Tafsir of At-Taghabun 64:1

Status: Disputed (as to whether it is Meccan or Medinan). Length: Eighteen verses. Revelation: Revealed after Surah al-Tahrim.

In the name of Allah, the Entirely Merciful, the Especially Merciful.

{Whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth is exalting Allah. To Him belongs dominion, and to Him belongs praise, and He is over all things competent.}

{It is He who created you, and among you is the disbeliever, and among you is the believer. And Allah, of what you do, is Seeing.}

{He created the heavens and the earth in truth and formed you and perfected your forms; and to Him is the [final] destination.}

{He knows what is within the heavens and the earth and knows what you conceal and what you declare. And Allah is Knowing of that within the breasts.}

The precedence of the two prepositional phrases (li-llāhi and mā fī al-samāwāt) serves to indicate the exclusivity of sovereignty and praise to Allah, the Exalted. This is because true sovereignty belongs to Him alone, as He is the Originator and Creator of all things, the Sustainer, and the Overseer. Likewise, all praise belongs to Him, for the roots and branches of all blessings originate from Him. As for the sovereignty of others, it is merely a delegation and a stewardship granted by Him, and praising them is merely an acknowledgment that Allah’s bounty has flowed through their hands.

{It is He who created you, so among you is the disbeliever and among you is the believer} This means: among you are those who commit disbelief and act upon it, and among you are those who commit faith and act upon it. It is like His saying: "And We granted him Isaac and Jacob... and We placed in his descendants prophethood and the Scripture," and "Among them are those who are guided, but many of them are defiantly disobedient." The evidence for this is His saying: {And Allah is Seeing of what you do}, meaning He is knowledgeable of your disbelief and your faith, both of which are your own actions.

The meaning is: He is the One who favored you with the fundamental blessing of creation and bringing you into existence from nothingness. You ought to have reflected correctly and all been grateful servants. Yet, despite having the capacity, you did not; rather, you split into factions and divided into nations. Among you is the disbeliever and among you is the believer. He mentioned the disbeliever first because they are the majority and the most numerous among them. It is also said: "He created you, so among you is the disbeliever in the act of creation—namely, the Materialists (Dahriyyah)—and among you is the believer in Him."

If you ask: "Yes, the servants are the ones who perform the act of disbelief, but it was already known in the knowledge of the Wise One that if He created them, they would do nothing but disbelieve and choose nothing else. What, then, prompted Him to create them knowing what would come from them? Is the creation of the ugly and the creation of the one who performs the ugly not one and the same? Is this not like someone who gifts a sharp sword to a known highwayman and murderer, who then uses it to kill a believer? Do not the wise unanimously agree on blaming the giver, rebuking him, and holding him accountable just as they blame the killer? Indeed, is their blame not even more severe toward the giver?"

I reply: We know that Allah is Wise, knowledgeable of the ugliness of the ugly, and independent of it. We know that all His actions are good, and the creation of the one who performs the ugly is His action; therefore, it must be good and possess a facet of goodness. Our inability to perceive that facet of goodness does not invalidate its goodness, just as our ignorance of the wisdom behind the creation of many of His creatures does not invalidate their goodness.

{With truth} Meaning, with a correct purpose and profound wisdom: that He made the earth a dwelling for those held accountable so they may act and be rewarded.

{And He formed you and perfected your forms} (A variant reading has ṣawrakum with a kasra). This is so that you may be grateful. {And to Him is the [final] destination}—your recompense for gratitude or negligence.

If you ask: "How did He perfect your forms?" I reply: He made humans the most beautiful and radiant of all animals. The evidence is that no human wishes for their form to be other than what they see of all other forms. Part of the perfection of the human form is that He created it upright, not bent, as He, the Exalted, said: "In the best of stature."

If you ask: "But among you are those who are ugly, deformed, and coarse in appearance, whom the eyes turn away from?" I reply: There is no true ugliness there. Rather, beauty—like other qualities—exists in layers and ranks. The fact that some forms fall short of the ranks of those above them, and that they appear unattractive when compared to those who surpass them, does not mean they are not beautiful. Otherwise, they still fall within the realm of beauty and do not exit its bounds. Do you not see that you may admire a face and find it beautiful, seeing nothing in the world like it, but then you see one even more beautiful and higher in the ranks of beauty? Your gaze then turns away from the first, and you find it burdensome to look at it after having been infatuated with it. The sages said: "Two things have no limit: beauty and eloquence."

He alerted [you] by His knowledge of what is in the heavens and the earth, then by His knowledge of what the servants conceal and reveal, then by His knowledge of what is in the breasts: that nothing, whether general or specific, is hidden from Him or escapes Him. Therefore, it is right that He be feared and guarded against, and that one should not dare to do anything that might provoke His displeasure.

The repetition of "knowledge" carries the meaning of repeated warning. Everything He mentioned after His saying {So among you is the disbeliever and among you is the believer} is, as you see, in the context of a warning against disbelief and a rejection of disobeying the Creator and failing to thank Him for His blessings. How ignorant is the one who mixes disbelief with creation and considers it part of it! Creation is the greatest blessing from Allah to His servants, and disbelief is the greatest ingratitude from the servants to their Lord.

{Has there not reached you the news of those who disbelieved before? So they tasted the consequence of their affair, and they will have a painful punishment. That is because their messengers would come to them with clear proofs, but they said, "Shall humans guide us?" So they disbelieved and turned away. And Allah dispensed [with them]; and Allah is Free of need, Praiseworthy.}