Surah Yunus (Jonah) 10 : 3

Overview (Verse 3)
 
Why a Human Messenger?
 
God’s wisdom is clearly apparent in choosing to send down His revelations to a man from among themselves and one whom they knew well. Thus they could give and take from him without difficulty or embarrassment. His wisdom in sending messengers is even clearer. By his very nature, man can accept and follow good or evil. His tool to distinguish between the two is his reason. This reason needs to have an accurate criterion to which it can refer whenever things become doubtful and unclear, or whenever temptations or immediate interests affect his judgement. He needs a measure which is totally unaffected by anything that influences the human body, mentality or temperament, so as to give him the right answer concerning any uncertainty. This measure and criterion is nothing other than God’s guidance and His law.
 
This requires that divine faith should provide a firm basis to which the human mind refers all its concepts and ideas in order to determine which of them are correct and which are false. To say, by contrast, that divine faith always reflects how people conceive this faith which is, consequently, liable to evolve and develop, is to make his basis subject to influence by human concepts and logic. This undermines the whole basis and leaves no proper measure or criterion to evaluate human concepts.
 
Such a view is not much different from saying that religion is of human making. The ultimate result is the same. The risk is too strong and the trap is very dangerous. Hence it is imperative that we always be on our guard against its short and long term results.
 
Although the question of revelation is so clear, the unbelievers receive it as though it is very strange: “The unbelievers say: ‘This is plainly a skilled enchanter:’” (Verse 2) They describe him as an enchanter or a sorcerer because what he says is beyond the power of human beings. Yet they should acknowledge the fact of revelation on account of this, because sorcery is incapable of including statements about universal facts or of delivering a complete code of living, laws and moral principles which make for a highly civilized society. They tended to confuse revelation with sorcery because in all pagan beliefs, sorcery was a part of religion. They did not have the clarity that a Muslim possesses with regard to the nature of divine faith. This realization saves Muslims from all the legends and superstitions of pagan beliefs.
 
Your Lord is God who created the heavens and the earth in six days, and established Himself on the Throne, regulating and governing all that exists. There is none who may intercede with Him unless He first grants leave for that. That is God, your Lord: so worship Him alone. Will you not then keep this in mind? To Him you shall all return. This is, in truth, God’s promise. He originates all His creation, and then brings them all back to life so that He may reward, with equity, those who have believed and done good deeds. As for the unbelievers, they shall have a scalding drink and a grievous suffering for their unbelief. He it is who made the sun a source of radiant light and the moon a light [reflected], and determined her phases so that you may know how to compute the years and measure [time]. God has not created this otherwise than in accordance with the truth. He makes plain His revelations to people of knowledge. Indeed in the alternating of night and day, and in all that God has created in the heavens and the earth, there are signs for people who are God-fearing. (Verses 3-6)
 
This, the question of Lordship, is the main issue of faith. The unbelievers did not seriously deny the concept of Godhead. They acknowledged God’s existence — for human nature cannot entirely reject the basic concept of God except in few highly unusual cases — but they associated other deities with Him and to these they addressed their worship. In some cases, the unbelievers considered their false deities to be intermediaries who could bring them closer to God. Others thought they could give themselves certain powers which belong to God alone, thereby enacting legislation which God had not sanctioned.
 
The Qur’ān does not enter into any cold philosophical argument, of the type introduced in Muslim cultural circles by the influence of Greek philosophy, concerning the questions of Godhead and Lordship. Instead it resorts to the simple, straightforward logic of human nature. It states that God is the One who created the heavens and the earth and everything in them. He is the One who has made the sun a source of radiant light and given the moon its quality to reflect light, determining its stages. He also made the day and night alternate. All these natural phenomena can awaken man’s heart and mind if he would only contemplate them and reflect on the power that controls them. God who has created all this and controls its movement is the One who deserves to be the Lord to whom people address their worship, assigning to Him no partners from among His creation. This is a simple logical conclusion which does not need any long argumentative debate based on cold deductive reasoning that touches no heart and awakens no mind.
 
This vast universe, with its heavens and earth, sun and moon, night and day, and all that is created in the heavens and the earth and lives in them of plants, birds, animals and other communities, follow the laws of nature God has set in operation.
 
The deep dark night with its still silence, disturbed only by the movement of phantoms; the dawn that opens up into it like a smiling, happy babe; the movement that the early breath of the morning brings to start a new day full of life; the calm shades that seem still to the beholder when they are in fact moving along gently; the birds that hop and fly here and there in never ending movement; the emerging plants that look forward to continued growth; the countless creatures that come and go everywhere; the unending cycle of birth and death; and the life that continues along its way determined by God, are all countless images, forms, types, movements that start and finish; cycles that take people to old age or to start young lives, to invigoration and fading away, to birth and death, and so on through a continuous life cycle that never stops. All this calls on every sense and atom in human beings to pause and reflect. It only takes an alert mind and an open heart to contemplate such signs as are everywhere in the universe. The Qur’ān directly awakens hearts and minds so that man can so reflect.
 
