Gems from the Holy Qur’an
From the translation by Muhammad Asad (Leopold Weiss)
About the translator:
Muhammad Asad, Leopold Weiss, was born of Jewish parents in Livow, Austria (later Poland) in 1900, and at the age of 22 made his first visit to the Middle East. He later became an outstanding foreign correspondent for the Franfurter Zeitung, and after years of devoted study became one of the leading Muslim scholars of our age. His translation of the Holy Qur'an is one of the most lucid and well-referenced works in this category, dedicated to “li-qawmin yatafakkaroon” (people who think). Forwarded by Dr Ismat Kamal.
Chapter 25, Verses 32-33
Now they who are bent on denying the truth are wont to ask, “Why has not the Qur’an been bestowed on him from on high in one single revelation?
[It has been revealed] in this manner so that We might strengthen thy heart thereby – for We have so arranged its component parts that they form one consistent whole – and [that] they [who deny the truth] might never taunt thee with any deceptive half-truth without Our conveying to thee the [full] truth and [providing thee] with the best explanation.
Chapter 25, Verse 43
Hast thou ever considered [the kind of man] who makes his own desires his deity? Couldst thou, then, [O Prophet,] be held responsible for him?
Chapter 25, Verses 47-49
And He it is who makes the night a garment for you, and [your] sleep a rest, and causes every [new] day to be a resurrection.
And He it is who sends forth the winds as a glad tiding of His coming grace; and [thus, too,] We cause pure water to descend from the skies, so that We may bring dead land to life thereby, and give to drink thereof to many [beings] of Our creation, beasts as well as humans.
Chapter 25, Verse 53
And He it is who has given freedom of movement to the two great bodies of water – the one sweet and thirst-allaying, the other salty and bitter – and yet has wrought between them a barrier and a forbidding ban. [ 1 ]
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Translator’s Notes
[ 1 ] I.e., it has caused them – as if by an invisible barrier – to remain distinct in kind despite their continuous meeting and mingling in the oceans: an indirect reminder of God’s planning creativeness inherent in the cyclic transformation of water – its evaporation from the salty seas, followed by a formation of clouds, their condensation into rain and snow which feed springs and rivers, and its return to the seas. Some Muslim mystics see in this stress on the two kinds of water an allegory of the gulf – and, at the same time, interaction – between man’s spiritual perceptions, on the one hand, and his worldly needs and passions, on the other.
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