Surah Taha: Thematic English Translation (Mustafa Çevik)

Ta Ha! (O human being)

We have not sent down this Quran to you to cause you hardship or to make you unhappy. On the contrary, We sent it down as a warning and counsel for those who reflect on the reason for their creation and wish to know their responsibilities toward Allah.

Allah, the source of knowledge, justice, happiness, and power, governs what He has created through the order and the laws He has established.

Allah is the sole Creator and the true Owner of everything in the heavens, on the earth, between them, and beneath the soil.

Whether you conceal or reveal what you think, what you believe, and what you do makes no difference to Allah, for He knows what is hidden, and even what you believe to be more hidden than the hidden.

O people! Without doubt Allah alone knows the way of life best suited to your innate nature (fitrah). You have no true god other than Him. The truest, most beautiful, and most perfect attributes belong to Him alone.

We will tell you part of what Moses went through. Recall when, travelling with his family at some hour of the night, he saw a fire in the distance and said to his family: “You wait here; I will go and take a look at the place where that fire is; perhaps I will bring you an ember from it, or find someone beside it who can show us the way.”

When Moses drew near the fire, a voice called to him: “O Moses! I am your Lord; take off your shoes, for you are in the sacred Valley of Tuwa. I have chosen you as a prophet. Now listen carefully to what is about to be revealed to you. I am the true God, who created the universe and all that is in it, established its order, and laid down its laws; so you too, perform the prayer to keep this truth in mind, and do not falter in your obedience to Me.

The truth is that the Last Hour will come and the universe will be destroyed; after that people will be raised to life again and called to account for whom they lived their worldly lives by and by what standard, and they will receive what they deserve. I have made the time of the Last Hour known to no one. Let not those who do not believe it will come, and who chase after their own empty desires and wishes, mislead and deceive you about it, or you too will be among the losers.” After saying this, Allah continued: “O Moses! What is that in your right hand?”

Moses said, “It is my staff. I lean on it when I am tired, I beat down leaves from the trees with it for my animals, and I use it for other things as well.” Then Allah said to Moses, “Now put it down on the ground, O Moses!” And when Moses put the staff in his hand down on the ground, it turned into a snake moving swiftly.

To Moses, seized with fear at what he saw, Allah said: “O Moses! Do not be afraid, and take hold of it; We will at once return it to its former state. Now put your hand into the front of your garment! It will come out shining white, a source of light, without any disease as its cause or sign; and so We will have shown you some of Our great miracles as well.”

O Moses! Now go to that ungrateful, unruly Pharaoh. Thereupon Moses said, “My Lord, put my heart at ease, make my task easy for me, and loosen the knot in my tongue so that what I say may be well understood. O my Lord! Appoint my brother Aaron, one of my own family, as my helper, and strengthen me through him, so that together we may better make known that You are the true Lord and God. Surely You see and know our every state.”

Allah said to Moses: “O Moses! Your request has been granted. Aaron too has been appointed as your helper. Once We had helped your mother too, inspiring her and making known to her: ‘Put your baby in a chest and leave it to the current of the river; the current will carry it to the shore, and from the shore We will have the wife of one who is an enemy both to Allah and to him take him up and adopt him as a son in her home.’ And so, O Moses, ever since then I have raised you under My watchful care with compassion and mercy, and brought you to maturity. When your sister went to the family of Pharaoh, who had taken you from the shore, and said, ‘I can suggest to you someone who will look after that baby,’ it was We who had ordained that it be so and directed her there. In this way We reunited you with your mother, so that she might be glad and not grieve. Then, when you had come of age, you accidentally took a life and killed a man, and We delivered you from that distress too. O Moses! We put you through a number of trials and brought you to maturity, and then for years you remained far from the place where you were born and grew up, among the people of Midian; at last, again by Our decree, you have come here once more.

O Moses! I have chosen you as My messenger and prepared you. Now go, you and your brother Aaron, to Pharaoh with the miraculous proofs I have granted you, and never show any slackness or timidity in inviting him and those with him to take Me alone as Lord and God. Both of you, go before that ungrateful, unruly, insolent man and, addressing him in a gracious and courteous manner, convey to him that Allah, the Creator of human beings, is their true Lord and God, and that therefore the authority to establish order over people and to lay down moral rules belongs to Allah alone. You cannot know; perhaps he will grasp this truth, come to his senses, and begin to reflect, or fear of Allah will enter his heart and he will turn to the truth.”

Then Moses said: “My Lord! We fear that, in response to this call we are to make in Your name, Pharaoh will act toward us with hostility, use violence against us, and grow even more unruly.” And Allah said to them: “Do not be afraid! I hear and see everything, and I am with you, guarding and watching over you; now go straight to him and say: ‘We two are messengers of our Lord. Cease your oppression and tyranny over Allah’s servants, for the Lord and God of them, of you, and of us is Allah alone. In Allah’s name we invite you and those with you to the truth, to live the life whose limits Allah has set, which is the reason for your creation.

Only by living in keeping with this call can safety and happiness be attained in this world and the Hereafter. Stop oppressing these Children of Israel too; set them free and let them come with us. O Pharaoh! It has been revealed to us that the ungrateful and the wrongdoers who turn away from our Lord’s call will suffer a severe punishment both in this world and in the Hereafter.’”

