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In the Shade of the Qur'an - Surah # 110
In the Shade of the Qur'an - Surah # 110
Syed Qutb
Sura # 110
Victory
an Nasr
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent,
the Merciful!
When the victory granted by Allah and the Conquest
come
and you see people embracing the religion of Allah in large numbers
then celebrate
the praises of your Lord, and seek His forgiveness.
He is ever disposed to Mercy.
In the Shade of the Qur'an
This short surah brings the good news to Allah's Messenger concerning the
advent of victory, the Conquest and peoples' collective acceptance of
Allah's religion. It instructs him to turn
towards his Lord in a devoted
adoration and a humble request for His forgiveness. The surah also presents
the nature and the righteousness of this Faith and its ideology - how high
humanity ascends to an ideal and brilliant
summit unattainable otherwise
than by responding to the call of Islam.
Of the several traditions
regarding the revelation of this surah, we quote
that of Imam Ahmad which goes as follows:
Aisha said that the Messenger of Allah used to repeat very frequently,
towards the end of his life,
'Exaltations and praises be to Allah, whose
forgiveness I ask; I repent of my sins.' He also said,
'My Lord told me
I would see a sign in my nation. He ordered me to praise Him, the
Forgiving, and ask His pardon when I see this sign. Indeed, I have. When
the victory granted by Allah
and the Conquest come ... (transmitted by
Muslim)
Ibn Katheer said in his commentary on
the Qur'an:
The Conquest', it is unanimously agreed, is a reference to the conquest
of Makka. The Arab tribes were awaiting the settlement of the conflict
between Quraish and the Muslims,
before accepting Islam, saying: 'If he,
Muhammad, prevails over his people, he would indeed be a prophet.'
Consequently, when that was accomplished they accepted Islam in large
numbers.
Not two years were to pass after the conquest of Makka when the
whole Arabian Peninsula was dominated
by Islam, and, all thanks to
Allah, every Arab tribe had declared its belief Islam.
Al-Bukhari
in his Sahih related
Amr ibn Salamah said that when Makka was conquered, every tribe hastened
to declare acceptance of Islam to Allah's Messenger. They were waiting
for it
to take place saying, Leave them to themselves. He would indeed
be a prophet if he prevailed over them.
This version is the one which agrees chronologically with the beginning of
the surah in the sense that
its revelation was a sign of something to
follow with some instructions to the Prophet, on what he should do when
this event took place.
There is, nevertheless, another fairly similar version in agreement
with
the one we have chosen and it is that by Ibn 'Abbas which says:
Umar used
to let me join the company of elders who were present at Badr,
some of whom felt uneasy and asked why
I should be allowed with them
when I was young. But ' Umar said to them, 'You know that he is of high
standing.' One day 'Umar invited them all and invited me as well. I felt
that
he wanted to show them who I was so he asked them, 'What do you
make of Allah's saying, ' When the
victory granted by Allah and the
Conquest come?' Some of them replied, 'He ordered us to praise Him
and
seek His forgiveness when He helps us to triumph and bestows His favours
on us.' The others remained silent. Then 'Umar asked me, 'Do you agree
with this view, Ibn Abbas?'
I answered in the negative. 'Umar asked me
again. 'What then do you say?' I replied, 'It was a sign
from Allah
to His Messenger indicating the approach of the end of his life meaning,
when the victory from Allah and the Conquest come, you; end is near,
so extol the praises of your Lord
and seek His forgiveness.' 'Umar
commented, 'I have known no more than what you have said. (transmitted
by al Bukhari).
So it is possible that the Messenger, having witnessed his Lord's sign,
realized
that he had fulfilled his mission on this earth and that it was
time for him to leave, which was what Ibn 'Abbas
actually meant.
However, there is another account narrated by Al-Hafiz al Baihaqi also
attributed
to Ibn 'Abbas who according to it said
When this surah was first revealed, the Messenger
of Allah called
Fatimah and said, 'My death has been announced to me.' She was seen
to start crying, then she smiled. She explained later, 'I cried when
he told me of his approaching
death. But he said to me, 'Be restrained,
because you will be the first of my family to join me', so
I smiled.'
According to the last tradition quoted the time of the revelation of the
surah is actually fixed as coming later than the sign, that is, the
Conquest and the people's collective movement
into Islam. When events took
place in this fashion the Messenger of Allah knew that his life would soon
come to a close. But again the first account is more authentic and fits in
more suitably with the outline of the
beginning of the surah, especially
as the Fatimah incident is related in a different form which gives more
weight to what we have suggested. This other form goes as follows:
Umm Salamah, the Prophet's
wife said: The Messenger of Allah called
Fatimah to him sometime during the year of the Conquest and
he said
something to her. She cried. Then he spoke to her again and she was
smiling. After he had died, I asked her about the incident and she
explained 'The Messenger of Allah
told me he was soon to die, so I
cried. Then he told me that I would be the next most celebrated woman
in Paradise after Mariam (Mary), the daughter of Imran, so I smiled.'
This narration
agrees with the general meaning of the Qur'anic text and
with what Imam Ahmad related which appears in the Sahih
of Muslim - that
is, there was a sign (in the surah) between Allah and His Messenger and
when the Conquest
was accomplished the latter knew that he was soon to
meet his Lord, so he spoke to Fatimah in the manner described
by Umm
Salamah.
Let us now consider the actual text of the surah and the injunction it
gives for all time:
When the victory granted by A Allah and the Conquest come, and you
see people embracing the religion of Allah in large numbers. Then,
celebrate the praises of your Lord
and seek His forgiveness. He is
ever disposed to mercy.
