Al Anbiyā’

فَرَجَعُوا إِلَي أَنفُسِهِمْ فَقَالُوا إِنَّكُمْ أَنتُمُ الظَّالِمُونَ

ثُمَّ نُكِسُوا عَلَي رُؤُوسِهِمْ لَقَدْ عَلِمْتَ مَا هَؤُلآءِ يَنطِقُونَ

64. “So they turned to themselves and said: ‘Verily, you yourselves are the unjust’.”
65. “Then they were made to hang down their heads, (saying:) ‘Very well indeed you know these (idols) do not speak’.”

Arousing the inner senses, self finding, returning to one’s self, and heeding the natural disposition of people are among the main aims of the divine prophets (as). Therefore, the words of Abraham (as) moved the idol worshippers and aroused their sleeping conscience. As a storm which takes the abundant ash from over the flames of fire and makes its brightness clear, Abraham made manifest their monotheistic nature from behind the curtains of their bigotry and ignorance.

During a short and fleeting time, they awoke from that deep and death-like sleep and returned to their conscience and nature and told themselves that they were truly unjust to themselves. They were unjust not only to themselves, but also to the society to which they belonged, and also to the holy presence of Allah, the Bestower of the blessings.¹⁶ The verse says:

But, the amount of the rust of their ignorance, bigotry and blindly imitation was more than that it could be completely wiped out and burnished by the call of this Champion of Monotheism. Alas! That holy spiritual awakening state did not last long, and there appeared an opposition against this monotheistic light from the side of the evil powers, and because of ignorance existed in their dark polluted innate, everything returned to its first state.

What a beautiful and narrow sense the Qur’an has, where it says:

So, in order to bring an excuse for their deaf and dumb gods, they announced:

They wanted to say that their idols are always silent and they never break the dignity of silence. The idol worshippers, in fact, wanted to hide the weakness, vileness and abasement of the idols by this hollow excuse.