And do not trust except those who follow your religion." Say, "Indeed, the [true] guidance is the guidance of Allāh. [Do you fear] lest someone be given [knowledge] like you were given or that they would [thereby] argue with you before your Lord?" Say, "Indeed, [all] bounty is in the hand of Allāh - He grants it to whom He wills. And Allāh is all-Encompassing and Wise."
The Envy the Jews Feel Towards Muslims; Their Wicked Plots Against Muslims
Allah states that the Jews envy the faithful and wish they could misguide them. Allah states that the punishment of this behavior will fall back upon them, while they are unaware. Allah criticizes them,
(O People of the Scripture: Why do you mix truth with falsehood and conceal the truth while you know) by hiding what is in your Books about the description of Muhammad , while you know what you do.
Some from among the people of the Book chose a strategy of deception in order to mislead Muslims. According to their agreed plan, they would declare their belief in the Qur'an in the morning and then reject it in the evening. They thought that this quick about-turn would create doubts in the minds of Muslims about Qur'an and Islam and they might turn away from their faith thinking that there must be something wrong with Islam visible to such learned people who were open-minded enough to accept it first. They also made it a point to re-serve their feinted declaration of belief in Islam to hoodwink Muslims only! Their true belief, they planned, would be affirmed before none but only those who follow their own creed. The rule was: Sincerity with the later, expediency with the former!
The Makkan polytheists called their religion the faith of Abraham. Jews and Christians too bracketed their religious history with that of Abraham. In every age people have used the names of their prophets and saints to justify their own additions to and inventions in religion. After the passage of time, people fail to differentiate between the original religion and its later version. The later version is ultimately taken to be the real religion. The atmosphere surrounding it is such that, when the call to return to true and pure religion is given, its opponents find the easiest way to discredit it is by making public allegations that the caller is against the religion handed down to them by their saints. One who is the true representative of the religion of ‘saints’ is now rejected in the name of former saints. This is because what his opponents hold up as their yardstick is not actually the original version of religion as given by the saints of the past. Instead it is the body of alterations and additions made by later followers and subsequently accepted as the ‘religion of the saints’. This is like drawing a veil of falsehood over the truth. That is, making pronouncements which are invalid from the religious and logical point of view. But since the public does not have the ability to analyze them, it deems them to be right and is thus distanced from the truth. The hanif (monotheist) is one who treads the straight path of monotheism and the non-hanif is one who deviates from the straight path, going instead into by-lanes. Sometimes the secondary aspects of religion are so emphasized by the interpretation put upon them that they appear to be the main foci, the actual core of religion. In this way its fundamentals lose their significance and people stray from the straight thoroughfare of monotheism into the byways of unimportant issues.
![Surah Ali 'Imran 3:73 in Arabic with its translation: “And do not trust except those who follow your religion." Say, "Indeed, the [true] guidance is the guidance of…”](/surah/ali-imran/73/image.jpg)