The Quran

131

Preface

وَلِلَّهِ ما فِي السَّماواتِ وَما فِي الأَرضِ ۗ وَلَقَد وَصَّينَا الَّذينَ أوتُوا الكِتابَ مِن قَبلِكُم وَإِيّاكُم أَنِ اتَّقُوا اللَّهَ ۚ وَإِن تَكفُروا فَإِنَّ لِلَّهِ ما فِي السَّماواتِ وَما فِي الأَرضِ ۚ وَكانَ اللَّهُ غَنِيًّا حَميدًا

Yusuf Ali

To God belong all things in the heavens and on earth.¹ Verily we have directed the People of the Book before you, and you (o Muslims) to fear God. But if ye deny Him, lo! unto God belong all things in the heavens and on earth, and God is free of all wants, worthy² of all praise.

Notice the refrain: “To God belong all things in the heavens and on earth”: repeated three times, each time with a new application. In the first instance it follows the statement of God’s universal providence and love. If two persons, in spite of every sincere desire to love and comfort each other, fail to achieve that end, and have to separate, God’s all-reaching bounty never fails, for He is the Lord of all things. In the second instance it is connected with God’s Self- Existence, Self-Excellence, and independence of all creatures; all His commands are for our good, and they are given to all His creatures, according to their capacities. In the third instance, it is connected with His universal power; for He could destroy any individual or nation and create a new one without any loss to Himself; but He gives a chance to all again and again, and even rewards them beyond their own ambitions.
God’s existence is absolute existence. It does not depend on any other person or any other thing. And it is worthy of all praise, for it is all-good and comprises every possible excellence. It is necessary to stress this point in order to show that the moral law for man is not a mere matter of transcendental commands, but really rests on the essential needs of mankind itself. If therefore such schools of thought as Behaviourisim proved their theories up to the hilt, they do not affect the position of Islam in the least. The highest ethical standards are enjoined by Islam, not as dogmatic imperatives, but because they can be shown to follow from the needs of man’s nature and the results of man’s experience.