Tafsir of Surah Hood - Verse 91

The Response of Shu`ayb's People

They said,

يشُعَيْبُ مَا نَفْقَهُ

(O Shu`ayb! We do not understand) This means that we do not comprehend.

كَثِيراً

(much) `most of what you say'. Ath-Thawri said, "He (Shu`ayb) was called the orator of the Prophets." As-Suddi said,

وَإِنَّا لَنَرَاكَ فِينَا ضَعِيفًا

(and we see you weak among us.) "They meant, `You are only one person."' Abu Rawq said, "They meant, `You are despised, because your tribe is not upon your religion."'

وَلَوْلاَ رَهْطُكَ لَرَجَمْنَـكَ

(Were it not for your family, you would have been stoned,) This means, your people. Were it not for their powerful position over the people of Madyan, they would have stoned him to death. Some said that this means with rocks. It has also been said that this means that they would have cursed and insulted him verbally.

وَمَآ أَنتَ عَلَيْنَا بِعَزِيزٍ

(and you are not powerful against us.) This means, "You have no position of power over us."

Shu`ayb's Refutation of His People

قَالَ يقَوْمِ أَرَهْطِى أَعَزُّ عَلَيْكُم مِّنَ اللَّهِ

(He said: "O my people! Is then my family of more weight with you than Allah")( He says: You would leave me alone out of respect for my people but not out of respect for the greatness of the Lord, the Most Blessed and Exalted Does not your awe of Allah prevent you from harming His Prophet Indeed you have placed the fear of Allah,

وَرَآءَكُمْ ظِهْرِيّاً

(behind your backs.) This means that you have thrown it behind you. You do not obey it, nor do you respect it.

إِنَّ رَبِّى بِمَا تَعْمَلُونَ مُحِيطٌ

(Verily, my Lord is surrounding all that you do.) This means that He knows all of your actions and He will reward you according to them.

After having given this good counsel to them, he warned them of the punishment of Allah Ta` ala. He said:

وَيَا قَوْمِ لَا يَجْرِ‌مَنَّكُمْ شِقَاقِي أَن يُصِيبَكُم مِّثْلُ مَا أَصَابَ قَوْمَ نُوحٍ أَوْ قَوْمَ هُودٍ أَوْ قَوْمَ صَالِحٍ ۚ وَمَا قَوْمُ لُوطٍ مِّنكُم بِبَعِيدٍ

And 0 my people, let not your hostility towards me cause you to suffer what was suffered by the people of Nuh, or the people of Hud, or the people of Salih. And the people of Lut are not far from you.

The sense of the last sentence is that the overturned habitations of the people of Sayyidna Lut (علیہ السلام) were close to Madyan where they were. Then, in terms of time, the punishment that came upon them was very close. From this they could learn their lesson and leave their obstinacy.

Hearing this, his people were enraged. They said that had it not been for the support he had from his clan, they would have stoned him to death. Despite this threat, Sayyidna Shu'aib (علیہ السلام) true to his mettle as a prophet, did not hesitate to tell them that they feared his clan all right, but would have no fear of Allah who holds everything in His power.

Finally, when his people did not listen to anything said to them, Sayyidna Shu'aib (علیہ السلام) told them that they could now wait for the punishment. After that, Allah Ta ala took out Sayyidna Shu'aib (علیہ السلام) and those who had believed in him, as is the Divine practice, from that habitation and the rest of them were destroyed instantly at the harsh Cry of Sayyidna Jibra'il (علیہ السلام) .

