35 Preface وَقُلنا يا آدَمُ اسكُن أَنتَ وَزَوجُكَ الجَنَّةَ وَكُلا مِنها رَغَدًا حَيثُ شِئتُما وَلا تَقرَبا هٰذِهِ الشَّجَرَةَ فَتَكونا مِنَ الظّالِمينَYusuf AliWe said: “O Adam! dwell thou and thy wife in the Garden1; and eat of the bountiful things therein as (where and when) ye will; but approach not this tree, or ye run into harm and transgression2.” Was the Garden of Eden a place on this earth? Obviously not. For, in verse 36 below, it was after the Fall that the sentence was pronounced: “On earth will be your dwelling-place.” Before the Fall, we must suppose Man to be on another plane altogether - of felicity, innocence, trust, a spiritual existence, with the negation of enmity, want of faith, and all evil. Perhaps Time and Space also did not exist, and the Garden is allegorical as well as the tree. The forbiddin tree was not the tree of knowledge, for man was given in that perfect state fuller knowledge than he has now (2:31): it was the tree of Evil, which he was forbiddin not only to eat of, but even to approach.Zulm in Arabic implies harm, wrong, injustice, or transgression, and may have reference to oneself; when the wrong is done to others it implies tyranny and oppression; the idea of wrong naturally connects itself with darkness, which is another shade of meaning carried with the root word.