Tafsir of Surah Al-Isra - Verse 89

If Allah willed, He could take away the Qur'an

Allah mentions the blessing and great bounty that He has bestowed upon His servant and Messenger Muhammad by revealing to Him the Noble Qur'an to which falsehood cannot come, from before it or behind it, (it is) sent down by the All-Wise, Worthy of all praise. Ibn Mas`ud said, "A red wind will come to the people, meaning at the end of time, from the direction of Syria, and there will be nothing left in a man's Mushaf (copy of the Qur'an) or in his heart, not even one Ayah." Then Ibn Mas`ud recited:

وَلَئِن شِئْنَا لَنَذْهَبَنَّ بِالَّذِى أَوْحَيْنَا إِلَيْكَ

(And if We willed, We could surely take away that which We have revealed to you.)

Challenging by the Qur'an

Then Allah points out the great virtue of the Qur'an, and says that even if mankind and the Jinn were all to come together and agree to produce something like that which was revealed to His Messenger , they would never be able to do it, even if they were to cooperate and support and help one another. This is something which is impossible. How could the words of created beings be like the Words of the Creator Who has no equal and peer, for there is none like unto Him

وَلَقَدْ صَرَّفْنَا لِلنَّاسِ

(And indeed We have fully explained to man- kind,) meaning, `We have furnished them with evidence and defini- tive proof, and We have shown them the truth and explained it in detail, yet despite that most of mankind insist on disbelief, i.e., denying and rejecting the truth.'

The last verse: وَلَقَدْ صَرَّ‌فْنَا (And surely We have explained - 89) tells us that the Holy Qur’ an stands out as a miracle so clear that it leaves no room for any question and doubt. Still, what is happening is that people do not thank Allah for His blessings, do not even recognize the real worth of the blessing of the Qur'an and keep wandering around in error.

When the Prophet Muhammad called to the Truth, his contemporaries said that they would believe in him only if he could perform miracles for them. But all such demands go against the divine plan of creation. God has created man as a conscious being and throughout the entire universe, this consciousness is a unique phenomenon—a gift by which man may recognise the truth by his own powers of reasoning, rather than wait to be convinced by miracles. The truth is that in the present world man is being tested at the level of argument. Here, everyone has to recognise truth in the language of reasoning and argument and adopt it as such. Those who cannot recognize truth in this way are the ones who will be failures.