Plugging the ears will not make the storm disappear since denial is no solution to any problem. His changeless laws are implemented in the Universe without any exceptions and none can escape them. 7:183, 14:8, 29:54, 30:24

Absaarahum = Their sight = Their vision = Their sight and insight. Those who defy reason, eventually lose their perceptual and conceptual faculties. God is the Powerful Designer of His laws and He has supreme control over all things. He has prescribed laws for every thing and event in the Universe. And He does not infringe upon these laws even though He is Able to do so. 2:201, 6:96, 7:182, 10:5, 11:15, 13:8, 14:16-18, 17:18-21, 25:2, 29:54, 30:24, 36:38, 42:20, 54:49, 65:3, 79:36, 87:3. Those who reject the Divine messages and rely solely on their intellect do not realize that revelation is to the human intellect what sunlight is to the human eye. It takes them out of darkness into light. 2:257

7:172

The high atmosphere serves as a protecting canopy against meteorites and keeps balance in the gases and temperature. 2:164

Bring some chapters of comparable merit that even come close to it in magnificence, eloquence, grandeur and wisdom 10:38, 11:13, 17:88. The use of 'We' and 'I' � God uses for Himself the first person singular 'I' as well as the plural 'We'. The Qur'an being the most eloquent Book on earth has its own unique charisma and style. Slight reflection even on a translation strikes us with the beauty and variety of its usage of semantics. 'We' in relation to God indicates His Supreme Royalty, whereas 'I' gives us some idea of how close the King of kings is to us. King Cyrus of Persia calls himself 'We' in 18:87, and that is just one example. But about God, "There is none like unto Him." 112:4. Likewise, the use of the masculine gender for God in all scriptures is meant to be in conformity with our social fabric and ease of expression. For third person singular, almost all languages in the world use the male gender except when referring to a specific female

This fire is generated in and engulfs the hearts 2:74, 9:110, 66:6, 104:67. Hajar = Stone = Rock = A stone-hearted person = Elite leadership = An apparently tough, prominent man = The hard or high segment of a hill

This Paradise is not given away as charity. It has to be built in this life and then inherited. It has been described in the Qur'an allegorically and it is not confined to one particular place. It encompasses the entire Universe and is a logical consequence of living upright and contributing to the well-being of humanity. 3:133, 13:35, 14:24, 24:55, 32:17, 39:74, 47:15, 57:21, 76:5-6, 76:17

Men and women of reason know that abstract phenomena are frequently best understood in the form of examples, metaphors and allegories. Faasiqoon (singular, Faasiq) = Those who drift away = Who slip out of discipline = Those who cross the bounds of what is right = Fruit whose seed slips out = Egg yolk that drops out of its sHell = One who transgresses Divine laws and thus becomes vulnerable to desires and extrinsic challenge. 3:81-82, 5:3, 5:47, 5:108, 6:121, 7:102, 9:24, 9:80, 24:4, 24:55, 59:19

9:33-34, 9:111, 10:19, 13:20-24, 31:28, 83:6, 114:1

37:58, 40:11, 44:56, 76:1

The obvious implication is: "but He does not will this"-that is, He does not preclude the possibility that "those who have taken error in exchange for guidance" may one day perceive the truth and mend their ways. The expression "their hearing and their sight" is obviously a metonym for man's instinctive ability to discern between good and evil and, hence, for his moral responsibility. - In the parable of the "people who kindle a fire" we have, I believe, an allusion to some people's exclusive reliance on what is termed the "scientific approach" as a means to illumine and explain all the imponderables of life and faith, and the resulting arrogant refusal to admit that anything could be beyond the reach of man's intellect. This "overweening arrogance", as the Qur'an terms it, unavoidably exposes its devotees - and the society dominated by them - to the lightning of disillusion which "well-nigh takes away their sight", i.e., still further weakens their moral perception and deepens their "terror of death".

Lit., "do not give God any compeers" (andad, pl. of nidd ). There is full agreement among all commentators that this term implies any object of adoration to which some or all of God's qualities are ascribed, whether it be conceived as a deity "in its own right" or a saint supposedly possessing certain divine or semi-divine powers. This meaning can be brought out only by a free rendering of the above phrase.

I.e., the message of which the doctrine of God's oneness and uniqueness is the focal point. By the use of the word "doubt" (rayb), this passage is meant to recall the opening sentence of this surah : "This divine writ - let there be no doubt about it.. .", etc. The gradualness of revelation is implied in the grammatical form nazzalna -which is important in this context inasmuch as the opponents of the Prophet argued that the Qur'an could not be of divine origin because it was being revealed gradually, and not in one piece (Zamakhshari).

Lit., "come forward with a surah like it, and call upon your witnesses other than God" -namely, "to attest that your hypothetical literary effort could be deemed equal to any part of the Qur'an." This challenge occurs in two other places as well ( 10:38 and 11:13 , in which latter case the unbelievers are called upon to produce ten chapters of comparable merit); see also 17:88.

