The Quran

Preface

قَدِ افتَرَينا عَلَى اللَّهِ كَذِبًا إِن عُدنا في مِلَّتِكُم بَعدَ إِذ نَجّانَا اللَّهُ مِنها ۚ وَما يَكونُ لَنا أَن نَعودَ فيها إِلّا أَن يَشاءَ اللَّهُ رَبُّنا ۚ وَسِعَ رَبُّنا كُلَّ شَيءٍ عِلمًا ۚ عَلَى اللَّهِ تَوَكَّلنا ۚ رَبَّنَا افتَح بَينَنا وَبَينَ قَومِنا بِالحَقِّ وَأَنتَ خَيرُ الفاتِحينَ

Yusuf Ali

“We should indeed invent¹ a lie against God, if we returned to your ways after God hath rescued us therefrom; nor could we by any manner of means return thereto unless it be as in the will and plan of God,² Our Lord. Our Lord can reach out to the utmost recesses of things by His knowledge. In the God is our trust. our Lord! Decide thou³ between us and our people in truth, for Thou art the best to decide.”

The answer of the righteous is threefold. (1) “Coming back is all very well. But do you mean that we should practise the vices we detest?” (2) 'You want us to lie against our consciences and our Lord, after we have seen the evil of your ways.” (3) “Neither bribes nor threats, nor specious appeals to patriotism or ancestral religion can move us: the matter rests with God, Whose will and pleasure we obey, and on Whom alone we rely. His knowledge will search out all your specious pretences.”
This of course, does not mean that anyone can ever return to evil ways with God’s consent. Shu'ayb has already emphatically repudiated the idea of returning “to your ways after God hath rescued us therefrom.” But even if their ways had been good, the human will, he goes on to say, has no data to rely upon, and he and his followers would only be guided by God’s Will and Plan.
Having answered the insincere quibblers among the godless, the righteous turn to God in earnest prayer. The endless controversies in this world about abstract or speculative things never end even where both sides are sincere in their beliefs. The decision must be taken to God, Who sits on the throne of Truth, and Whose decisions will, therefore, be free from the errors and imperfections of all human judgment. The sincere have nothing to fear in the appeal to Him, as their motives are pure.