Commentary on a verse of the Holy Quran

SEPTEMBER 1984 HOLY QUR’AN COMMENTARY In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Ever Merciful We praise Him and invoke His blessings on His Noble Prophet COMMENTARY ON A VERSE OF THE HOLY QUR’AN Wa Inna Lakum Fil An’ame La Ibratan, Nusqeekum Mimma Fee Botooneha, Wa Lakum Feeha Manafe’o Kaseeratun Wa Minha Ta’koloon. “And in the cattle also there is a lesson for you. We give you to drink of that which is in their bellies and you have in them many benefits, and of them you also eat; (23:22) The verse means to say that man derives great benefits from the cattle. They are living machines which produce for him such a wholesome and nutritious food as milk, from fodder, grain herbage and leaves of trees, etc., which they eat. Man has so far failed to devise a machine which like these Divinely devised machines could produce milk from these things. The word tf/^c , meaning an indi- cation or evidence whereby one passes from ignorance to knowledge, seems to allude to the subtle process which takes place in the bellies of some of the animals turning grass or herbage eaten by them into pure and wholesome milk and by pondering over which one is led to acquire an insight into God’s great power and into the subtle ways through which Divine laws work. By this simile of grass and milk we are led to visualize that just as fodder, grain and grass cannot pro- duce milk without passing through the wonderful machine created by God in the bellies of animals. Similarly, human reason which is like grass and grain and cannot produce, without the aid and assistance of Divine revelation, a teaching which, like milk, is very useful for man’s moral and spiritual development.