Surah 1-2 - YasSarNal QuR'aN

Al-Baqarah (The Cow) | COVENANTS BREACHED ALL THE TIMEuse it in argument against you before your Lord? Will you not use your reason?’ Dothey not know that God is well aware of all that they conceal and all that they reveal?(Verses 75-77)Towards the end of the last section, we were told about the rigid and relentlessnature of the Israelites. It is a gloomy portrait that casts a bleak shadow of despairand hopelessness; it would seem impossible that any good would come out of them.With that in mind, the sūrah questions the grounds for any hope, as entertained bysome Muslims, that the Jews would accept Islam.Such a hope was ill-founded because the Jews seemed to lack the perception andthe understanding that would lead them to acknowledge the truth and accept it.Faith and belief in God require a straightforward, refined and receptive nature that isfree of deviousness and perversity. It requires a caring, sensitive nature that is trulysincere and fearful of God, that would not distort His words or try to obliterate thetruth once it is declared.The reference here is to the learned and the scholars among Madinah’s Jews, therabbis and religious elders, who were well versed in the Torah but were willing totamper with it, and who would knowingly misrepresent and misquote it. This theywould do out of jealousy and for their own selfish purposes. Since those people werepredisposed to distorting their own Scriptures, they would be even more liable tomisrepresent and reject what Muĥammad was teaching, and more than ready tooppose Islam and falsify its message.When they meet the believers, they say, ‘We believe,’ but when they find themselvesalone, they say to one another, ‘Need you inform them that which God has disclosed toyou? They will only use it in argument against you before your Lord? Will you notuse your reason?’ (Verse 76)Besides distortion and misrepresentation of the truth, there is also cant andhypocrisy. In fulfilment of prophecies found in their own Scriptures and by virtue ofthe fact that they had been awaiting the coming of a prophet to lead them tosalvation, some Jews would tell the Muslims at times that they too believed inMuĥammad (peace be upon him). Privately, to avoid giving the Muslims anyevidence they could use to indict them before God, they would strongly reproachone another for overdoing their pretence of belief. Ludicrous as it may appear, theyseemed to believe that as long as they did not divulge their true convictions to theMuslims publicly, they would succeed in concealing them from God and He wouldthereby not hold it against them. The sūrah, therefore, wonders what kind of logicthey were using and, before moving to elaborate on their claims, asks in amazement:“Do they not know that God is well aware of all that they conceal and all that they reveal?”93