Читать книгу Towards Understanding the Qur'an - Sayyid Abul A'la Mawdudi - Страница 262

Al-Ma’idah 5: 4

This day I have perfected for you your religion, and have bestowed upon you My Bounty in full measure, and have been pleased to assign for you Islam as your religion.7 (Follow, then, the lawful and unlawful bounds enjoined upon you.) As for he who is driven by hunger, without being wilfully inclined to sin, surely Allah is All-Forgiving8 All-Compassionate.

(4) They ask you what has been made lawful to them. Say that all clean things have been made lawful to you,9 ▶

if they failed to carry out His commands, especially as there was no longer any justifiable excuse for such failure.

7 The “perfection of religion” mentioned in this verse refers to making it a self-sufficient system of belief and conduct, and an order of social life providing its own answers to the questions with which man is confronted so that in no circumstance would one need to look for guidance to any extraneous source. The bounty referred to in the statement: “I have bestowed upon you My bounty in full measure,” is the bounty of true guidance. The statement: “I have been pleased to assign for you Islam as your religion” means that since the Muslims had proved by their conduct and their striving that they were honest and sincere about the commitment they had made to God in embracing Islam – the commitment to serve and obey Him – He had accepted their sincerity and created the conditions in which they were no longer yoked in bondage to anyone but Him. Thus the Muslims were no longer prevented from living in submission to God because of extraneous constraints just as there were no constraints preventing them from subscribing to true beliefs.

8 See Surah al-Baqarah 2: n. 52 above.

9 The questioners wanted a list of what was lawful so that they could treat everything else as prohibited, but the Qur’an provided them instead with a list of what is prohibited and then left them with the guiding principle that all “clean

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