Tafsir of Surah Al-Isra - Verse 96

وَلَوْ تَقَوَّلَ عَلَيْنَا بَعْضَ الاٌّقَاوِيلِ - لأَخَذْنَا مِنْهُ بِالْيَمِينِ - ثُمَّ لَقَطَعْنَا مِنْهُ الْوَتِينَ

(And if he had forged a false saying concerning Us, We surely would have seized him by his right hand, And then We certainly would have cut off his life artery.) (69:44-46) Allah said;

إِنَّهُ كَانَ بِعِبَادِهِ خَبِيرًا بَصِيرًا

(Verily, He is Ever the All-Knower, the All-Seer of His servants.) meaning, He knows best who among them deserves blessings, good treatment and guidance, and who deserves to be doomed and led astray. He says:

In the last verse (95), it was said that they, despite being human, can-not demand that their messenger should be an angel. This demand was unreasonable. Yes, if angels had been living on the Earth and there was the need to send a messenger to them, then, indeed, an angel would have been sent as a messenger. It will be noted that the attribute of an-gels living on the Earth has been described here in the words: يَمْشُونَ مُطْمَئِنِّينَ (walking about in peace). This tells us that the need to send an angel deputed as a messenger to other angels would have come up only at a time when the angels of the Earth could not themselves go to the heavens rather remained living on the Earth alone. Otherwise, had they themselves possessed the power to go to the heavens, there would have remained just no need to send a messenger to the Earth.

Anyone studying such verses, will find the stubbornness of those who denied such a ‘great’ Prophet as Muhammad very strange. The cause of this astonishment is traceable to the fact that before him is the ‘great’ Prophet as he is known today, while the deniers of the first phase had before them a contemporary prophet who was at that time just Muhammad ibn ‘Abdullah, as yet with no glorious history to commend him. A prophet to his contemporaries appears to be only a human being like any other, but later on, with the accumulation of historical proofs regarding his prophethood, people have no doubt about his being a real prophet. That is why all the prophets have been rejected by their contemporaries, save a tiny minority, while the next generation had no reason not to acknowledge their greatness. Since man is in a state of trial in the present world, he will never be informed of the truth through the angels. Such a communication of the truth would mean unveiling reality to the ultimate extent. If reality were to be unveiled in this way, how would man be put to the test?