Volume 8 Surah 9 - Enjoy Islam

Al-Tawbah (The Repentance) | RELATIONS WITH OTHER RELIGIONSIslam and to meet the Prophet. `Adiy took his sister’s advice and travelled toMadinah. He used to be the chief of his tribe, Ţayyi’, and his father waswidely renowned for his unparalleled generosity. People were speakingabout his arrival in Madinah. When he went to see the Prophet he waswearing a silver crucifix which he hung around his neck. The Prophet wasreading this verse: ‘They make of their rabbis and their monks...lords besides God.’‘Adiy said: `They have not worshipped them.’ The Prophet said: `Yes, indeedthey did. They followed them when they forbade them what was lawful andpermitted them what was forbidden. That is how they worshipped them.’Al-Suddī, a learned commentator on the Qur’ān says: “They have sought theadvice of human beings and abandoned God’s Book. Hence He says: ‘Yet they havebeen ordered to worship none but the One God,’ which means the One who may forbidsomething and it is treated by all as forbidden and may permit another and it istreated as lawful. His law is to be obeyed and His verdict is final.”In his commentary on the Qur’ān, al-Ālūsī, a scholar of the modern period says:“That they made them lords does not mean that they treated them as if they weregods in control of the universe. What is meant is that they obeyed them in what theyhave bidden and forbidden.”From the very clear Qur’ānic statement and its interpretation by the Prophet,which provides the ultimate judgement, and also from the observations of scholars,old and new, we may deduce a number of very important conclusions concerningreligion and beliefs which we will state here very briefly:• According to the Qur’ān and the Prophet’s interpretation, worship means thefollowing of the law. The Jews and the Christians did not make their rabbisand monks as lords in the sense that they treated them as gods or that theyoffered their worship rituals to them. Yet God describes them in this verse as`associating partners with Him’ and, in a later verse in the sūrah, as`unbelievers’ only because they followed the laws they devised for them. Thisalone, regardless of beliefs and rituals, is sufficient to make anyone who doesit a person who associates partners with God, which takes him out of faithaltogether and puts him in the category of unbelievers.• The Qur’ānic statement attaches the descriptions of `associating partners withGod’ and `unbelief’ to both the Jews who accepted the laws made for them bytheir rabbis and put those laws into practice and the Christians who believethat Christ is their Lord and offer worship rituals to him. Both actions are thesame in the sense that both make their perpetrators polytheists ascribinglordship to beings other than God.• Polytheism, or idolatry, comes into being merely by assigning the authority to109