This evidently denotes all objects of worship to which men turn instead of God-their powerlessness and inefficacy being symbolized by the lifelessness of stones-while the expression "human beings" stands here for human actions deviating from the way of truth (cf. Manar 1, 197): the remembrance of all of which is bound to increase the sinner's suffering in the hereafter, referred to in the Qur'an as "hell".

Lit., "something resembling it". Various interpretations, some of them of an esoteric and highly speculative nature, have been given to this passage. For the manner in which I have translated it I am indebted to Muhammad `Abduh (in Manar I, 232 f.), who interprets the phrase, "It is this that in days of yore was granted to us as our sustenance" as meaning: "It is this that we have been promised during our life on earth as a requital for faith and righteous deeds." In other words, man's actions and attitudes in this world will be mirrored in their "fruits", or consequences, in the life to come - as has been expressed elsewhere in the Qur'an in the verses, "And he who shall have done an atom's weight of good, shall behold it; and he who shall have done an atom's weight of evil, shall behold it" (99:7-8). As regards the reference to "spouses" in the next sentence, it is to be noted that the term zawj (of which azwaj is the plural) signifies either of the two components of a couple-that is, the male as well as the female.

Lit., "something above it", i.e., relating to the quality of smallness stressed here-as one would say, "such-and-such a person is the lowest of people, and even more than that" (Zamakhshari). The reference to "God's parables", following as it does immediately upon a mention of the gardens of paradise and the suffering through hell-fire in the life to come, is meant to bring out the allegorical nature of this imagery.

The "bond with God" (conventionally translated as "God's covenant") apparently refers here to man's moral obligation to use his inborn gifts-intellectual as well. as physical-in the way intended for them by God. The "establishment" of this bond arises from the faculty of reason which, if properly used, must lead man to a realization of his own weakness and dependence on a causative power and, thus, to a gradual cognition of God's will with reference to his own behaviour. This interpretation of the "bond with God" seems to be indicated by the fact that there is no mention of any specific "covenant" in either the preceding or the subsequent verses of the passage under consideration. The deliberate omission of any explanatory reference in this connection suggests that the expression "bond with God" stands for something that is rooted in the human situation as such, and can, therefore, be perceived instinctively as well as through conscious experience: namely, that innate relationship with God which makes Him "closer to man than his neck-vein" (50:16). For an explanation of the subsequent reference to "what God has bidden to be joined", see surah 13, note 43.

"He" and "she" do not necessarily imply natural gender in Arabic (Appendix 4).

See Appendix 5 for further discussion of Heaven and Hell.

These verses primarily refer to the mathematical system of the Quran. The most popular position among Muslim scholars is that the miracle of the Quran is its literary excellence. This is, however, an imaginary or false claim, since there is no objective or universal criteria for comparing literary texts and thereby preferring one over the other. The miraculous nature of the Quran or the Quran's claim of divine authorship and its universal appeal cannot be relegated merely to the literary taste of those who know Arabic, which may change subjectively. It is impossible to argue that the Quran is divine by comparing its literary aspects to those of Al- Mutanabbi, Taha Hussain or any other Arabic literary work. Bukhari and Ibn Hanbal, the two so-called authentic hadith collections of Sunnism, tacitly confess the impossibility of distinguishing the Quranic statements from man-made literary works since they narrate a text, which is still uttered by millions of Sunni mushriks in “bonus" prayers called nawafil. According to their report, Ibn Masud, one of the most prominent comrades of prophet Muhammad, and allegedly one of the most prolific sources of hadith, had included that prayer to his Quran as an independent chapter while expunging the last two chapters. The claim of medieval Sunni and Shiite sources regarding the requirement for two witnesses for each verse to authenticate their divine nature, regardless of the truth-value of the claim, is another acknowledgment of their inability to distinguish a Quranic revelation from fabricated statements via the so-called literary excellence criterion. See 4:82; 10:20; 74:30, and the Appendix titled On it Nineteen.

The descriptions of Hell and Paradise are allegorical. See 13:35; 17:60; 47:15; 76:16. The language of 2:25 is similar to 74:31 and may consequently imply a miraculous prophecy that might cause a great controversy in the future. The fact that the verse follows 2:23, which challenges unappreciative people regarding the miraculous nature of the Quran, supports our expectation. The Bible contains numerous verses referring to Hell. For instance: "Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a dragnet, that was cast into the sea, and gathered some fish of every kind, which, when it was filled, they drew up on the beach. They sat down, and gathered the good into containers, but the bad they threw away. So will it be in the end of the world. The angels will come forth, and separate the wicked from among the righteous, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth." (Matthew 13:47-50)

After creation, we were put to death. Through birth we were given life on this planet; we will die again and we will be resurrected for the Day of Judgment. Death is simply the stage of unconsciousness that is required by God's system where our mind is forced to travel between universes.