man’s understanding and ability. This is a road which attracts man more and more as he walks further and further. The nearer he draws to God through fearing Him, the higher the goal he sets for himself. He will continuously strive to achieve a greater position, so as to make his heart always alert, never asleep.
 
“Do not allow death to overtake you before you have surrendered yourselves truly to Him.” The timing of death is beyond the reach of our knowledge. No man can be certain when death will overtake him. Hence, if anyone wants to die a Muslim, in the full sense of the word, he must surrender himself to God, right here and now. He must also abide by the requirements of this surrender at all times. The fact that Islam is mentioned after the command to have fear of God points to its wider implications: total surrender and submission to God, complete obedience and implementation of His method, and making His book the final arbiter in all affairs. This is the meaning which pervades the whole sūrah.
 
This is the first pillar upon which the structure of the Muslim community is built. Without it, no human grouping can be described as Islamic. No Divine method of life can come into operation in any community without it. In its absence, there are only ignorant methods and ignorant leadership.
 
The other pillar is the bond of brotherhood, based on the love of God and implementation of His method: “Hold fast, all of you together, to the bond with God and do not be disunited. And remember the blessings God has bestowed on you: how, when you were enemies [to one another] He united your hearts and, by His grace, you have become brothers.” (Verse 103) It is a brotherhood which has its roots in the fear of God and in surrendering to Him. In other words, it is derived from the first pillar. Its cornerstone is to hold fast to the bond with God, that is, the fulfilment of His commands and the implementation of His law. It cannot have any other basis, concept, goal or bond.
 
“Hold fast, all of you together, to the bond with God and do not be disunited.” This brotherhood which holds fast to a strong bond with God is a blessing with which God has favoured the first Muslim community. It is a blessing which God always grants to those of His servants whom He loves. He reminds the first Muslim community here of this blessing, recalling how enmity was rife among them in their pre- Islamic days. No enmity was fiercer than that which existed between the Aws and the Khazraj, the two Arab tribes in Yathrib, the city which came to be called Madinah. Alongside them lived the Jews who were always trying to perpetuate this hostility in order to weaken both tribes and destroy all ties between them. It was in such an atmosphere of hatred that the Jews worked and flourished. God, however, united the hearts of both Arab tribes with the tie of Islam. It is only through Islam that such mutually hostile hearts could be united. It was only through the bond of God, to which all can hold fast, that they could become, by God’s grace, brothers. Historical grudges, vengeance killings, personal ambitions and racial ties are reduced to nothing when compared with the bond of brotherhood which unites all under the banner of God, the Almighty: “And remember the blessings God has bestowed on you: how, when you were enemies [to one another] He united your hearts and, by His grace, you have become brothers.” (Verse 103)
 
He also reminds them of His grace in the form of saving them from the fire after they were about to fall in it. He saved them when He guided them to hold fast to His bond, the first pillar, and when He united their hearts so that they became brothers, the second pillar: “When you were on the brink of an abyss of fire, He saved you from it.” (Verse 103) We note here that the Qur’ān refers to man’s heart, which is the centre of his feelings and bonds. It does not say: “He united you.” Rather, it refers to man’s own deeply-seated feelings: “He united your hearts.” Men’s hearts are thus described as a solid group, united by God on the basis of His covenant. We also have here a vivid description of the Muslims’ earlier situation which touches their hearts: “... You were on the brink of an abyss of fire.” At the very moment when their fall into the abyss is expected, those hearts feel God’s hand as it reaches out and saves them. They feel God’s bond stretched out to them in order to protect them. We find them saved after exposure to a great danger. It is a very vivid, heart-touching scene which is raised before our eyes despite the lapse of many centuries.
 
In their biographies of the Prophet, Muĥammad ibn Isĥāq and others, report that this verse was revealed on the occasion of a Jewish leader from Madinah passing by a group of Muslims from both the Aws and the Khazraj. When he looked at them a sudden awareness overtook him. He realized that their past hostility had been replaced by genuine love and brotherhood. He was determined to spoil this healthy atmosphere. He sent a man with instructions to sit with those people and remind them of their past hostilities, and the fierce battles that had taken place between them, particularly the Battle of Bu`āth, in which both tribes suffered heavy casualties. The man was successful in his mission and soon tempers were boiling among that group. In their anger, some of the tribesmen repeated their old slogans. Someone called for his sword. Others repeated the same call. Someone even suggested that they should meet for battle the following day outside Madinah. When the Prophet received intelligence of what was taking place between them, he went hurriedly to them and tried hard to cool their tempers. He said to them: “Do you resort to your ignorant ways when I am living in your midst?” He recited to them the Qur’ānic verse: “And remember the blessings God has bestowed on you: how, when you were enemies [to one another] He united your hearts and, by His grace, you have become brothers; and how, when you were on the brink of an abyss of fire, He saved you from it.” (Verse 103) They soon regained their senses and regretted what had happened. Peace prevailed anew among them and they hugged each other in genuine brotherly love. They had been rightly guided when God’s revelation was made clear to them. Hence, the concluding comment in that Qur’ānic verse is an apt description of their case: “Thus God makes clear His revelations to you, so that you may be rightly guided.”
 
This is just one example of Jewish efforts to sever the bond which unites those who love God and follow the Divine method and make of them a model community, providing leadership for the rest of mankind. Every time a true Muslim community comes into existence, holding fast to the bond of God and implementing His constitution, the Jews start their scheming to create division among them. When that group of early Muslims heeded what they were bid by people of earlier revelations, they were about to sink back into disbelief, about to do battle with each other. Their bond with God which unites them in a genuine brotherhood was about to be severed.
 
This verse has much wider significance than just this particular incident. Taken with what precedes and follows it, the verse suggests that the Jews in Madinah were engaged in a continuous effort to create division and disunity among the Muslims. Hence, the repeated Qur’ānic warnings to the Muslims not to pay heed to the people of earlier revelations and to make sure that they would not fall victim to their scheming. We detect here a feeling that the Muslim community was undergoing great troubles as a result of the plots of the Jews in Madinah. Those same tactics have been employed all the time against Muslims everywhere in the world.