Having listened to what Moses and Aaron said, Pharaoh said, “And who might this Lord of yours be, O Moses?” Moses replied, “Our Lord is Allah, who creates everything as He has ordained it to be, guides it to the path that suits the purpose of its creation, places responsibilities on it, and will then call it to account for them.”

Thereupon Pharaoh said to Moses, “Well then, what will become of the former peoples who took lords and gods other than Allah? Will they too be punished?” Moses said, “Their case has been determined by my Lord’s laws; only He knows what judgment will be passed on them. My Lord never errs and never forgets; and He is Allah, who has spread out the earth like a bed for the comfort of His servants, opened roads and passes in it, sends down rain from the sky, brings forth from the soil plants of every kind and in pairs, and feeds both people and animals with His blessings.

Without doubt, all these are clear proofs that Allah is the Lord and God of all that is in the universe. Only those who use their reason and reflect understand and grasp this.”

O people! We created you from the earth, We will return you to the earth when you die, and then We will raise you from it once more. Indeed, We invited Pharaoh, with miracles and Our signs, to the truth, to the system of life that is the reason for his creation. But he called them all lies and turned his back, and stubbornly persisted in associating partners with Allah and in disbelief.

Pharaoh turned to Moses and said, “O Moses! Have you come to do away with our order by sorcery, to drive us out of our land and our homes, and to seize the government? But know that we too will answer you with a more powerful sorcery, and so we will foil this trick of yours and discredit it. Now set a suitable place and time, so that we may settle accounts with you before everyone’s eyes.”

Moses said to Pharaoh, “Then let us meet on the festival day, at mid-morning when the people gather, in the square, before the people.” Thereupon Pharaoh gathered his sorcerers and prepared them, and at last, on the day of the meeting, they came together.

Moses called out to Pharaoh, to those who had come with him, and to the people: “By taking others besides Allah as lords and gods and associating them with Allah as partners, you are both doing yourselves great harm and being ungrateful to Allah, rebelling against Him and slandering Him. If you do not give this up and agree to follow the system of life that is the reason Allah created you, Allah will punish you with a terrible punishment and wipe you out root and branch. Have no doubt that the end of those who do not accept Allah’s call has always been ruin.”

At these words of Moses, Pharaoh and his chief advisers conferred secretly among themselves, saying, “The intention of this Moses and his brother has become plain. Just as we guessed, they want to sway the people by using the art of sorcery, stir them up against us, overthrow the present order, seize the government, and rule the country as they please,” and so they settled their decision about Moses. Then they summoned the sorcerers and told them that they must display all their skill in defeating Moses, and that they absolutely had to succeed.

So the sorcerers who came out into the square said to Moses, “O Moses! Will you show your skill first, or shall we?” Moses said to the sorcerers, “You show your skills first.” Thereupon the sorcerers threw down the ropes and sticks in their hands. Through the trickery of sorcery the ropes and sticks began moving like snakes toward Moses, and at this Moses grew alarmed and began to be afraid. And We revealed to Moses: “Do not be afraid; it is you who will prevail. Now put down the staff in your hand; your staff will swallow up all that they have produced by the trickery of sorcery; what they have done is nothing but an illusion to deceive the eye, and know well that sorcerers will never succeed, whatever they do.” And so it happened. Seeing this, the sorcerers understood and acknowledged that what Moses had brought about was not something that could be done by the art of sorcery, that it was a miracle, and that Moses was a prophet; they prostrated themselves to Allah and said before everyone: “We have believed in the Lord of Moses and Aaron; we submit to His call.”

When Pharaoh heard this from the sorcerers, he said to them: “So you have accepted Moses’ prophethood and gone over to his side without my permission, have you? It seems that Moses is your master, who taught you sorcery; in return for what you have done I will cut off your hands and feet on opposite sides, and then I will hang you on the trunks of palm trees; then you will understand whose punishment is more severe, your Lord’s or mine.”

The sorcerers turned to Pharaoh and said: “With the clear truths we have heard and seen from Moses before us, we will not accept your lordship. Do your worst, but you can never make us give up believing in our Lord’s call; your rule can reach only those who follow you, and only in this brief worldly life. We have turned to the system of life to which our Lord invites us, the reason for our creation, which will make us honorable, dignified, and free; we hope that our Lord will forgive us our sorcery and our tricks to deceive the eye. What is with our Lord is better and more lasting.”

The truth is that whoever comes into his Lord’s presence having turned away from His call, his place is Hell; there is neither death there nor escape from it.

But those who come into their Lord’s presence having taken no lord or god besides Him, and so purified of shirk and disbelief, will be rewarded with the highest ranks and will abide forever in Gardens through which rivers flow, where the finest blessings are found. Such will be the reward of those who have purified themselves.

When Pharaoh stepped up his oppression and tyranny over the Children of Israel, We revealed to Moses: “Set out by night with My servants, and do not be afraid. When you reach the sea, strike the water with your staff; We will open a dry path for you there; and have no fear of Pharaoh and his army coming after you.”

