Rather...

Rather, this verse gives a true picture of the true companions of the Holy Prophet (S), which brings before all, their true appearance.

But, alas; instead of leaving aside the simple and plain meaning of this verse, Shah Waliullah in Izalatul Khifa, with reference to Ibn Abbas, says that “Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah ‘and those with him’ is Abu Bakr and ‘you will see them bowing down, prostrating themselves’ is for Ali (a.s.), ‘seeking grace from Allah and pleasure’ are Talha and Zubair, ‘their marks are in their faces because of the effect of prostration’ are Abdur Rahman bin Auf, Saad bin Abi Waqqas and Abu Ubaidah bin Jarrah.” O just gentlemen!

Can there be any answer to such nonsense? How pitiful that a scholar like Shah Waliullah can say such meaningless thing and include such weak matter in his books and allow its publication. Had such a thing been written by any non-scholar, it would have been taken as ignorance and readers would have taken no notice of it. But the appearance of such words from the pen of a great scholar, clearly shows that prejudice is a great calamity.

Prejudice turns even the greatest scholar into an ignorant man. While writing such things, Shah Waliullah did not think how meaningless things are being jotted down and, worse than that, the author takes its proof from Ibn Abbas. Ibn Abbas was a learned man who had obtained knowledge of Quran from Amirul Mo-mineen (a.s.). There should be no doubt that neither Ali (a.s.) has made such a reckless change in the meaning of this verse nor Ibn Abbas.

Obviously, the subject words, ‘those with him’ are subject and their predicates have come one after another and not that it is a list of different people, as seen from the writing of Shah Waliullah. Similar explanations are found in other books of Ahlul Sunnat like Ghaniyatu Talibeen. How strange that such great scholars have come down to such an extent that they have tried to give wrong meaning to the obvious and clear words of the Divine verses!

They have, with extreme selfishness, given up all rules of grammar and language. Now we throw a glance of research on each and every phrase of this holy verse and whatever comes up will be presented without any prejudice and partiality. It should be clear that the first part of this holy verse, which has been made disputable, is ‘those with him’, which, according to Shah Waliullah, means Abu Bakr.