Volume 18 Surah 78 - 114 - Enjoy Islam

Al-Fīl (The Elephant)flocks of birds that are helped on their way by winds.It is in line with these reports to believe that those birds mentioned in thesūrah refer to a kind of fly or mosquito which carries the germs of somediseases, and that the stones were of dried and poisonous clay which thewind carried and which might have stuck to the birds’ legs. When this claytouched any organism, it penetrated deep into it and then causedcomplications in wounds and injuries which upset the whole body, leading tothe dropping off of flesh. Many kinds of these powerless birds are, as a matterof fact, among the most efficient of God’s troops, which He uses for thedestruction of whomsoever He wills. That little organism, called nowadays‘germ’, is within this classification. It gathers in large groups, the number ofwhich is unknown except to the Creator. It is not essential for themanifestation of God’s might that the birds should be as large as mountaintops, or of a certain shape or colour, and it is not essential for thismanifestation that we should know the size of those stones and the way theywork. For God has troops of all kinds: “In everything He has a sign attestingto His oneness,” as the saying goes.There is no force in the universe but is subject to God’s power. To that tyrant,Abrahah, who wanted to destroy the Ka`bah, God sent birds carryingsmallpox and measles. Both he and his people were destroyed before enteringMakkah. That was an act of grace and a blessing from God bestowed on theneighbours of His sanctuary in spite of the fact that they were idolaters. Godwished to protect His House until He sent His Messenger, Muĥammad, toprotect it with the force of faith and ideology. At the same time, it was apunishment from God inflicted on His enemies, the people of the Elephant,who wanted to destroy the House without reasonable justification.This can be taken as a basis for understanding this sūrah. Nothing else can beaccepted without logical explanation, even if it is authentically reported.Divine power is exhibited more strikingly when those who manifested theirmight by recruiting elephants, the largest quadruped animals, weredestroyed and crushed by a tiny animal, invisible to human eyes. A wiseperson finds this certainly greater, more fascinating and miraculous.Natural Phenomena and God’s PowerThis assumption [of smallpox or measles resulting from clay infected with thegerms of those diseases] advanced by the well-versed Imam is contrasted with oneincluded in some narratives, describing the stones thrown by the birds as causing theheads and bodies of the Abyssinians to split. They speak of the stones boring through254