(Revealed before Hijrah)
According to Qurtubi there exists complete unanimity of opinion among scholars that this Surah was revealed at Mecca. Ibn ‘Abbas also lends his powerful support to this view. It is, however, difficult to assign an exact date to its revelation. Scholarly opinion generally is inclined to place it towards the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth year of the Call. The previous Surah had ended on the note that the revelation which descends on Heavenly Messengers and Prophets by Divine command possesses an element of mystery. It was further stated that before revelation actually descended upon the Holy Prophet, he was not conversant with its nature and significance. The present Surah opens with the affirmation that because the Qur’an has been revealed in a most clear and eloquent language and because also it deals with all basic truths and its teaching is easily comprehensible, therefore, in spite of the element of mystery in its revelation, there is no reasonable ground for anyone to reject it. It further says that God would not stop sending fresh revelation whenever there was genuine need for it, just as Prophets of God did not cease to come because they were mocked and jeered at. The phenomenon of the advent of Divine Reformers will continue despite anything the disbelievers might say or do.
The Surah like the three preceding Chapters opens with the declaration that the Qur’an has been revealed by God, the Lord of all Honour and Praise, and proceeds to deal with the subject of Divine Unity—its basic theme—in a way and form different from that in which it has been dealt with in other Chapters of the Ha Mim group. It says that God, in order to establish His Unity, has been sending, from time immemorial, His Messengers and Prophets. They preached and taught that God is One. They were rejected and opposed and persecuted. But this did not cause God to stop sending new Prophets and new revelations. Prophets continued to appear in the fulness of time, and the greatest of them came in the person of the Holy Prophet Muhammad. The Surah develops this argument and says that God has created the heavens and the earth for the service of man and has made full provision for his physical needs. When He has taken so much care to provide for his material needs and physical comforts, it is inconceivable that He should have neglected or ignored to make similar provision for his moral and spiritual requirements. It is to meet man’s moral needs that God sends a new revelation. But in their ignorance and folly disbelievers set up equals to God in various shapes and forms; and even go so far as to shift the responsibility for their idolatrous practices to God, brazenly saying that if God had so willed, they would not have worshipped idols. The plea is against human intelligence and common sense, and no Divine Scripture supports it. The real cause of the disbelief of disbelievers lies in their pride and conceit because the Qur’an, as they say, has not been revealed to a great man. In answer to this arrogant assumption of superiority the disbelievers receive a severe rebuke that what they call greatness carries no weight in the sight of God. Were it not that the obliteration of disparity of wealth, position and status would have rendered social order impossible and would have created chaos, God would have given to disbelievers tons of gold and silver so much so that even the staircases of their houses would have been made of gold, because these things are nothing in God’s sight. As stated above the main theme of the Surah is the unsparing denunciation of idolatry. But while the Qur’an condemns idol-worship it respects Jesus who, according to Christians, is an object of worship, as a great and noble Messenger of God, adding that he invited his people to the worship of One God, but they ignored his teachings and deified him. So the fault lay with them and not with him. The Surah ends on a brief but most clear and convincing discourse on Divine Unity.