The Quran

179

ما كانَ اللَّهُ لِيَذَرَ المُؤمِنينَ عَلىٰ ما أَنتُم عَلَيهِ حَتّىٰ يَميزَ الخَبيثَ مِنَ الطَّيِّبِ ۗ وَما كانَ اللَّهُ لِيُطلِعَكُم عَلَى الغَيبِ وَلٰكِنَّ اللَّهَ يَجتَبي مِن رُسُلِهِ مَن يَشاءُ ۖ فَآمِنوا بِاللَّهِ وَرُسُلِهِ ۚ وَإِن تُؤمِنوا وَتَتَّقوا فَلَكُم أَجرٌ عَظيمٌ

Muhammad Asad

It is not God's will [O you who deny the truth] to abandon the believers to your way of life:¹ [and] to that end He will set apart the bad from the good. And it is not God's will to give you insight into that which is beyond the reach of human perception: but [to that end] God elects whomsoever He wills from among His apostles.² Believe, then, in God and His apostles; for if you believe and are conscious of Him, a magnificent requital awaits you.

Some commentators (e.g., Razi) assume that the expression ma antum 'alayhi (lit.. "that upon which you are") denotes here "the condition in which you are" - i.e., the state of weakness and confusion in which the Muslim community found itself after the battle of Uhud - and that, therefore, this passage is addressed to the believers. This interpretation, however, is not plausible. Apart from the fact that the believers are here referred to in the third person, while ma antum 'alayhi is in the second person plural, the latter expression denotes almost invariably, both in the Qur'an and in the Traditions, people's mode of life and beliefs. Moreover, we have reliable reports to the effect that Ibn 'Abbas, Qatadah, Ad-Dahhak, Muqatil and Al-Kalbi unhesitatingly declared that the people addressed here are "those who deny the truth" to whom the preceding passages refer (see Tabari's and Baghawi's commentaries on this verse). Read in this sense, the above passage implies that the believers would, in time, differ from the unbelievers not only in their convictions but also in their social aims and their manner of living.
I.e., it is through these apostles that God vouchsafes to man a partial glimpse of the reality of which He alone has full knowledge.