Second...

Second: They want to deceive Allah, forgetting that He is the Knower of the seen and the unseen, Aware of what they conceal and what they proclaim. We may infer from the verses that the Jewish laity in Medina sometimes talked openly with the believers, telling them of some of the foretellings about the Prophet or giving them some information that proved the truth of Islam and its Prophet.

But their leaders used to admonish them for it, telling them that it was a thing revealed to them, it should not be disclosed to the believers, lest they argued with the Jews before the Lord - as though if the believers did not argue with them before God, He would not know of it! Such thinking implies that Allah knew only the apparent, not the hidden and concealed things or thoughts. Allah refuted this foolish idea and said: “What!

Do they not know that Allah knows what they conceal and what they proclaim?” It is our, and not God's, knowledge which is limited to the seen and does not comprehend the unseen, because our perception depends on the senses which in their turn depend on body organs - equipped with nervous instruments, surrounded by space and time, influenced by a hundred other material causes. This talk also throws light on the materialistic outlook of the Israelites.

They were so steeped in that belief that they applied the human limitations to God too. They thought that God was present and active inside the matter and prevailed over it. But that presence and that control and management were based on the same principles as a material cause brings out and controls a material effect. Such a belief was not a specialty of the Jews; it was and is held even by those followers of Islam who believe in fundamentality of matter.

For these people, God's life, know­ledge, power, choice, will, decree, order and management have the same meanings as do their own life, knowledge etc. It is a disease for which there is no cure. And the signs and warnings can avail nothing to a people who do not understand. Such views have made Islam a laughing-stock in the eyes of those who have no access to the true faith and correct Islamic knowledge.

Those detractors say: The Muslims ascribe to their Prophet the saying, “Allah created Adam in His likeness”; and these followers of the Prophet have created a god in the likeness of Adam. One group of the Muslims ascribes to its Lord all the qualities of the matter.