Tafsir of Yunus 10:41

"And if they deny you" (41)—meaning, if they persist in denying you after the proof has been established. It is interpreted in this way because the original act of denial has already occurred, so the future tense implied by the conditional particle would not be correct here. Furthermore, its response—which is His saying, Exalted is He, "Say, 'For me is my work, and for you is your work'"—aims for dissociation and separation, which is only appropriate for persistence in denial and despair of them responding. The meaning is: I have the reward for my work, and you have the reward for your work, whatever they may be. The singular form of "work" attributed to them is used in consideration of the unity of the category, and to observe perfect parallelism, as has been stated.

And His saying, Exalted is He, "You are disassociated from what I do, and I am disassociated from what you do" (41), is a confirmation of what the particle of specification (lam al-ikhtisas) implies regarding the non-transferability of the reward of an action to anyone other than the one who performed it; meaning, you are not held accountable for my work, nor am I held accountable for your work. Based on this, the verse is definitive and not abrogated by the "Verse of the Sword," because its implication is the specification of each individual to their own actions and their fruits of reward and punishment, and the Verse of the Sword did not abolish that. According to Muqatil, al-Kalbi, and Ibn Zayd, it is abrogated by it, as if they understood from it [the verse] the necessity of turning away and refraining from confronting them with anything. Perhaps the reason for presenting the ruling of the speaker first and delaying it second—and the reverse for the ruling of the addressees—is evident from what we have mentioned regarding the meaning of the verse; so understand.

"Say, 'Allah is swifter in plotting'"—by concealing true overwhelming power (al-qahr) within this superficial gentleness. "Indeed, Our messengers record what you plot"—in the tablets of the celestial kingdom (malakut).

"It is He who enables you to travel on land and sea"—meaning, He causes your souls to travel on the land of spiritual struggles (mujahadat) and your hearts in the sea of observations (mashhadat). It is also said: He causes your intellects to travel on the land of actions and your spirits in the sea of attributes and the Essence.

"Until, when you are in ships"—meaning, the ship of eternal providence ('inayah). "And they sail with them by a fine wind"—which is the breeze of His union, Exalted is He. "And they rejoice therein"—because it signals that [union] and is perfumed with the fragrance of the abodes of intimacy and the squares of holiness: O breeze of the wind, why is it that whenever you draw near us, your scent becomes more fragrant? I think Salima was told of our sickness, so she gave you her scent, and you came as a healer.

"There came to them a stormy wind and the waves came upon them from every place"—this is the storm of overwhelming power and the waves of the attributes of Majesty. This is a recurring tradition for those who love; no state remains for them, and no union lasts for them. How excellent is he who said: We spent the night, despite the envier, with a drink between us, like the scent of musk mixed with wine. I laid her head on my palm and spent the night by her side, and I said to the night, "Be long," for the full moon had set. When the morning shone, it separated us—for what joy is there that time does not cloud?

"And they realized that they were encircled"—meaning, that they were among the perishing in those waves. "They called upon Allah, sincere to Him in religion"—by dissociating from anything other than Allah the Almighty, saying, "If You should save us from this, we will surely be among the thankful"—to You for it.

"But when He saves them, at once they commit injustice upon the earth without right"—this is their transgression of the limits of servitude due to their intoxication in the beauty of Lordship, similar to what al-Hallaj and his likes experienced. Then, after their return from intoxication to sobriety, He alerted them that the matter is beyond that by His saying, Majestic is He: "O mankind, your injustice is only against your own souls"—meaning that what you claimed returns to you, not to Him, the Exalted, for He is the Absolute Existence, even beyond the constraint of absoluteness. Thus they have said.

Ibn ‘Ata said regarding the verse: "Until, when they board" the vessels of Gnosis, and the winds of Providence carry them, and their souls and hearts become pleasant with that, and they rejoice in their turning toward their objective, "there comes to them a stormy wind"—which annihilates them from their states and wills. "And the waves come upon them from every place, and they realize that they are encircled"—meaning, they are certain that they have been taken away from themselves, and there remains for them, or against them, no attribute to which they can return, and that the Truth has distinguished them from among His servants by stripping them of their selves. "They call upon Allah, sincere to Him in religion"—for He, Exalted is He, purified their inner secrets and cleansed them of everything other than Him. "But when He saves them"—meaning, He returns them to their attributes and bodies—they return to what the common people are upon: seeking sustenance for the souls. End quote.

It is as if he interpreted "injustice" (baghy) as "seeking" and included within it the meaning of being occupied; meaning, they seek on the earth while being occupied with other than the Truth, the Exalted, which is the sustenance upon which their bodies subsist. The matter of the threat (wa‘id) indicated by "We will inform you," etc., becomes problematic under this interpretation, and [the previous one], because what occurs during intoxication carries no threat, nor does seeking sustenance. Consider whether it is valid to say that the matter is of the category: "The good deeds of the righteous are the bad deeds of those brought near (muqarrabun)."

