seekeroftruth
Well-Known Member
Quran 5:57. O you who believe! Do not befriend those who take your religion in mockery and as a sport, be they from among those who were given the Scripture before you, or the disbelievers. And obey God, if you are believers.
58. When you call to the prayer, they take it as a joke and a trifle. That is because they are people who do not reason.
59. Say, “O People of the Scripture! Do you resent us only because we believe in God, and in what was revealed to us, and in what was revealed previously; and most of you are sinners?”
60. Say, “Shall I inform you of worse than that for retribution from God? He whom God has cursed, and with whom He became angry; and He turned some of them into apes, and swine, and idol worshipers. These are in a worse position, and further away from the right way.”
61. When they come to you, they say, “We believe,” though they have entered with disbelief, and they have departed with it. But God is well aware of what they hide.
62. You see many of them competing with one another in sin and hostility, and their consuming of what is illicit. What they have been doing is truly evil.
63. Why do the rabbis and the priests not prevent them from speaking sinfully and from consuming forbidden wealth? Evil is what they have been doing.
64. The Jews say, “God’s hand is tied.” It is their hands that are tied, and they are cursed for what they say. In fact, His hands are outstretched; He gives as He wills. Certainly, what was revealed to you from your Lord will increase many of them in defiance and blasphemy. And We placed between them enmity and hatred, until the Day of Resurrection. Whenever they kindle the fire of war, God extinguishes it. And they strive to spread corruption on earth. God does not love the corrupters.
65. Had the People of the Scripture believed and been righteous, We would have remitted their sins, and admitted them into the Gardens of Bliss.
66. Had they observed the Torah, and the Gospel, and what was revealed to them from their Lord, they would have consumed amply from above them, and from beneath their feet. Among them is a moderate community, but evil is what many of them are doing.
This is an outtake from the commentary.
It is remarkable that, though the people spoken of here are in both places the same, they are on one occasion called simply apes and on the other apes and swine. In addition, the same people are here spoken of as serving the devil. The concluding words that the people who were thus made apes and swine and the servants of the devil are “in a worse plight and further astray from the straight path”, are conclusive as establishing the fact that they were still men, because apes and swine could not be said to be straying from the straight path. The next verse makes this plainer, for these very apes and swine are there described as coming to the Messenger with unbelief and going away with unbelief.
The Muslims as a community were mostly poor people who accepted the truth. Moreover, they had left their property at Makkah. The Madßnah Muslims were an agricultural community and naturally not rich. The Jews on the other hand carried on business and their usurious transactions had made them very rich, hence they taunted the Muslims, saying that Allåh’s hand was fettered.
It is clear from this that the Jews had a hand in the battles which the Quraish waged against Islåm; in fact they gave them promises of help from within if they attacked Madßnah; perhaps they also financed these wars. The casting of enmity among them may relate to the enmity between the Jews and the Christians, because both are again and again referred to in this chapter.
If they had observed the Torah and the Gospel which contained clear prophecies of the Prophet’s advent, they would have believed in the revelation of the Qur’ån as well. The eating from above is in reference to spiritual blessings and eating from beneath their feet signifies the earthly provisions; i.e., they would have had abundance of both. The attitude of liberality adopted by Islåm towards even its most implacable foes is remarkable. Notwithstanding their strong enmity to Islåm, a party of the Jews and the Christians is described as keeping to the moderate course.
The one thing that separates us from the apes..... is ignorance..... they can't communicate because they are ignorant. Humans have trained Apes to speak in sign language. Apes could run the world if they weren't so ignorant. One thing about swine.... their bodies are a good substitute for the human body.... and they are frequently used in experiments to see how something will affect the human body. Let's face it.... a swine is a fancy pig.
Verse 64, though, really got me this morning. "The Jews say, 'God’s hand is tied.'"
See, now that's what I've been saying all along. Putting God in a box is ignorant.
In the United States today, it's almost impossible for a poor woman to take a man to civil court for blinding her. In order to go to court, she needs to pay an expert witness to say she was blinded by this man. That expert witness will charge her up front. The only way to avoid that, is to hire a lawyer, who will take a large chunk of what she will require, to get use to living with just one eye. Money.... it's all about money.
If I were to go to the church and ask my fellow Christians for help.... they would put their hand around my neck and say "let's pray". They don't really think prayer will do much. As a matter of fact, they will put my need on a list to be prayed over and over and over and over and over.... like God wouldn't answer after the first request if they didn't bludgeon Him with their prayer request reminders. I have considered, here, if they would yawn during the prayer, or if God would yawn because they have made prayer so mundane.
If I go to a synagogue and ask them for help.... they would explain to me that government, like business runs on money. Everything is a business designed to generate coins.... pretty coins.... little idols to be worshipped. They will be happy to tell me why God is not going to heal the poor woman like me. I must have done something to anger God. If I want to bring a lawsuit against my brother, then I am the one who is doing wrong.... because it's in the Torah.
I know... bringing my daily life into this is probably the cause of my problem. After all.... the blind in the Bible are all healed by faith. Here I'm claiming to be faithful, and I've been blinded. Here I sit this morning saying God is bored by our constant prayers about the same things over and over.... saying God can't be put in a box... and I'm putting Him in the box myself. Why would God be bothered with boredom.... He has Heaven!
Jews and Christians at the time this was written [600's AD] were just as blind as I am today. They were trying to cure their blindness by claiming their "right" to see. They were not considering the "wrong" of being blinded in the first place. If a drunk doesn't stop drinking he's never going to sober up. If a thief doesn't keep his hands in his pockets he's never going to stop taking stuff that doesn't belong to him. If a rich man doesn't put the coins away, he'll never stop counting them long enough to help his neighbor.
Ignorant pigs are putting God in a box. If you don't like this scenario then stop being ignorant pigs.
If you agree that your prayer list and financial profit are the solution to my monocular vision... then go ahead and mock.