The Lord to Be Worshipped
 
“Your Lord is God who created the heavens and the earth in six days.” (Verse 3) Your Lord who deserves to be worshipped alone is the Creator of all that is. It is He who created the heavens and the earth according to an elaborate plan of creation and to wise purpose. He did all this ‘in six days’. We will not delve into any argument about these six days, for they are mentioned here only to point to the wisdom behind the elaborate planning of creation and how the affairs of the universe are conducted so as to suit God’s purpose. Anyway, these six days belong to the realm that God has kept to Himself. We cannot find what they are unless He chooses to inform us. Hence, we do not go beyond what is stated about them in the Qur’ān. “And established Himself on the Throne.” (Verse 3) This expression indicates a position of a firm, overall authority exercised by a higher being. It gives a physical image in the inimitable style of the Qur’ān. The conjunction, ‘and’, is used in the Arabic text in the form of ‘then’, but it does not indicate any chronological order. It only indicates a mental dimension. Time has no significance in this context. There is simply no state or form applicable to God which came into existence after it was not there. Limitless is God in His glory. He is not subject to an event taking place, and all that events entail of time and location. Hence we emphatically say that ‘and’, in the present context, indicates a mental dimension.
 
“Regulating and governing all that exists.” (Verse 3) He determines the beginning and the end, the shape and the form, the preliminaries and the conclusions, and chooses the laws that govern its stages and its final place.
 
“There is none who may intercede with Him unless He first grants leave for that.” (Verse 3) All decisions and judgements belong to Him alone. There are no intercessors who may bring anyone closer to Him. No one of His creatures may intercede with Him unless He grants him permission to do so, in accordance with His wise planning. Intercession may be earned through firm belief and good deeds, not by appealing to false intercessors. This answers what the Arabs used to say about the angels: that statues of them which they worshipped enjoyed an inalienable right of intercession. How absurd!
 
What all this means is that the Creator has the absolute authority to govern and regulate all matters, and no one may intercede without His permission. “That is God, your Lord’ who is worthy of having His Lordship acknowledged by all. ‘So worship Him alone.” (Verse 3) For He is the One to whom all submission should be addressed. “Will you not then keep this in mind?” (Verse 3) The whole thing is so clear and so firmly established that it only requires a mere admonition for the truth to be well engraved in people’s minds.
 
We need to pause a little to reflect on the statement that follows all the universal phenomena pointing to God and His Lordship: “That is God, your Lord: so worship Him alone.” (Verse 3) As we have already said, the unbelievers among the Arabs did not seriously deny the existence of God. They acknowledged that He is the Creator who gives sustenance, initiates life, causes death, regulates all matters and is able to do whatever He wills. This acknowledgement though was not followed by its logical consequence of acknowledging His Lordship over their lives. That would have been reflected by submitting to Him alone in all matters, addressing all worship rituals to Him and accepting His rule in all their affairs.
 
That is precisely the meaning of the statement: “That is God, your Lord: so worship Him alone.” Worship means submission, obedience and acknowledging all these attributes as belonging to God alone.
 
In all structures based on jāhiliyyah the concept of Godhead is drastically narrowed down. People begin to think that by merely acknowledging the existence of God, they have attained to faith, and that once people make that acknowledgement they have then done all that is required of them. They thus avoid the natural consequence of that acknowledgement, which requires submission to God alone, who is the overall Sovereign and ruler, and against whom no one has any authority unless it comes from Him.
 
Similarly the meaning of ‘worship’ is seriously curtailed in any jāhiliyyah society. It becomes synonymous with offering worship rituals. People then think that once they address these rituals to God, they are worshipping Him alone. The fact is that the term ‘worship’, `ibādah in Arabic, is derived from the root `abada which signifies submission. Worship rituals are only one aspect of submission, which remains much wider in import.
 
Jāhiliyyah is not a period of history or a particular stage of development. It is a state characterized by the curtailment of the concepts of Godhead and worship on the above lines. Such curtailment leads people to associate partners with God while they imagine that they are following His faith, as is the case today in all parts of the world. This includes those countries whose populations have Muslim names and address their worship to God, but who have Lords other than God. Yet the Lord is the One whose authority over us all should be acknowledged, whose law should be implemented, to whom we should submit, carry out His orders and refrain from what He forbids, and whom we should obey in all matters. This is how the Prophet explained worship to his companion, `Adiy ibn Ĥātim, as he told him: ‘They obeyed their [rabbis and monks who legislated for them as they pleased], and that is how they worshipped them.”