Then, He, Exalted is He, likened life in the speed of its disappearance and the passing of its pleasure after its arrival, and the delusion of its owner, to what He indicated by His saying: "Like the water which We send down..." etc. In this, there is an allusion to what befalls—may Allah protect us—those whose misery was predestined in eternity, regarding their state: while you see him and his conditions are clear, his years free from the dust of impurity, the branches of his intimacy hanging low, and the gardens of his closeness flourishing, Time turns the shield against him and attacks him with armies of trials. The storms of Divine Decree blow upon those gardens, the vast spaces narrow upon him, joy and intimacy vanish, and he becomes as if he had not flourished the day before. His state speaks: Stand by the abodes, for these are their traces; we weep for the loved ones out of grief and longing. How often have I stood here asking a reporter about its people, or one who is truthful or compassionate? The caller of passion answered me from its ruins, "You have parted from whom you love, so meeting has become remote."

"And Allah invites to the Home of Peace"—which is the spiritual world safe from afflictions—"and guides whom He wills to a straight path"—in which there are no branches, and that is the path of Oneness. It is said: He invites everyone to His home, and He guides the elite of the knowers to His union; or He invites the travelers to Paradise and guides the attracted (majdhubin) to direct observation.

"For those who have done good"—and they are the elite of the elite—"is the best [reward]"—which is the vision of Allah, the Exalted—"and extra"—which is the permanence of that vision. Or, for those who came with what makes their state good—from the goodness of the heart or the body—is the reward of the "best" from the perfection poured upon them, and an "extra" in the readiness to accept goodness beyond what they were upon before. It is also said: The "best" is what the nearness of supererogatory acts requires, and the "extra" is what the nearness of obligatory acts requires.

"No darkness will cover their faces, nor humiliation"—meaning, no dust of shame nor the humiliation of separation will touch them. "Those are the companions of Paradise"—which their actions require—"they will abide therein eternally."

Then He, Exalted is He, mentioned the state of those who did evil by His saying, Majestic is He: "But they who have earned evil deeds..." etc., and pointed out that it is the opposite of the state of those noble ones. "And the Day We will gather them all together"—in the Great Gathering—"then We will say to those who associated others with Allah"—among them, and they are the veiled ones who stopped with the "other" through love and obedience—"Remain in your places, you and your 'partners'"—stand all together and await the judgment. "So We will separate them"—meaning, We will cut the causes that existed between them. "And their 'partners' will say, 'It was not us that you were worshipping'"—rather, you were worshipping things you invented in your corrupt imaginations. "And sufficient is Allah as a witness between us and you, that we were indeed unaware of your worship"—we did not ask it of you, neither by the tongue of state nor by the tongue of speech. "There"—meaning, in those standings—"every soul will realize"—meaning, taste and test—"what it had put forth [of deeds]" in the world. "And they will be returned to Allah, their Master, the Truth"—the One who manages their reward with justice and equity—"and lost from them is whatever they used to invent"—of their inventions, false imaginations, and vain wishes.

Then He, Exalted is He, mentioned what points to Oneness, what He mentioned regarding sustenance from the heaven—which to the knowers is the sustenance of the spirits, and from the earth is the sustenance of the bodies—and the "living" to them is the knower, and the "dead" is the ignorant. "And most of them follow not except assumption"—a condemnation of them for lacking knowledge of what is necessary, impossible, and permissible for their Master. Scarcely any escape this condemnation except a few, and among them are those who knew Him, Majestic is He, through Him, not through thought. Indeed, knowledge is almost restricted to them, for the arguments of the scholars of forms—the theologians and others—are contradictory, and their words pull in different directions; you hardly see an argument free from "he said" and "she said," and dispute and debate. Reaching knowledge of any of that is more remote than the star 'Ayyuq and rarer than the eggs of the Anuq (a mythical bird).

I have traveled all those institutes, and cast my gaze among those landmarks, and I saw none but one placing the palm of a bewildered person on his chin, or biting the finger of a regretful person.

Whoever seeks salvation must do what the People did to obtain it first: he must follow the pious predecessors in what they were upon regarding the matter of their religion, without caring for the treatises of the philosophers and those of the theologians who follow their path, which only increase the seeker of truth in doubt.

"And it was not [possible for] this Qur'an to be produced by other than Allah, but [it is] a confirmation of what was before it"—from the Preserved Tablet—"and a detailed explanation of the Book"—which is the Mother of the Book. How could it be fabricated when it was established before it in two books, detailed and summarized? "Rather, they have denied that which they encompass not in knowledge and whose interpretation has not yet come to them"—a condemnation of them for rushing to deny the Truth before reflecting, contemplating, and gaining insight into the reality. This is the habit of the deniers, the people of the veil, with the words of the [Sufi] folk, as they rush to deny them before reflecting upon them, contemplating their contents, and standing upon the terminology they were built upon. It is more appropriate for them to be cautious and reflective.

And Allah, the Exalted, is the Guardian of success.