And the virtue is treated as evil...

And the virtue is treated as evil; it has no protector or defender to stand for it. Ultimately, the things deteriorate to unbelievable extent, as we are seeing with our own eyes today. However, the sentence: “ And they say: 'Be Jews or Chris­tians' ”, stands for the sentences, “The Jews say: 'Be Jews, you will be guided aright'; and the Christians say: 'Be Christians, you will be rightly guided.' ” They make such divergent claims because of their divergences and differences. Qur’an: Say: “Nay!

(we follow) the religion of Ibrahim, the upright one, and he was not of the polytheists” : It is the reply of their claims. The Prophet should tell them: Nay! we follow the religion of Ibrahim, the upright one; because it is the one religion which was followed by all your prophets - Ibrahim and all those who came after him. Ibrahim, who brought this religion, was not a polytheist.

Had there been so many divisions in his religion - the divisions which were attached to it by the inno­vators - he would have become a polytheist: That which is not a part of Allah's religion cannot invite towards Allah, it will surely call to something other than Allah - and this is what polytheism means. The religion of Ibrahim is the religion of unity; it does not contain anything that is not from Allah.

Qur’an: Say: “We believe in Allah and (in) that which has been revealed to us, and (in) that which was revealed to Ibrahim...” : After mentioning the claim of the Jews and the Christians, Allah describes the truth - and He always tells the truth. The truth consists of the testimony of belief in One God and belief in all that was brought by the prophets - without making any distinc­tion between them. This is what is called the Islam.

Belief in Allah was the fundamental part of that which was revealed to the prophets; yet it has been mentioned here separately. The reason is that the belief in the Creator is a natural instinct, it does not depend on prophetic proofs and arguments. After that fundamental belief, Allah mentions “that which has been revealed to us”, that is, the Qur'an or the knowledge contained in it. Then He mentions “that which was revealed to Ibrahim and Isma'il and Ishaq and Ya'qub”.

Thereafter is de-scribed “that which was given to Musa and 'Isa”; these two have been especially mentioned because the speech is addressed to the Jews and the Christians who call only to these two prophets, respectively. Finally the testimony includes “that which was given to the prophets”.