Sūrat an-Nisāʾ
Section 6 of 28 · Surah Studies · Mufti Abdul Rahman Mangera
Allah Wants to Lighten Your Burden
Allah (swt) then treats of several other matters. First, there is a passage from verse 26 onwards — three verses, and very profound ones:
يُرِيدُ ٱللَّهُ لِيُبَيِّنَ لَكُمْ وَيَهْدِيَكُمْ سُنَنَ ٱلَّذِينَ مِن قَبْلِكُمْ وَيَتُوبَ عَلَيْكُمْ ۗ وَٱللَّهُ عَلِيمٌ حَكِيمٌ وَٱللَّهُ يُرِيدُ أَن يَتُوبَ عَلَيْكُمْ وَيُرِيدُ ٱلَّذِينَ يَتَّبِعُونَ ٱلشَّهَوَٰتِ أَن تَمِيلُوا۟ مَيْلًا عَظِيمًا يُرِيدُ ٱللَّهُ أَن يُخَفِّفَ عَنكُمْ ۚ وَخُلِقَ ٱلْإِنسَـٰنُ ضَعِيفًا
“Allah intends (through this Qur’ān) to explain to you (the rules) and to guide you to the ways of those (prophets who passed) before you, and to turn graciously towards you. Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise. Allah intends to turn graciously towards you, while those who follow desires want you to deviate (from the right path), a huge deviation. Allah intends to make things easy on you. And man has been created weak.” (4:26–28)
After mentioning all of these things, Allah says: Allah wishes to make this clear to you; Allah wishes to give you this exposition; and He wishes to guide you — to guide you to the ways of those before you; and then He wishes to forgive you. He wishes to accept your repentance, should you do anything wrong; and Allah is the Knowing and the Wise. Then Allah says: Allah wishes to accept your repentance, while those who follow their desires would rather that you inclined away from the faith completely. There are always such people — they appear in different colours, and some of this is explained as the sūrah goes on. Many people want others to do wrong, simply because it makes them feel better: it validates their understanding, it validates their practice, it validates their abandonment of something. That will always be the case. Do not come under their pressure.
Then Allah says: Allah wishes to lighten the burden upon you. He wishes to lighten it, because human beings — the insān — have been created weak. That is the declaration of Allah, who created us. One of the explanations given here is that when a man sees a woman, he has great difficulty in controlling his gaze and managing the situation, in not having sticky eyes — which in Ramadan certainly becomes easier for many people. But that is the explanation: that the human being has been created weak. He knows he cannot have a thing; not everyone he sees can be his. He may have, at most, up to four, according to the permission; yet every new person he sees, he wants to look at. It is this natural desire which is part of our weakness — part of the fitnah, part of the grand scale of the environment in which Allah wishes to place us, and which He wishes us to avoid, to see whether we love Allah more, by abandoning the stare and the surreptitious look and following the command of Allah. May Allah make that easy for men.