20. THE COMPASSION OF ALLAH TOWARDS HIS SLAVES
I pondered the wisdom behind abrogating the text of verse of stoning the married adulterer from the Qur’an, while affirming its ruling, as agreed on by all scholars, and I came to realise that there are two reasons; they are:
First, it is from the compassion (lutf) of Allah towards His slaves that He did not face them with the greatest hardship; therefore, He only mentioned the punishment of lashing and concealed the mentioning of stoning. In the same context, scholars explained that when Allah stated the obligations which the innate nature of mankind dislikes, He would refer to it in a passive format,
“decreed upon you is fasting.” [al-Baqarah (2): 183]
though it is He Who ordained this command. On the other hand, in aspects that entail comfort, He uses the active format,
“Your Lord has decreed upon Himself mercy.” [al-An’am (6):54]
Second, the text was abrogated to manifest the virtue of this nation for accepting the ruling after being convinced of its establishment through just a few evidences. This is because agreeing on the establishment of this ruling is evidence per se, but nevertheless is not as superior as it would have been should the evidence have been established in the text of Qur’an.
The example of this is the acceptance of Prophet Ibrahim (‘a lay hi as-salam) to act upon the vision he received in his dream to slaughter his son, which is evidence per se, but not as strong as it would be if such a revelation was received while in an awakened state.
(source: al-Hafiz Abu’l-Faraj ibn al-jawzl [d. 597AH] “CAPTURED THOUGHTS being” a translation of his masterpiece ‘Sayd al-K hatir)
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