The Whisperings That Make Them Dispute

The next few verses, which are not entered upon, are a reiteration and further clarification of not eating what is ḥarām, and ḥarām meats in particular. Do not eat — the default being laid down — that over which the name of Allah has not been pronounced, for that is a transgression. And why do people come to dispute with you? Why these Islamophobes in the media? Why these various editorials and journalists, and any other, even politicians — why? Allah says it here: it is the shayṭāns who inspire their friends to dispute with you. It is an inspiration of Shayṭān; a whispering of Shayṭān; the direction of Shayṭān that he must do it.

Hence Allah (swt), to give some understanding of the distinction between good and evil, says in verse 122 — verses 122 and 123 — where a comparison is drawn: the one who was dead, and to whom We gave life. There was one who was not; We gave him life, and thereafter appointed for him a light by which he walks among people: he knows what to do — a light, a spiritual light. Can such a one be as the man still in darkness, who will not come out of it at all? It is not the same. So it is: for the disbelievers their deeds have been made to seem fair, that they may think them good; that this is modern and not old-fashioned. Human beings are old-fashioned. Human beings are as old as time — as old as Ādam (peace be upon him) — and their characteristics are perennial. That people now do things differently in this twenty-first century does not make it superior. We have not had a century even of this new idea; it is fifty or sixty years, subḥān Allāh, whereas men lived for centuries before, and what was good for them… Certain things we have undoubtedly improved; but there is much that we shall only discover in fifty or a hundred years, when the excitement is past and people begin to think seriously. They will probably look back and say that it was a great mistake: that many aspects, many notions, were a great mistake. A man must therefore be very careful.

And Allah then says:

In every place there will be those who engage in some plotting, and in a measure of deception. They do it in truth only to themselves. It is simply the sunnah of Allah upon the earth that this should happen.