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yurīdūna ʾan yuṭfiʾū nūra llāhi bi-ʾafwāhihim wa-yaʾbā llāhu ʾillā ʾan yutimma nūrahū wa-law kariha l-kāfirūna
They desire to put out the light of Allah with their mouths, but Allah is intent on perfecting His light though the faithless should be averse.
— Ali Quli Qarai
Surah At-Tawbah – Verse 32
32 . “They intend that they extinguish the Light of Allah with their mouths and Allah refuses but to perfect His Light, though the infidels detest it.”
For the vain and useless efforts of the Jews and the Christians, or all the opponents of Islam, among whom are polytheists, there has come an interesting resemblance in this verse. It says:
Inspite of their wish, Allah intends to spread this Divine Light and to complete it more and more, so that it covers throughout the world and in a manner that all the people of the world enjoy it, although the disbelievers do not like it. The verse continues saying:
There is no meaning seemed more expressive than this to illustrate the degradation and contempt of their attempts. In fact, there will be no result for the efforts of a feable creature before the endless Will and infinite Power of Allah other than this. For extinguishing a small light, people used to usually blow with their mouths, while a puff of mouth has no effect in extinguishing strong lights. In order to state the weakness of their ability and to break their personality, the Qur’ān has applied “…with their mouths…” which is of no avail for the strong lights to be extinguished.
The purpose is that these miserable people intend to extinguish the light of Allah with the blow of their mouth, like a person who tries to extinguish the sun with a puff.