Surah al-Baqarah (The Cow) 2 : 75

Overview (Verses 75 - 79)

The passage we discussed in Chapter 3 ended on a note reminding the Children of Israel of the many favours God had bestowed on them and their continued ingratitude. We witnessed a number of scenes, some drawn in general outline and some elaborate, showing God’s favours and the Israelites’ ungrateful response. This culminated in the description of their hearts as harder than rocks.

This passage addresses the Muslim community, giving it an outline of the machinations of the Children of Israel, and their devious, wicked scheming. The Muslims are warned that, with such history and nature, the Jews will always try to lead them astray. The length of this address, and the different styles and approaches it employs are indicative of the magnitude of the wicked schemes the Jews of Madinah employed to undermine the Muslim community.

Every now and then, the sūrah confronts the Children of Israel, in front of the Muslims, with the pledges they gave to God and how they violated them. They went as far as killing some of their Prophets when those Prophets would not comply with their wishes. It also describes their violation of divine law, their false arguments and distortion of their Scriptures.

The passage highlights their long arguments with the Muslim community, and the false claims they used. It instructs the Prophet on how to expose their claims and refute their arguments, putting forward the truth, clear and simple. One of their claims was that they would not be in hell for more than a small number of days, on account of their special position with God. God instructs His Messenger on how to refute this claim: “Say: ‘Have you received such a promise from God — for God never breaks His promise — or do you attribute to God something of which you have no knowledge?’“ (Verse 80)

When they were called upon to embrace Islam, “they would say, ‘We believe in what has been revealed to us.’ They deny everything else, although it is the truth, corroborating the revelations they have.” (Verse 91) God tells the Prophet to expose as false their claim of believing in what was revealed to them. “Say, ‘Why, then, did you in the past kill God’s prophets, if you were true believers?’ Moses came to you with clear proof, but in his absence you transgressed, worshipping the calf. We accepted your solemn pledge, and We raised Mount Sinai above you, saying, ‘Take with firmness and strength what We have given you and hearken to it.’ They said, ‘We hear but we disobey.’ For their unbelief they were made to drink the calf into their hearts. Say, ‘Vile is that which your faith enjoins upon you, if indeed you are believers.’” (Verses 91-93)

They also alleged that paradise belongs to them alone, in preference to all people. God instructs the Prophet Muĥammad to challenge them to open appeal in which they and the Muslims would meet and pray to God together to destroy the party that is lying: “Say: ‘If the ultimate abode with God is yours alone, to the exclusion of all others, then wish for death, if your claim is true.’” (Verse 94)

He also states very clearly that they would never wish for death. This proved to be true. When challenged for such a public appeal, they declined, because they realized that their claims were false.

The sūrah continues with this confrontation, exposure of the Israelites and instructions to the Muslims. Such a line was certain to weaken and foil the Jewish wicked schemes against the Muslims. All their devious designs were laid bare. Through knowledge of their old history, the Muslim community was able to expose their insidious methods.

Even today, the Muslim community continues to be the target of such Jewish methods. Unfortunately, the Muslim community today does not follow in the footsteps of its forefathers who implemented the Qur’ānic directives. It was only through such implementation that they were able to overcome the wicked schemes of the Jews of Madinah, even though the Muslim community was still in its infancy. Persisting with their wicked designs, the Jews continue to try to turn the Muslims away from the Qur’ān so that they would not derive from it their most effective weapons. As long as the Muslim community turns its back to its source of true power and pure knowledge, they feel safe. Therefore, anyone who tries to divert the Muslim community away from its faith and from the Qur’ān serves, knowingly and willingly or not, the Israeli aims. It is only through its true faith, its law and method of action that the Muslim community derives its true power. When it abandons these, its enemies are assured of their safety and victory.

Falsification of Scriptures

Do you hope that they will accept your message when some of them would listen to the word of God then, having understood them, knowingly distort it? When they meet the believers, they say, ‘We believe,’ but when they find themselves alone, they say to one another, Need you inform them that which God has disclosed to you? They will only use it in argument against you before your Lord? Will you not use your reason?’ Do they not know that God is well aware of all that they conceal and all that they reveal? (Verses 75-77)

Towards the end of the last section, we were told about the rigid and relentless nature of the Israelites. It is a gloomy portrait that casts a bleak shadow of despair and hopelessness; it would seem impossible that any good would come out of them. With that in mind, the sūrah questions the grounds for any hope, as entertained by some Muslims, that the Jews would accept Islam.

Such a hope was ill-founded because the Jews seemed to lack the perception and the understanding that would lead them to acknowledge the truth and accept it. Faith and belief in God require a straightforward, refined and receptive nature that is free of deviousness and perversity. It requires a caring, sensitive nature that is truly sincere and fearful of God, that would not distort His words or try to obliterate the truth once it is declared.

The reference here is to the learned and the scholars among Madinah’s Jews, the rabbis and religious elders, who were well versed in the Torah but were willing to tamper with it, and who would knowingly misrepresent and misquote it. This they would do out of jealousy and for their own selfish purposes. Since those people were predisposed to distorting their own Scriptures, they would be even more liable to misrepresent and reject what Muĥammad was teaching, and more than ready to oppose Islam and falsify its message.

When they meet the believers, they say, ‘We believe,’ but when they find themselves alone, they say to one another, ‘Need you inform them that which God has disclosed to you? They will only use it in argument against you before your Lord? Will you not use your reason?’ (Verse 76)

Besides distortion and misrepresentation of the truth, there is also cant and hypocrisy. In fulfilment of prophecies found in their own Scriptures and by virtue of the fact that they had been awaiting the coming of a prophet to lead them to salvation, some Jews would tell the Muslims at times that they too believed in Muĥammad (peace be upon him). Privately, to avoid giving the Muslims any evidence they could use to indict them before God, they would strongly reproach one another for overdoing their pretence of belief. Ludicrous as it may appear, they seemed to believe that as long as they did not divulge their true convictions to the Muslims publicly, they would succeed in concealing them from God and He would thereby not hold it against them. The sūrah, therefore, wonders what kind of logic they were using and, before moving to elaborate on their claims, asks in amazement: “Do they not know that God is well aware of all that they conceal and all that they reveal?” (Verse 77)

The sūrah continues with its education of the Muslims about the Israelites by saying that they fall into two groups. The first is the ignorant, illiterate masses who have no knowledge or understanding of the Scriptures, who live by superstition and wishful thinking, and who presume that the Jews will gain eternal salvation, on the fallacious grounds of being God’s ‘Chosen People’, whose sins are forgiven and deliverance guaranteed.

The second group is those who exploit this ignorance and distort the Scriptures for material gain and in order to further and safeguard their own ambitions, power and influence: “There are among them illiterate people who have no real knowledge of the Scriptures, entertaining only wishful belief and conjecture. Woe, then, to those who write down, with their own hands, [something which they claim to be of] the Scriptures, and then say, ‘This is from God’, in order to get for it a trifling price. Woe to them for what their hands have written and woe to them for what they earn.” (Verses 78-79)

Neither group could be relied on to be truthful to their Scriptures or respond positively to the truth and guidance revealed by God to the Prophet Muĥammad. They are condemned to a deplorable end for distorting God’s words, and for exploiting their own people and others for material gain and for the sake of religious and political dominance.