Surah Hud, Ayah 26

The Story of Nuh and His Conversation with His People

Allah, the Exalted, informs about Prophet Nuh. He was the first Messenger whom Allah sent to the people of the earth who were polytheists involved in worshipping idols. Allah mentions that he (Nuh) said to his people,

إِنَّى لَكُمْ نَذِيرٌ مُّبِينٌ

(I have come to you as a plain warner.) meaning, to openly warn you against facing Allah's punishment if you continue worshipping other than Allah. Thus, Nuh said,

أَن لاَّ تَعْبُدُواْ إِلاَّ اللَّهَ

(That you worship none but Allah;) This can also be seen in his statement,

إِنِّى أَخَافُ عَلَيْكُمْ عَذَابَ يَوْمٍ أَلِيمٍ

(surely, I fear for you the torment of a painful Day.) This means, "If you all continue doing this, then Allah will punish you with a severe punishment in the Hereafter." Then Allah says,

Commentary

When Sayyidna Nuh علیہ السلام invited his people to believe, they responded with some doubts and objections against the veracity of his mission as a prophet and messenger of Allah. Sayyidna Nuh (علیہ السلام) with the will and permission of Allah, answered their questions. Many primary and subsidiary religious rulings relating to honesty and social living emerge from here as a corollary. This dialogue forms the core of the subject taken up in these verses.

Being humble is the essence of Faith. Faith is neither something hereditary nor does it consist of the mere recitation of certain phrases. Faith is a discovery. When a man finds God by living in a state of keen awareness and in comparison realizes his position of helplessness, the feeling which takes possession of him at that time is known as humility (ikhbat). Humility is the necessary result of one’s realisation and recognition of one’s own position of powerlessness in comparison with God. Faith, humility and righteous deeds—all three are different aspects of the same reality. Faith is the conscious discovery of God and His perfect attributes. Humility is the state of the heart which necessarily develops in man as a result of the discovery of God. When man thinks in godly terms, when his heart is full of godly feelings, the natural result is that the external aspect of his life becomes moulded in the shape of godly, or righteous deeds. One who is the embodiment of Faith, humility and righteous deeds is the very person desired by God and as such will find his abode in the eternal gardens of paradise. Testing conditions of the highest order have been created in this world in order to find out which group used their senses of hearing and observation to discover the truth and moulded themselves accordingly. These are the sincere people of this world: they applied their reason and found the truth. The others did not properly use their senses of hearing and observation, so that naturally they did not acquire any knowledge of the truth and, that being so, did not mould themselves according to it. They are the blind and the deaf. Obviously, these are two different types of people and their ultimate fate cannot be the same.