Transliteration:( Wa laa tufsidoo fil ardi ba'da islaahihaa wad'oohu khawfanw wa tama'aa; inna rahmatal laahi qareebum minal muhsineen )
139. Do not commit infidelity, impiety and sins as these cause the calamities of the world to descend upon you, and lead to widespread mischief. Drought is caused because of miserliness, pestilence and epidemics are caused due to adultery.
140. This means that since there is faith, piety, justice and fair play are established in the world due to the blessings of the Holy Prophet صلى الله عليه وآله وسلم You should now abstain from infidelity, polytheism, tyranny, oppression and injustice. Thus, we learn that though spreading mischief is evil under all conditions, but spreading this wherever reformation has taken place is the wickedness of the highest order.Â
141. This tells us that Dua (Prayer) and worship should reflect both fear and hope, then if Allah Almighty wills, they will be accepted without delay.
142. Like Allah Almighty, the Holy Prophet صلى الله عليه وآله وسلم is the Mercy of Allah Almighty, and very close to the good doers. Says Allah Almighty: "And We sent you not but as a mercy for all the worlds." (S21:V107).
The tafsir of Surah Al-A’raf verse 56 by Ibn Kathir is unavailable here.
Please refer to Surah A’raf ayat 55 which provides the complete commentary from verse 55 through 56.
44. The command not to make mischief in the earth means not to vitiate the right order of life. What basically, constitutes ‘mischief-making’ is to surrender oneself to one’s lusts, to commit acts in subservience to other human beings and to subscribe to base morals, social orders, civilizations, principles and laws derived from sources other than God’s Guidance. This is the essential mischief from which innumerable evils issue and which the Qur’an seeks to eradicate. The Qur’an also emphasizes that sound order is the original condition, and disorder and mischief occurred later as accidents resulting from man’s ignorance and transgression. In other words, man’s life on earth did not start with ignorance, savagery, polytheistic beliefs, rebellion against God and moral disorder whereafter reforms were gradually introduced. On the contrary, man’s life began with good order and was later corrupted because of man’s perversity and folly. God sent Prophets from time to time in order to eradicate the disorder that had set in and to restore the original, good order. These Prophets constantly ehorted people to refrain from disrupting the original order and creating mischief.
Thus the Qur’anic view on this question is altogether different from that of the proponents of the false doctrine of evolution, who postulate that man has gradually come out of darkness into light; that life has advanced in a unilinear fashion, towards increasinly better conditions. The Qur’an rather postulates that human life began in the full light of Divine Guidance, that the original state of affairs was in accord with the Right Way prescribed by God. The blame for corruption goes to man who, failing victim to Satan’s allurements, veered towards darkness and corrupted the right order of human life again and again. As for God, He continually sent Prophets in order to summon men from darkness to light, and to ask them to eschew evil and wickedness. (See Towards Understanding the Qur’an, (al-Baqarah 2, n. 230, pp. 165-6 – Ed.)
45. This clearly shows what the expression ‘mischief-making’ in the verse signifies. It consists of man’s turning to others than God as his guardian, patron and helper, and calling them to his aid and support. To bring about reform, therefore, consists of man’s turning exclusively to God as his guardian and helper.
Calling upon Allah with fear and longing’ conveys the idea that man should fear God alone, and to Him alone he should look for the fulfilment of his wishes. While calling upon God man should realize that he is totally dependent on God’s favour and that he can attain success only if God helps and guides him to it. Similarly, man should also bear in mind that once he is deprived of God’s support, he is doomed to utter failure and undoing.
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