Читать книгу Towards Understanding the Qur'an - Sayyid Abul A'la Mawdudi - Страница 240

Al-Nisa’ 4: 120–2

and I shall command them and they will cut off the ears of the cattle,78 and I shall command them and they will disfigure Allah’s creation.”79 He who took Satan rather than Allah for his guardian has indeed suffered a manifest loss. (120) Satan makes promises to them and fills them with vain hopes, but whatever he promises them is merely delusion. (121) For these people, their abode shall be Hell and from there they shall find no way of escape. (122) But those who believe and do good, We shall cause them to enter the Gardens beneath which rivers flow. Here they will abide for ever. ▶

78 The reference here is to a superstitious Arabian custom. It was customary among the Arabs that after a camel had given birth to five or ten young to slit her ears and let her go in the name of their deity; they considered it forbidden to put her to any work. Likewise, the male camel that had generated ten offspring was consecrated to some deity. The slitting of ears symbolized this consecration.

79 To alter God’s creation in some respect does not mean changing its original form. Hence the alteration of God’s creation, which is characterized as Satanic, consists in using a thing not for the purpose for which it was created by God. In other words, all acts performed in violation either of one’s true nature or of the intrinsic nature of these other objects are the result of the misleading promptings of Satan. These include, for instance, sodomy, birth control, monasticism, celibacy, sterilization of either men or women, turning males into eunuchs, diverting females from the functions entrusted to them by nature and driving them to perform the functions for which men were created.

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