Kāna, and Why the Jinn Cannot Be Seen

The point about past and present tense raises a related question: how does kāna relate to verses like these?

Kāna is just an expression in Arabic. Those who are starting to learn Arabic learn that kāna is a past tense. So, literally speaking, it seems to mean that Allah was the Ghafūr and Raḥīm, whereas He is the Ghafūr and Raḥīm. This is just eloquent Arabic, where the past tense is used to denote a continuous tense. It is simply more eloquent to use an unusual way of doing it. This happens in Arabic all the time.

For example, one says iyyāka naʿbudu. Iyyāka is the object; naʿbudu, we worship You. But rather than say naʿbuduka, we worship You, He said iyyāka naʿbudu, which means: only You do we worship. It is said that al-taqdīmu mā ḥaqquhu al-taʾkhīr yufīdu al-ḥaṣra wa-l-takhṣīṣ, which basically means that changing the position of something that is supposed to come after, to before, provides the benefit of emphasis and specificity. This is a similar kind of method of using the eloquence of the Arabic language.

It is not to be translated in the past tense; nobody has done that. And it was not something that even the kuffār made a big deal out of in their time, because they understood the language. It is only today half-baked Arab Christians who like to bring those kinds of things up.

Why, then, can the jinn not be seen? That is the way Allah (swt) made it; there are wisdoms in that. It is related, though, that in the Hereafter, in Paradise, inshāʾAllāh, we will be able to see them, and they will not be able to see us. The human being and the jinn were both created for the worship of Allah (swt), so they share in that; yet in that sense, the human being is still the ashraf al-makhlūqāt. The human being is the most noble of Allah's creation.

So whether there is extraterrestrial life, life on other planets, perhaps more progressive than us and way ahead, and so on and so forth, as some people like to hypothesise: we are the ashraf al-makhlūqāt. Unless there is a branch of the human beings that reached there somehow, and that seems doubtful.