Tafseer of Sura Feel – Elephant

SURAH AL-FEEL (THE ELEPHANT) Surah: 105

THEME: THE QUDRAT (POWER AND MIGHT) OF ALLAH TA’ALA

In the name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful

1. Did you (O Muhammad Sallallaahu Alaihi Wasallam) not see how your Rabb dealt with the companions of the elephant?

2. Did He not make their plot go astray?

3. And He sent upon them birds in flocks.

4. Striking them with stones of baked clay.

5. And He made them like an empty field of stalks (of which the corn has been eaten up by cattle).

COMMENTARY

The surah opens with a direct address to Nabi Sallallaahu Alaihi Wasallam where Allah Ta’ala enlightens him with regards to the incident of the Elephant.

Allah Ta’aala in this Surah provides a very concise description of the event where Abraha, governor and viceroy of Yemen at that time sets out with his army of elephants with the evil intention of destroying the Ka’ba. Allah Ta’aala, the Sovereign of the worlds takes it upon Himself to protect His house and foil the plans of Abraha and his army. He sent flocks of birds, armed with mere pebbles of baked clay in their beaks and feet and caused these to be rained down upon Abraha and his army leaving them totally and completely destroyed. Such was their destruction that Allah Ta’aala compares their sight to an empty field of stalks, of which the corn has been devoured by cattle.

Remember there is always someone mightier and more powerful than you!

Nowadays, when oppression and power brandishing have become the norm, should we not be taking a lesson from the above incident. How often do we come across oppression stemming as a direct result of financial or physical power. Current global economic situations starkly reveal this, where financial powers of just one nation control and oppress the entire world. On the other hand how many of our women are finding themselves victims of physical abuse being savagely and mercilessly beaten by their husbands. Is this not the abuse of physical power. And then when we focus on child abuse, once again is it not abuse of physical power.

To the perpetrators of these cowardly and dastardly acts, is not the above incident of Abraha a sufficient warning to immediately desist and refrain. Did Abraha not think of himself as all-powerful and mighty? If only he remembered that there was a power and might far greater than his, than he would not have faced such humiliation and destruction.

So respected reader the next time you think of oppressing someone, whether it is on account of financial or physical power, then for a moment ponder over your insignificant “power” in comparison to that of Allah Ta’aala.!

May Allah Ta’aala protect us from the abuse of His favours and instead endow us with the Tawfeeq of using these to the benefit of the Ummah, Aameen.