The beginning
of the first verse implicitly presents a concept of what goes
on in this universe: the events that take place in
this life, and the
actual role of the Messenger of Allah and his followers in the progress of
Islam,
and to what extent it depends on their efforts. "When the victory
granted by Allah", denotes that it is Allah's
victory and Allah is the One
who brings it about in His own good time, in the form He decides and for
the purpose He determines. The Prophet and his companions have nothing to
do with it at all, and they obtain no
personal gain from it. It suffices
them that He does it through them, appoints them as its guards and entrusts
it to them. This is all they acquire from the victory of Allah, the
Conquest and the people's acceptance
en masse of His religion.
According to this concept, the duty of the Messenger and his companions
whom Allah chose and gave the privilege of being the instruments of His
victory, was to turn to Him at the climax
of victory in praise, expressing
gratitude and seeking forgiveness. Gratitude and praise are for His being
so generous as to have chosen them to be the standard bearers of His
religion; for the mercy and favour He did
to all humanity by making His
religion victorious; and for the Conquest of Makka and the people's
collective
acceptance of Islam.
His forgiveness is sought for the various unrevealed, defective feelings,
such as vanity, which sometimes creep into one's heart at the overwhelming
moment of victory attained after a long
struggle. Human beings can hardly
prevent this happening and therefore Allah's forgiveness is to be sought
for it. Forgiveness also has to be sought for what might have been
insinuated into one's heart during the long
and cruel struggle and for
petulance resulting from the belatedness of victory or the effects of
convulsive
despair, as the Qur'an brings out elsewhere:
Or think you that you will enter Paradise while
yet there has not come
to you the like of that which came to those who passed away before you?
Affliction and adversity befell them; they were shaken as with earth
quake, till the Messenger (of Allah)
and those who believed along with
him said: 'When will Allah's help come?' Now surely Allah's
help is
near. (2:214)
It is also necessary to seek Allah's forgiveness
for one's shortcomings in
praising Allah and thanking Him for His favours which are perpetual and
infinite.
And if you were to count the favours of Allah, never will you be able
to number them. (16:18)
However much one's efforts in this respect, they are never adequate.
Another touching thought is that seeking forgiveness at the moment of
triumph arouses in one's mind
the feeling of impotence and imperfection
at a time when an attitude of self-esteem and conceit seems natural.
All
these factors guarantee that no tyranny will afflict the conquered. The
victorious is made to realize
that it is Allah who has appointed him,
a man who has no power of his own and is devoid of any strength, for a
pre determined purpose; consequently the triumph and the conquest as
well as the religion are all His,
to Whom all things ultimately return.
This is the lofty, dignified ideal the Qur'an exhorts people to toil
towards and attain, an ideal in which man's exaltation is in neglecting
his own pride and where his soul's freedom
is in his subservience to
Allah. The goal set is the total release of human souls from their egoistic
shackles, their only ambition being to attain Allah's pleasure. Along with
this release there must be exerted a
striving which helps man to flourish
in the world, promote human civilisation and provide a rightly-guided,
unblemished, constructive, just leadership devoted to Allah.
In contrast, man's efforts to liberate himself
while in the grip of egoism,
shackled by his zest for worldly things, or overpowered by his cravings,
turn out to be absolutely in vain unless he sets himself free from self and
lets his loyalty to Allah override
everything else, particularly at the
moment of triumph and the collecting of booty.
Such
a standard of behaviour, which Allah wants humanity to aspire towards
and to attain, was the characteristic feature
of the Prophets at all times.
So it was the case with Prophet Yussuf (Joseph), when all he wanted was
achieved and his dream came true:
and he placed his parents high on the throne of dignity
and they fell
down prostrate before him. He said: 'Father! This is the fulfillment of
my dream of old. My Lord has made it come true. He has been gracious to
me. He has released me from
prison and has brought you from the desert
after Satan had stirred-up strife between me and my brothers.
My Lord
is gracious with all that He plans to do. He is full of knowledge and
wisdom. (12:100)
Then, at that moment of climax, Yussuf took himself away from the
jubilations and from the embracing arms to turn towards his Lord, praising
him with a pure feeling of gratitude:
My Lord! You have given me something of sovereignty and power and have
taught me something of the interpretation of visions. Creator of the
heavens and the earth! You are
my Protector in this world and the here
after. Let me die in submission and join the righteous. (12:101)
Thus vanished the feeling of predominance and reputation and the happiness
brought by his reunion with his family,
and the picture we are left with is
of that individual, Yussuf, praying to Allah to help him remain submissive
to Him until he dies and to let him, out of His mercy and grace, join His
righteous servants. So, it
was also with Prophet Sulaiman (Solomon), when
he saw the Queen of Sheba's throne brought into his very reach in
a flash:
And when he (Sulaiman) saw it set in his presence he said: 'This is
of the bounty of my Lord, that He may try me whether I give thanks
or remain ungrateful. He who gives
thanks does so for his own good,
and he who is ungrateful ... my Lord is all sufficient and bountiful.
(27:40)
And so indeed it was with Muhammad all through his life. In the moment of
triumph, as the Conquest of Makka was accomplished, he entered it on the
back of his camel with his head bowed
down. He forgot the joy of victory
and thankfully bowed his head seeking his Lord's forgiveness, though he
had just conquered Makka, the city whose people had openly and unashamedly
persecuted and expelled him. This also
was the practice of his companions
after him.
Thus, upon belief in Allah, was that great
generation of humanity raised
very high, reaching an unparalleled standard of greatness, power and
freedom.
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