OCCASION OF REVELATION. (VERSE NO. 97)

COMMENTS

Before the commencement of the battle of Badr, the chiefs of Meccan idolaters issued a notice that all the inhabitants of Mecca who could partake in the war, had to set out for the fight against Muslims. Th this effect some of the Meccans who had accepted Islam, but did not forsake their homes and possessions, were compelled to join the pagan forces against their Muslims brothers! Some of them were killed in the battle field and the verse revealed their inauspicious fate and end.

      The immediate occasion for this passage was the question of those who claimed to be a Muslim, but they were not willing to fulfill the commandment of migration that Allah had issued. Death caught them in sin and in the oppression to themslves:

      ``Those whom the angels carry off their souls from their bodies while they were in sin, and oppressed themselves, the angels said to them: `What were you doing?'.''

      The plural use of angel in the above passage, implies that the angel of death is not only one single angel, but there are many angels whose duty is to cause man to die. If EZRAEL is known to be the angel of death, it is because he is the arch angel, and the chief leader of the angels of death.

      Then Mecca was a place wherein Islam was being persecuted and suppressed, and therefore the Muslims inhabited there, were ordered to emigrate from Mecca to Medina, which involved of forsaking their hearths and homes. Muslims were required, and are required to wage a compaign of resistance, and of unceasing strive and struggle against evils and bad conducts.

      If they were and are barred of doing so, they had and they have, to put themselves in a place that such campaigns would be possible - they will have to emigrate. In Mecca some of the Muslims sought excuses, and failed to decide on performing God's Command. So the flood of unlucky events drove them right into the whirlpool of damnation.

INDEPENDENCE OF THE SOUL

      The verse clearly states that the angels take, and carry off the soul of man from his body; which implies that, death is not annihilation or non-existence. The angels will take the soul of the deceased, which is in fact his real existence, and the principle and main part of him, to another world to live there until resurrection.