Surah Al-Ahqaf

The subject matter of the Surah is to warn the disbelievers of the errors in which they were involved, and also persisted arrogantly, and were condemning the man who was trying to redeem them. They regarded the world as a purposeless place where they were not answerable to anyone. They thought that invitation to Monotheism (Tawhid) was false and stuck to the belief that their own deities were actually the associates of God. They were not inclined to believe that the Qur’an was the Word of the Lord of the worlds. They had a strange erroneous concept of Messengership on the basis of which they were proposing strange criteria of judging the Prophet’s ﷺclaim to it. In their estimation one great proof of Islam’s not being based on the truth was that their elders and important chiefs of the tribes and so-called leaders of their nation were not accepting it and only a few young men, and some poor folks and some slaves had affirmed faith in it. They thought that Resurrection and life after death and the rewards and punishments of the Hereafter were fabrications whose occurrence was absolutely out of the question. In this Surah, each of these misconceptions has been refuted in a brief but rational way, and the disbelievers have been warned that, if they would reject the invitation of the Qur’an and the Prophethood of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, by prejudice and stubbornness instead of trying to understand its truth rationally, they would only be preparing for their own doom.

Such were the conditions when this Surah was sent down. Anyone who keeps this background in view, on the one hand, and studies this Surah, on the other, will have no doubt left in his mind that this is not at all the composition of Muhammad ﷺ, but “a Revelation from the All-Mighty, All-Wise God.” For nowhere in this Surah, from the beginning to the end, does one find even a tinge of the human feelings and reactions, which are naturally produced in a man who is passing through such hard conditions. Had it been the word of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ whom the occurrence of personal griefs, one after the other and the countless and the recent bitter experience at Ta’if had caused extreme anguish and distress, it would have reflected in some degree the state of the mind of the man who was the subject of these afflictions and griefs. Consider the prayer that we have cited above: it contains his own language, its every word is saturated with the feelings that he had at the time. But this Surah which was sent down precisely in the same period and was recited even by him under the same conditions, is absolutely free from every sign or trace of the time.68