Verse 46 of Surah 8 Researched for Modern-day Muslims

In the Name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful

As extracted from QUR’AANIC STUDIES – A Modern Tafsir PART II, the Arabic text, it's transliteration, and it's meaning in English of Verse 8:46 are as under:

Please see the image on top above.

46. WaateeAAoo Allaha warasoolahu wala tanazaAAoo fatafshaloo watathhaba reehukum waisbiroo inna Allaha maAAa alssabireena

8:46. And obey Allah and His Messenger and do not quarrel; for, then, you will lose courage and your power will go away. And be patient! Indeed, Allah is with those who are patient.

Qur’aanic Verse 8:46 was, of course, revealed when the Prophet (peace on him) lived on this earth.

But the Qur’aan, with all its Verses, is the last divine Message for mankind, and, therefore, applicable to all times till the Last Day!

As such, we must research this, as also every other, Verse in the circumstances of our time. So, let us proceed:

And obey Allah. Now, no human being is in direct contact with Allah. So, what does this ‘obey Allah’ mean to us now?

Obviously, it means obeying His unpolluted Message in the form of the Qur’aan! Verse 15:9 provides divine Guarantee against its corruption.

But do we, Muslims, obey (follow) the Qur’aan? I may not be much off the mark even if I guess that 99% of us do not! Yes, we read it, but as a parrot would do – without understanding! Our Mullahs have issued a fatwa that mere reading of the Qur’aan, even without understanding it, carries its own sawaab. So, most Muslims do not bother about understanding what they read! To tell you the secret truth, many so-called Muslims do not believe that the Qur’aan is a divine book!!

And (obey) His Messenger. These divine words, I am sorry to comment, are grievously misunderstood by the common Muslim now! The divine instruction was to obey the Messenger in person while he was living on this earth. Because then, he was the lone person directly and consciously in communication with Allah. It was through him that the Qur’aan was in its long process of being revealed. How could one then obey Allah without obeying His Messenger in person? Let me emphasize that the obedience expected was to the Messenger in person while he was living on this earth!

But what do the Muslims do now? They have come to believe that obeying the Messenger entails obeying his supposed sayings, recorded in writing hundreds of years after his death! They do not bother to see whether these sayings are in tune with the Qur’aan. They, in fact, give preference to the ahaadeeth over the Qur’aan!!

and do not quarrel. And we, Muslims, quarrel on every little thing among ourselves! Despite the explicit divine displeasure shown in Verse 30:32 against dividing the Ummah into sects, we, Muslims, happily call ourselves Sunnis, Shias, Salafi, Barelvis, Deobandis, Syeds, Pathans, Tableeghi Jamaatis, and what not! Sunnis bomb Shia masajids and vice versa. One Muslim country wages war against another just to get more oil fields!

for, then, you will lose courage and your power will go away. And we are all witnesses to this Qur’aanic prophecy coming true before our very eyes! We, as a community, have become whipping boys for any Tom, Dick, or Harry of this world!!

And be patient! Indeed, Allah is with those who are patient. It is as though this Verse, revealed in the 7^th century A.D., is telling us, Muslims of the 21^st century, that our humiliating position is the consequence of our own deeds – deviating from the Straight Path shown in the Qur’aan. Yet, if we still adhere to our flickering faith in Allah, it is not a complete curtains-down for us. We should come back to the Straight Path and be patient! We should then find that Allah has not forsaken us.

Mohammad Shafi

9^th of April, 2021.