The Quran

151

Preface

۞ قُل تَعالَوا أَتلُ ما حَرَّمَ رَبُّكُم عَلَيكُم ۖ أَلّا تُشرِكوا بِهِ شَيئًا ۖ وَبِالوالِدَينِ إِحسانًا ۖ وَلا تَقتُلوا أَولادَكُم مِن إِملاقٍ ۖ نَحنُ نَرزُقُكُم وَإِيّاهُم ۖ وَلا تَقرَبُوا الفَواحِشَ ما ظَهَرَ مِنها وَما بَطَنَ ۖ وَلا تَقتُلُوا النَّفسَ الَّتي حَرَّمَ اللَّهُ إِلّا بِالحَقِّ ۚ ذٰلِكُم وَصّاكُم بِهِ لَعَلَّكُم تَعقِلونَ

Yusuf Ali

Say: “Come, I will rehearse what God hath (really)¹ prohibited you from”: Join not anything as equal with Him; be good to your parents; kill not your children on a plea of want;- We provide sustenance for you and for them;- come not nigh to shameful deeds. Whether open or secret; take not life, which God hath made sacred, except by way of justice and law:² thus doth He command you, that ye may learn wisdom.

Instead of following Pagan superstitions, and being in constant terror of imaginary taboos and prohibitions, we should study the true moral law, whose sanction is God’s Law. The first step is that we should recognise that He is the One and Only Lord and Cherisher. The mention of goodness to parents immediately afterwards suggests: (1) that God’s love of us and care for us may?on an infinitely higher plane?be understood by our ideal of parental love, which is purely unselfish; (2) that our first duty among our fellow creatures is to our father and mother, whose love leads us to the conception of divine love. Arising from that is the conception of our converse duties to our children. God provides sustenance (material and spiritual) not only for us, but for them; hence any custom like the Pagan custom of sacrificing children to Moloch stands condemned. Then come the moral prohibitions against lewdness and all unseemly acts, relating to sex or otherwise, open or secret. This is followed by the prohibition of killing or fighting. All these things are conformable to our own interests, and therefore true wisdom from our own point of view.
For the comprehensive word, haqq, I have used the two words, “justice and law”: other significations implied are: right, truth, what is becoming, etc. It is not only that human life is sacred, but all life is sacred. Even in killing animals for food, a dedicatory formula “in the name of God” has to be employed, to make it lawful: see n. 698 to 5:4 and n. 962 to 6:138.