Surah 27
(The Ant)
(Makkan Period)
Title
This surah takes its title from verse 18 where the expression wādī al-naml occurs, implying that this is either the surah in which the story of al-naml ("the ant") has been narrated or in which the word al-naml occurs.
Period of Revelation
The subject matter and style resemble the surahs of the middle Makkan period. This view is supported by various traditions. According to 'Abd Allah ibn 'Abbas and Jabir ibn Zayd, the chronological sequence of the revelation for the surahs of this period is as follows: al-Shu'arā', al-Naml, and al-Qaşaș. (See Ālūsī, Rūḥ al-Ma'ani, Vol. 19, p. 154.)
Subject Matter and Main Themes
This surah consists of two discourses. The first starts at the beginning of the surah and ends with verse 58. The second commences at verse 59 and concludes at the surah's end.
The first discourse emphasises that only those who accept the truths expounded by the Qur'an as fundamental facts regarding the Universe and who adopt, thereafter, an attitude of obedience to God in their practical lives can truly benefit from the Qur'an and qualify for the "good news" given in it. The greatest hurdle for man in following the way of the Qur'an is the denial of the Hereafter. This denial makes man irresponsible, renders him a slave to his carnal desires and obsessive in his love of worldly goods. Such an attitude makes it hard for man to be subservient to God and to accept any kind of moral limitations on his behaviour.
After this prologue, three characters are presented as examples to illustrate this point. The first character is of Pharaoh but also the chiefs of Thamud and the headstrong unbelievers of Lot's nation who were all heedless of the accountability in the Hereafter. Slaves to their carnal desires, they were also inimical to those who called them to goodness and moral uprightness. They obdurately clung to evil practices which were abhorrent to any sensible person. They did not recant, not even for one instant, until God's punishment seized them.
The second character is the Prophet Solomon (peace be on him) who had been blessed by God with wealth and dominion, with glory and splendour on a scale that was beyond even the wildest dreams of the Makkan unbelievers. However, because Solomon regarded himself as accountable to God and considered all his possessions to be God's bounty, he was ever in humble obeisance to God, displaying no trace of vanity.
The third character is the Queen of Sheba who ruled over the most wealthy and famous people in the history of Arabia. She had everything that could make a person arrogant and conceited. Her wealth and possessions were far in excess of those of the unbelievers of Makka. Moreover, she belonged to a polytheistic nation. For her, two reasons made acceptance of the Truth far more difficult than for an ordinary unbeliever. The first was that she had inherited shirk - associating others with God in His Divinity - from her forefathers and it was natural that she should be inclined to adhere to the same. Second, her natural desire to hold on to political power was not conducive with giving up polytheism and replacing it with monotheism. However, when the Truth became evident to her, nothing could prevent her from its acceptance. If, in the beginning, she held on to shirk it was merely because she was surrounded by a polytheistic milieu rather than because she had become a slave to her carnal desires. Moreover, she was not altogether oblivious of accountability to God.
The second discourse commences with the mention of certain self- evident truths and is followed by a repeated questioning of the Makkan unbelievers to the effect that: "Do these realities lend any support to the doctrine of shirk that you are following, or to tawhid to which the Qur'an calls you?" Thereafter, the real disease of the unbelievers is identified in clear terms. That being their denial of the Hereafter which made them blind to the Truth. Essentially, they were myopic to what could be seen and deaf to what could be heard. The result being that they were utterly frivolous and irresponsible in their attitude to life and its problems. If the end of life is nothing but our bodies being reduced to dust, then Truth and falsehood have no meaning. For those who subscribe to such a view, the question of whether one's life should rest on the right or wrong foundations loses all importance.
This discourse, however, is not meant to give rise to despair, nor is it meant to give the impression that there is no point in calling people who are immersed in negligence and heedlessness to the Right Way. Rather the discourse seeks to jolt the heedless from their slumber. Hence verses 67-93 contain successive and insistent mention of many things that should awaken people to the reality of the Hereafter, as also warn them of the evil consequences of their insensitivity to it. These verses also depict the Hereafter in such a way that it would appear as a reality whose details are being described by someone who has actually witnessed it.
At the end of the surah, the Qur'ānic summons to people to become servants of the One True God is couched in very concise and forceful terms. In other words, it is in their own interests to do so. At the same time people are also warned about the consequences of rejecting tawhid. They are told that if they wait until they see God's signs that will compel them to believe, then their acceptance of the Truth will be of no avail because that will be the Day of Judgement.