16:110 An-Nahl (The Bee)

أي: ثم إن ربك الذي ربى عباده المخلصين بلطفه وإحسانه لغفور رحيم لمن هاجر في سبيله، وخلى دياره وأمواله طلبا لمرضاة الله، وفتن على دينه ليرجع إلى الكفر، فثبت على الإيمان، وتخلص ما معه من اليقين، ثم جاهد أعداء الله ليدخلهم في دين الله بلسانه ويده، وصبر على هذه العبادات الشاقة على أكثر الناس.فهذه أكبرالأسباب التي تنال بها أعظم العطايا وأفضل المواهب، وهي مغفرة الله للذنوب صغارها وكبارها المتضمن ذلك زوال كل أمر مكروه، ورحمته العظيمة التي بها صلحت أحوالهم واستقامت أمور دينهم ودنياهم

هؤلاء صنف آخر كانوا مستضعفين بمكة مهانين في قومهم فوافقوهم على الفتنة ثم إنهم أمكنهم الخلاص بالهجرة فتركوا بلادهم وأهليهم وأموالهم ابتغاء رضوان الله وغفرانه وانتظموا في سلك المؤمنين وجاهدوا معهم الكافرين وصبروا فأخبر تعالى أنه من بعدها أي تلك الفعلة وهي الإجابة إلى الفتنة لغفور لهم رحيم بهم يوم معادهم.

The One who is forced to renounce Islam will be forgiven if He does Righteous Deeds afterwards

This refers to another group of people who were oppressed in Makkah and whose position with their own people was weak, so they went along with them when they were tried by them. Then they managed to escape by emigrating, leaving their homeland, families and wealth behind, seeking the pleasure and forgiveness of Allah. They joined the believers and fought with them against the disbelievers, bearing hardship with patience. Allah tells them that after this, meaning after their giving in when put to the test, He will forgive them and show mercy to them when they are resurrected.

يَوْمَ تَأْتِى كُلُّ نَفْسٍ تُجَـدِلُ

((Remember) the Day when every person will come pleading) meaning making a case in his own defence.

عَن نَّفْسِهَا

(for himself.) means, no one else will plead on his behalf; not his father, not his son, nor his brother, nor his wife.

وَتُوَفَّى كُلُّ نَفْسٍ مَّا عَمِلَتْ

(and every one will be paid in full for what he did,) meaning whatever he did, good or evil.

وَهُمْ لاَ يُظْلَمُونَ

(and they will not be dealt with unjustly.) meaning there will be no decrease in the reward for good, and no increase in the punishment for evil. They will not be dealt with unjustly in the slightest way.

Then indeed your Lord — as for those who emigrated to Medina after they were persecuted after they were tortured and compelled to pronounce words of unbelief a variant reading for futinū ‘they were persecuted’ has fatanū in other words ‘after they disbelieved’ or ‘after they turned people away from belief’ and then struggled and were patient in obedience — indeed your Lord after that that is after such a trial is Forgiving of them Merciful to them the predicate of the first inna ‘indeed’ is indicated by the predicate of the second one.

Sequence of Verses

Warnings of punishment against disbelief (kufr) - whether original or apostacy (irtidad) - appeared in previous verses. After that, in the first (106) of the initial three verses cited above, it has been pointed clearly that 'Iman or the declaration of faith is a wealth that could work wonders for a kafir (disbeliever) or murtadd (apostate) who - if he were to come up with an honest and true 'Iman - all his past sins would stand forgiven.

In the second verse (107), the last day of Qiyamah was mentioned for the reason that all this phenomena of reward and punishment has to occur after that. In the third verse (108), it was said that the real punishment of disbelief and sin will, though come after the Qiyamah, yet there are some sins the punishment of which is faced in a certain degree within the present world.

Then surely thy Lord-toward those who emigrated after they were tormented, then struggled and were patient-surely thy Lord after that is forgiving, ever-merciful. The reality of emigration is that you emigrate from your own makeup, you abandon yourself and your desires, and you place the foot of nonbeing on top of your own attributes. Beginningless love may then lift the curtain and endless passion may show its beauty. How beautifully that chevalier spoke! Endless passion has nothing to do with a heart that stays firm in its own attributes. [DS 209] The paragon of the world and master of Adam's children, who was the goal of existent things and the center point in the circle of newly arrived things, always used to recite this supplication: “'O God, do not entrust us to our own souls for the blink of an eye, or less than that!' Lord God! Re- move from before us this makeup stamped by createdness and the relationships of opposition! Lift the burden of our souls away from us so that we may travel in the world of tawḤīd!” The command came, “O master, before you wanted, My want took care of your work and put aside the burden of you-ness from you. [Did We not] lift from thee thy burden? [94:2]. O MuḤammad! If anyone came by his own selfhood, you did not come by yourself, because I brought you: Who took His servant by night [17:1]. Nor did you come for yourself, because you came as a mercy for the world's folk: We sent thee only as a mercy to the worlds [21:107]. The state of Abraham was the same. Adam was still in the concealment of nonexistence when the Exalted Lord inscribed the stamp of bosom friendship on that paragon. He placed the fire of yearning for Him in his inwardness, and the beauty of beginningless passion toward him. He al- ludes to this with His words, “We gave Abraham his rectitude from before” [21:51]. Then, when he came into existence, on the day when he stood in the desert of bewilderment, his heart was lit up with love for the Eternal and his spirit was drunk with the wine of nonbeing. At the moment of the morning draft of the passionate, the shouting of the drunkards, and the uproar of the heart-lost, he was driven by craving the wine of nonbeing to say with the tongue of helplessness concerning whatever he looked upon, “This is my Lord” [6:76]. He saw himself consumed in witnessing the Real's majesty and beauty and was unaware of creation's being and his own being. Hence the Exalted Lord increased His caressing of him and counted him as one community: