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Sura 30
Aya 30
30
فَأَقِم وَجهَكَ لِلدّينِ حَنيفًا ۚ فِطرَتَ اللَّهِ الَّتي فَطَرَ النّاسَ عَلَيها ۚ لا تَبديلَ لِخَلقِ اللَّهِ ۚ ذٰلِكَ الدّينُ القَيِّمُ وَلٰكِنَّ أَكثَرَ النّاسِ لا يَعلَمونَ

Muhammad Asad

AND SO, set thy face1 steadfastly towards the [one ever-true] faith, turning away from all that is false,2 in accordance with the natural disposition which God has instilled into man:3 [for,] not to allow any change to corrupt what God has thus created4 - this is the [purpose of the one] ever-true faith; but most people know it not.
  • I.e., "surrender thy whole being"; the term "face" is often used metonymically in the sense of one's "whole being".
  • For this rendering of hanif, see note 110 on 2:135.
  • See 7:172 and the corresponding note 139. The term fitrah, rendered by me as "natural disposition", connotes in this context man's inborn, intuitive ability to discern between right and wrong, true and false, and, thus, to sense God's existence and oneness. Cf. the famous saying of the Prophet, quoted by Bukhiri and Muslim: "Every child is born in this natural disposition; it is only his parents that later turn him into a 'Jew', a 'Christian', or a 'Magian'." These three religious formulations, best known to the contemporaries of the Prophet, are thus contrasted with the "natural disposition" which, by definition, consists in man's instinctive cognition of God and self-surrender (islam) to Him. (The term "parents" has here the wider meaning of "social influences or environment").
  • Lit., "no change shall there be [or "shall be made"] in God's creation (khalq)", i.e., in the natural disposition referred to above (Zamakhshari). In this context, the term tabdil ("change") obviously comprises the concept of "corruption".