Injunctions and Rulings:

Rules about Lessening of Weights and Measures

One of the reasons why punishment fell on the people of Sayyidna Shu'aib (علیہ السلام) was their practice of weighing and measuring less than due - called tatfif. The Holy Qur'an has described the severe punishment for those who do that in Surah al-Mutaffifin which opens with the verse: وَيْلٌ لِّلْمُطَفِّفِينَ (Woe to those who give less - 83:1). There is a consensus of the entire Muslim Ummah that doing so is strictly Haram (unlawful). Quoting a saying of Sayyidna ` Umar ؓ ، Imam Malik has said in Mu'atta' that weighing and measuring less essentially means that someone does not fulfill the right of another person due on him, fully and duly. In fact, makes it less, whether it happens to be something given by weight, or measure, or something of another kind. If an employee falls short in performing his or her assigned duty, or an office worker, or a laborer cuts his working hours short, or fails to fulfill his job assignment as due, then, they all will be counted in this cat-egory. Anyone who does not perform his or her Salah with due consideration of everything obligatory and mash En in it has also committed the crime of this ` tatfif.' May Allah keep all of us protected from it!

Ruling

It appears in Tafsir al-Qurtubi that the people of Sayyidna Shu'aib (علیہ السلام) would save gold and silver by trimming the edges of gold and silver coins, like dinar and dirham, circulating in the country as official currency, and which they would channel back into circulation at par value. Sayyidna Shu'aib (علیہ السلام) prohibited them from doing so.

In Hadith as well, the Holy Prophet ﷺ has declared the chipping of the coins of an Islamic state to be Haram (unlawful). Tafsir authority, Zayd ibn Aslam has said exactly this while explaining the

verse of the Qur'an: تِسْعَةُ رَ‌هْطٍ يُفْسِدُونَ فِي الْأَرْ‌ضِ وَلَا يُصْلِحُونَ ; (nine family heads spreading corruption in the land and not correcting [ their ways ] - 27:48). He says that these people of the city mentioned in the verse used to chip off gold and silver from dinar and dirham coins and ran a profitable business of their own through this source - something the Qur'an calls a great corruption.

During the Khilafah of Sayyidna ` Umar ibn ` Abd al-` Aziz (رح) ، someone was arrested while he was cutting a dirham coin. He was awarded a punishment of lashes and was paraded around head shaved. (Tafsir al Qurtubi)

In a tradition of the Prophet Muhammad, Shu‘ayb has been called the orator among the prophets (khatib al-ambiya’). He used to explain facts to the people of his community in their own understandable language in the most effective manner. Then, why did they not understand what he said? The reason for this was that the mindset of the community had been so vitiated that their way of thinking was quite different from that of Shu‘ayb. Therefore, what he had to say seemed incomprehensible. The community was engrossed in obeisance to human beings whereas Shu‘ayb called upon them to do obeisance to the one and only God. They were under the impression that belief in saints or great ones was enough for their salvation. But Shu‘ayb’s dictum was that salvation can be attained only through the belief in the one God and the performance of good deeds. The community members thought that since they considered themselves believers, they really were believers. Shu‘ayb said however, that a believer was one who was so by God’s assessment. In the eyes of the community salat (prayer) was merely a sort of ineffective formal supplement. Shu‘ayb declared, on the contrary, that salat was a reckoner of man’s life, his income and expenditure. The community thought that Faith was merely a spiritless acceptance, whereas he said that faith was that which was acquired by a live consciousness. In this way, a barrier had developed between Shu‘ayb and the community when it came to understanding his true and straightforward words. ‘Were it not for your clan, we would have stoned you.’ This statement reveals the great extent to which Shu‘ayb’s community had grown insensitive and become immersed in the love of outward, showy con-cerns. The truth of the matter was that when Shu‘ayb exposed the religious pretensions of the communi-ty, its members became his enemies. At that time he had no crowds surrounding him to deter them from attacking him. He did not possess wealth and status with which to impress his listeners. He had at his command only the strength of Truth and reasonableness, but with such people Truth and reasonableness did not carry any weight. In these circumstances, they would have certainly made a fatal attack on him, had it not been for the fear of tribal revenge. In the tribal era, the killing of a member of a tribe meant that, according to tribal custom, the entire tribe would rise to avenge that killing. This fear restrained Shu‘ayb’s community from taking any extreme step, just as in the present age people remain safe from the mischief of miscreants, because the latter fear that if they commit a crime, they will have to face the police force and the courts.