29 Preface يا أَيُّهَا الَّذينَ آمَنوا لا تَأكُلوا أَموالَكُم بَينَكُم بِالباطِلِ إِلّا أَن تَكونَ تِجارَةً عَن تَراضٍ مِنكُم ۚ وَلا تَقتُلوا أَنفُسَكُم ۚ إِنَّ اللَّهَ كانَ بِكُم رَحيمًاYusuf AliO ye who believe!1 Eat not up your property among yourselves in vanities: But let there be amongst you Traffic and trade by mutual good-will: Nor kill (or destroy) yourselves: for verily God hath been to you Most Merciful!Let me paraphrase this verse, for there is profound meaning in it. (1) All your property you hold in trust, whether it is in your name, or belongs to the community, or to people over whom you have control. To waste is wrong. (2) In 2:188 the same phrase occurred, to caution us against greed. Here it occurs, to encourage us to increase property by economic use (traffic and trade), recalling Christ’s parable of the Talents (Matt. 25:14-30), where the servants who had increased their master’s wealth were promoted and the servant who had hoarded was cast into darkness. (3) We are warned that our waste may mean our own destruction (“nor kill or destroy yourselves.”) But there is a more general meaning also: we must be careful of our own and other people’s lives We must commit no violence. This is the opposite of “trade and traffic by mutual good will.” (4) Our violence to our own brethren is particularly preposterous, seeing that God has loved and showered His mercies on us and all His creatures.