Surah 1-2 - YasSarNal QuR'aN

Al-Baqarah (The Cow) | THE MESSAGE SPELT OUTfrom being an impertinent and inappropriate question, this reveals the unbelievers’ignorance and their exclusion from God’s light and guidance. They have noreverence for God and no trust in His revelations.Accordingly, the answer comes in the form of a swift warning: “In this way, Godlets many go astray and gives guidance to many others, but none does He leave to go astrayexcept the evildoers.” (Verse 26)God tests people in various ways and with varying degrees of difficulty andrigour, but the effect is not the same. Ordeals and tribulations can only bring abeliever much closer to God and enhance his God-fearing sense and his submissionto Him, while they will shake and confound an unbeliever or a hypocrite. It is thesame with prosperity and good fortune. A believer will become more conscious of,and thankful to God, while an unbeliever or a hypocrite will grow more arrogant,inconsiderate and irresponsible.Thus parables are used by God to test people’s faith, so that “In this way, God letsmany go astray and gives guidance to many others, but none does He leave to go astrayexcept the evildoers.” (Verse 26) In consequence of their attitudes and actions, theevildoers are given even more freedom to pursue the route they have chosen forthemselves.God’s Covenant with ManWe have not completely departed from the subject of the beginning of the sūrah:the presentation of the main types of people found in every human society. So thetext turns to speak in more detail of the “evildoers”. They are those “who violate God’scovenant after having accepted it, and cut asunder what He has ordered to be joined, andspread corruption in the land. They are the losers.” (Verse 27)The text speaks in very general terms, without specifying the ‘covenant’ or thething they cut asunder, or the type of ‘corruption’ they spread. Priority is given todefining the overall profile of this type of people rather than recording any particularincidents or examples. They have lost God’s trust, severed all the ties Hecommanded to be maintained, and they are capable of perpetrating every kind ofcorruption or evil. These are people condemned to confusion and loss of guidance;their basic human nature has been corrupted and perverted. They are like aprematurely picked fruit that has rotted and withered away. Their minds andoutlook on life are totally distorted, so that whatever gives believers guidance anddirection only confounds them and sends them further towards ruin and damnation.Here, we may care to reflect briefly on the destructive effect of the activities of thistype of people, as represented by the Jews, the hypocrites and the idolaters, on the42