Surah Al-Isra, Ayah 86

If Allah willed, He could take away the Qur'an

Allah mentions the blessing and great bounty that He has bestowed upon His servant and Messenger Muhammad by revealing to Him the Noble Qur'an to which falsehood cannot come, from before it or behind it, (it is) sent down by the All-Wise, Worthy of all praise. Ibn Mas`ud said, "A red wind will come to the people, meaning at the end of time, from the direction of Syria, and there will be nothing left in a man's Mushaf (copy of the Qur'an) or in his heart, not even one Ayah." Then Ibn Mas`ud recited:

وَلَئِن شِئْنَا لَنَذْهَبَنَّ بِالَّذِى أَوْحَيْنَا إِلَيْكَ

(And if We willed, We could surely take away that which We have revealed to you.)

Challenging by the Qur'an

Then Allah points out the great virtue of the Qur'an, and says that even if mankind and the Jinn were all to come together and agree to produce something like that which was revealed to His Messenger , they would never be able to do it, even if they were to cooperate and support and help one another. This is something which is impossible. How could the words of created beings be like the Words of the Creator Who has no equal and peer, for there is none like unto Him

وَلَقَدْ صَرَّفْنَا لِلنَّاسِ

(And indeed We have fully explained to man- kind,) meaning, `We have furnished them with evidence and defini- tive proof, and We have shown them the truth and explained it in detail, yet despite that most of mankind insist on disbelief, i.e., denying and rejecting the truth.'

We can now move to verse 86: وَلَئِن شِئْنَا لَنَذْهَبَنَّ (And if We so will, We will surely take away...). It will be recollected that, in the previous verse (85), by giving an answer to the question about Ruh as true to the measure of its necessity, the underlying effort to find out the reality of the Ruh was blocked and it was declared that man's knowledge, no matter how much, still remains relatively insignificant in terms of the great span of the ultimate reality of things. Therefore, getting entangled with unnecessary debates and investigations is a waste of precious time. The present verse: وَلَئِن شِئْنَا (And if We so will) indicates that the sum total of whatever knowledge human beings have been given, even that is no private property of theirs. Allah Ta` ala can, if He so wills, take away that too. Therefore, they should be grateful to Allah for whatever of knowledge they have and stay away from wasting time in redundant and unnecessary investigations - specially when pure investigation is just not the objective, instead, testing others or belittling them is. If one did that, it is not out of the realm of possibility that this crookedness may result in all that one has in the name of knowledge taken away in toto. The address in this verse is, though, to the Holy Prophet ﷺ ، but the purpose is to really make his followers listen and get the message - when even the knowledge of the Rasul of Allah ﷺ is not within his exclusive power and control, not much can be said about others!

‘The Spirit’ here means divine revelation. The Arabs who used to question the Prophet were not deniers of revelation. Their questions arose not out of their ignorance of the fact that God reveals His message to His prophets, but out of their ignorance of the Prophet, that is, not considering him worthy of receiving divine revelation. It was at a time when history had not yet created an aura of greatness around the Prophet. He appeared to people like a common man, so they could not believe that the angel would come to him with God’s words, and if they questioned him, it was only to scoff at him. However, in answer to this question the Quran gives us a very important principle, that is, that man has been granted only a little knowledge, and not complete knowledge. That is why realism demands that he refrain from embroiling himself in such questions as he cannot answer because of his natural limitations. In ancient times man could see only with his naked eye. So observation by the eye could work only over a specific distance, which is not enough to study the truth. For instance, something which appears from a distance to be a single object turns out to be two when we come closer to it. Since so many gadgets have become available in latter times, man has come to look upon them as remedies for his limitations. He thinks that by means of these gadgets, things can be observed to the fullest possible extent. But when man reached the twentieth century this misunderstanding came to an end. Then he learnt that things were far more complex and mysterious than were imagined, even with the aid of these gadgets. This being so, remaining content with limited knowledge is now the demand of realism, not just the demand of some creed. During the age of Newton, the world of scientific research was limited to the macro world. In those times, it was held that all things of the world, in their ultimate analysis, were a combination of atoms and the atom was something which could be weighed and measured. In the light of this theory, it was believed that anything that could be weighed and measured or was tangible had any real existence. Consequently an unseen God could not be believed in at a scientific level. However in the 20th century in the era of Einstein, with the splitting of the atom, human knowledge reached the micro world from the macro world. Now it was demonstrated that the atom was composed of electrons and protons, which were nothing but intangible waves or energy which could not be seen. It could be apprehended only by means of indirect effect or by inference. Therefore, unobservable things that could be proved by inference also came to be considered as having a real existence. This led to the belief in the argument from design. “Where there is a design (Universe) there is a Designer”. It was thus accepted that if we could see the effect of God, His design, or the Universe, we had to ultimately believe in the existence of the Designer or the Maker of the universe. Our capacities are limited, but the world beyond us is unlimited. It is impossible for the limited to grasp the unlimited. Human limitation demands that man should remain content with indirect knowledge, and stop insisting on direct knowledge. In other words, knowledge acquired by indirect methods should be regarded as being as valid as that acquired by observation.