al-Aḥzāb

وَبَشّـِرِ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ بِاَنَّ لَهُم مّـِنَ اللَّهِ فَضْلاً كَبِيراً

وَلاَ تُطِعِ الْكَافِرِينَ وَالْمُنَافِقِينَ وَدَعْ أَذَاهُمْ وَتَوَكَّلْ عَلَي اللَّهِ وَكَفَي بِاللَّهِ وَكِيلاً

47. “And give the believers the glad tiding that they shall have from Allah a great grace.”
48. “And do not obey the unbelievers and the hypocrites, and heed not their hurt, but rely on Allah, and Allah is sufficient as a protector.”

The Prophet (S) is commanded from the side of Allah to give glad tiding to the believer that His special grace and favour will envelop them, and this itself is the greatest grace of Allah. So, here, the Qur’an says:

This points to the fact that the Prophet’s glad tiding is not limited only to the reward of the good deeds of the believers, but Allah bestows on them from His grace so much so that the balance between their good deed and this reward will utterly be changed, as some other noble verses of the Qur’an certify this meaning. In one place the Holy Qur’an says:

In another place it says:

So that, according to it, sometimes the reward of a charity will be seven hundred times more, and sometimes more than one thousand times. Sometimes their reward may be more than this and beyond what was said. The Holy Qur’an says:

Thus, this verse elevates the dimensions of the great grace of Allah higher than that which can come into existence in man’s imagination and apprehension. Next to that, the Qur’an refers to the second and the third instruction. It says:

No doubt the Messenger of Allah (S) never did obey the disbelievers and the hypocrites, but the importance of the matter is so much that the Qur’an has specially stressed on it as an emphasis for the Prophet (S) and as a warning and lesson for others. The reason of it is that there are some important dangers in the way of the true leaders that they may be invited to collusion that they submit, sometimes by threat and sometimes by the way of giving some privileges.

This may happen so frequently that sometimes man makes mistake and thinks that the way of reaching to the aim is accepting such a collusion and submission; the same collusion and submission the result of which is that all efforts and endeavours remain fruitless and the whole struggles become futile. The history of Islam announces that some pagans, or some groups of the hypocrites, repeatedly tried to draw the Prophet of Islam (S) to such situation. Sometimes they suggested that he should not mention the names of their idols in a bad way and would not criticize them.

Sometimes they told him to allow them to worship his object of worship for one year and then he would worship their objects of worship. Sometimes they told him to respite them for one more year to continue their own programs and then they would believe. Sometimes they suggested him to send away the poor believers from around him so that they, who were rich and influential, might accept him. Sometimes they said they were ready to give him some financial privileges, sensitive rank and position, beautiful wives and the like.

It is evident that all of them were some dangerous pitfalls on the way of rapid progress of Islam and against rooting out paganism and hypocrisy. If the Prophet of Islam (S) showed flexibility in the face of one of these suggestions, the basis of the Islamic revolution would ruin and the struggles might not result. Then in the fourth and fifth commands, it says:

This part of the verse shows that in order to make the Prophet (S) submit they had put him in an intensive pressure. They hurt him in different ways: whether through sarcasm, slander and undue insolence, or through bodily hurt, or by economic embargo (siege) unto him and his companions, differently in Mecca and Medina. The term ‘hurt’, mentioned here, is a word the meaning of which covers all kinds of annoyance. Raqib in Mufradat says:

“‘Hurt’ means any kind of harm that reaches a living creature, whether unto its spirit or unto its body, or unto his relatives, worldly or other worldly.”

The history indicates the Divine prophets and early believers stood firmly against kinds of hurts and never accepted the disgrace of submission and defeat and finally succeeded in their goals. This is also noteworthy that the above five commandments, which have been mentioned in the recent two holy verses, are related to each other and are complement to each other. Giving glad tiding to the believers for attracting the faithful forces, the lack of collusion and submission before pagans and hypocrites, being heedless to their hurts, and relying on Allah totally form a collection in which the way of reaching to the goal is hidden and they are as an inclusive instruction of action for all the truth seekers.