Tafsir of Surah An-Nisa' - Verse 27

وَيَهْدِيَكُمْ سُنَنَ الَّذِينَ مِن قَبْلِكُمْ

(And to show you the ways of those before you,) meaning their righteous ways and how to adhere to the commandments that He likes and is pleased with.

وَيَتُوبَ عَلَيْكُمْ

(and accept your repentance) from sin and error,

وَاللَّهُ عَلِيمٌ حَكِيمٌ

(and Allah is All-Knower, All-Wise.) in His commands, decrees, actions and statements. Allah's statement,

وَيُرِيدُ الَّذِينَ يَتَّبِعُونَ الشَّهَوَتِ أَن تَمِيلُواْ مَيْلاً عَظِيماً

(but those who follow their lusts, wish that you (believers) should deviate tremendously away from the right path)) indicates that the followers of Shaytan among the Jews, Christians and the adulterous, wish that you would take the horrendous path of falsehood instead of the truth.

يُرِيدُ اللَّهُ أَن يُخَفِّفَ عَنْكُمْ

(Allah wishes to lighten (the burden) for you") His legislation, orders, what He prohibits and what He decrees for you. This is why Allah has allowed free men to marry slave girls under certain conditions, as Mujahid and others have stated.

وَخُلِقَ الإِنسَـنُ ضَعِيفاً

(and man was created weak.) and this is why it is suitable in his case that the commands are made easy for him, because of his weakness and feebleness. Ibn Abi Hatim recorded that Tawus said that,

وَخُلِقَ الإِنسَـنُ ضَعِيفاً

(and man was created weak), "Concerning women". Waki` said, "Man's mind leaves when women are involved."

Sequence

Mentioned in the previous verses were details of injunctions. Now, in the present verses, Allah Almighty points to his blessings and favours saying that your being obligated with these injunctions is for your own good, even though you may not be able to understand its manifestation in details. Then, along with it, there is the motivation to follow the divine injunctions. Finally, there is the message of alert against the evil intentions of the misguided who wish ill of you and would like you to stray far away from the straight path.

Commentary

Following the description of several injunctions relating to marriage, the present verses say that Allah Almighty is making His injunctions very clear and explicit for you, and He is putting you in line with the ways of the noble prophets and the righteous who have come earlier. Do not think that these details of what is unlawful and what is not are there for you alone. The fact is that communities, earlier than you, were also charged with such injunctions. Those who acted in accordance with them were rewarded with Allah's favour.

As for those who follow the dictates of their desires, which includes fornicators, adulterers and nations and peoples adhering to false creeds who just do not recognize the restrictions of halal and haram and make no distinction between lawful and unlawful would very much like you too to move away from the straight path and start giving ear to their false intentions and crooked ways. Be on your guard against them. There are creeds where it is all right to marry women - marriage with whom is not proper. Then there are many atheists who favour the very elimination of the institution of marriage as something out of tune with modern times. Not content with what they call "living together", there are people in some countries who are talking about women as a shared item of enjoyment. All this comes from people who take orders from their desiring self. Some Muslims, subscribing to Islam yet weak in their faith, when they keep company with disbelievers and atheists of such inclinations, fall a prey to their lustful claims and begin to think that their own religion is out-dated and that the position of the enemy is the very epitome of human progress. They do not realize that they have been framed into believing that people with such ideas are modern and forward-looking, something they start wishing their own religion could have permitted. Refuge with Allah from such spineless surrendering! The best policy is to take the warning given by Allah Almighty and stay away from owning and practicing ideas and ways of people with dispositions so wicked.

There is nothing new about the moral standards laid down in the Quran. In every age God has been proclaiming them through His messengers and believing people in every age have followed them. But since the ancient heavenly books could not remain untampered with, the divine modes of living were consequently lost or obscured. God, however, revealed them again in the Arabic language through His final Messenger. Today, when any group of people follows them, it joins that eternal caravan of righteous humanity which, favoured with the grace of God, adhered steadfastly to the divine path. In every group of people certain traditions become rooted as a matter of centuries-old practice and people become too accustomed to them to think of them critically. When an original thinker tries to bring in social reform, he is bitterly opposed by traditionalists. They find it difficult to leave their familiar ways and adopt unfamiliar ones. They become hostile to any effort at reformation which would distance them from the ways of their forefathers. In such cases the reaction of the religious class is by far the strongest. When the core of a religion becomes weak, it is vitiated by hair-splitting arguments, and a structure of elaborate rules based on form is built up. Devoid of the real spirit, people keep following the old rituals, thinking that they are adhering to the religion of God. This religion of human creation is gradually identified with their forefathers and becomes sacred. Ultimately, the simple and natural religion of God is so heavily veiled that it becomes difficult to recognize it as the original religion. The situation being such, any movement for the revival of the simple and natural religion faces bitter opposition; people find their ritualistic dogma threatened and negated by it. Those whose dogma is based on self-styled faith viciously oppose any effort to revive God’s simple and straightforward religion, because they anticipate that such an effort may lead to the end of their dominance and leadership.