Pharaoh and his army, pursuing the Children of Israel as they crossed by the path opened in the sea, were drowned in the waters as the sea closed over them. Pharaoh had not accepted what is right and had kept his people from it too, and his people had followed him blindly.

O Children of Israel! So it was that We saved you from Pharaoh’s oppression, and then on the right slope of Mount Sinai We took a pledge from you that you would take no lords and gods other than Allah. Then We provided for you in the desert, sending you quails and manna as a blessing, and We said: “Eat of the lawful and pure blessings We have granted you as provision, but never be ungrateful and run wild, nor stray from what is right; otherwise you will incur My wrath. And whoever incurs My wrath has wronged himself. But whoever repents of his shirk, his disbelief, and all his sins, turns to Allah’s call, and fulfills his responsibilities, Allah is merciful and forgiving.”

When, some time later, Moses came in haste to Mount Sinai again to receive new messages from Allah and convey them to his people, Allah said to him, “O Moses! Why were you in such a hurry to leave your people and come?” Moses said, “My Lord, they are following in my footsteps, and I came in haste to receive Your messages as soon as possible and to win Your good pleasure.” Then Allah said to him, “O Moses! So you say, but We tested them in your absence, and they followed the Samiri and went astray.”

Hearing this, Moses returned to his people in anger and grief. When he reached them, he rounded on them and rebuked them, saying, “O my people! Your Lord had made you a fine promise; did the time for this promise to be fulfilled seem too long to you, so that you did not wait, but despaired of your Lord and left the right path? Or do you want to incur your Lord’s punishment? Is that why you broke the pledge you gave to Allah and to me?”

His people replied to Moses, “We did not break the pledge we gave to our Lord and to you deliberately or willingly. We had with us ornaments we had wrongfully taken from the people of Egypt, and to rid ourselves of the burden of guilt for them we threw them into the fire. The Samiri too threw in what he had with him; then he took out what had melted in the fire, poured it into a mold, and from it made the statue of a calf that gave out a lowing sound in the wind. Then he misled us, saying that this was our god and the god of Moses too, but that Moses had forgotten his past and was trying to make us forget it as well.”

The Children of Israel had followed the Samiri without considering that the statue, which they expected as a god to guide them and solve their problems, could be of no benefit to them at all.

Yet even before Moses returned from Mount Sinai, Aaron had warned them, saying, “O my people! You are being tempted and led astray by this statue of a calf; your true Lord and God is Allah, and He is the Possessor of boundless mercy. Do not make the calf sacred and go astray; obey me.”

And they answered Aaron, saying, “Until Moses comes back, we will honor this statue of a calf, the symbol of our former belief, which we believe will help us, guide us, and protect us; we will bow before it and seek refuge in its help.”

When Moses returned to his people, he first rounded on his brother Aaron and said: “O Aaron! When you saw them going astray, why did you not stop them, but went against my command? What held you back from it?” To Moses, who was saying this while pulling at his brother’s beard, Aaron said, “Son of my mother! Stop pulling at my hair and beard, and listen to me first. I could not intervene any further because I was afraid you would say, ‘You have sown the seeds of division among the Children of Israel and caused them to split; you could not keep them together.’ They would not listen to me at all.”

This time Moses turned to the Samiri: “And you, tell me, O Samiri! What was your aim? Why did you bring this straying back to the fore?” The Samiri said to Moses, “I did not look at your call through their eyes, nor did I believe in it as they did; the idea of a god that could be seen with the eye appealed to me more. True, I learned some things from you as well, but they did not suit me or serve my interests either, so after you left I put them out of my mind too. I felt the urge to make this statue, and I made it.”

Thereupon Moses said to the Samiri, “Get out of my sight and never show your face to me again; from now on you will always be shunned by us and left to loneliness, and after your death you will be condemned to a punishment from which you can never escape. Now we will burn this statue you set before the people as a god and scatter its ashes into the sea; let us see whether it has the power to stop that! Your one true God and ours is Allah. With His boundless knowledge He has created everything and established its order.”

O Prophet! We are making known to you through the Quran (the Reminder) these and similar events of the past so that the necessary lessons may be drawn. Whoever turns away from the Quran, ignores it, pays it no heed, and draws no lessons from it will, on the Day of Resurrection, carry on their backs a great burden of guilt and will suffer its penalty.

When the Day of Resurrection comes and the Trumpet is blown, the wrongdoers who denied and rebelled will be gathered together in terror, their eyes looking as if they would leap from their sockets with fear; and, whispering among themselves as though We could not hear them, they will say to one another, “We must have lived in the world about ten days,” while one of them will say, “Ten days? Of course not! We lived only one day.”

They ask you what will become of the mountains on the Day of Resurrection; say to them: “My Lord will grind them to dust and scatter them, and leave the places where they stood perfectly level; not a mound nor a hollow will remain on the earth. On That Day everyone will follow a summoner from whom there is no escape and be led to the place of gathering; by then every voice will have been hushed, able to make no sound but a whisper and a rasp. And on That Day Allah will grant intercession to no one except those who believed in the system of life that accords with the purpose of creation and strove to fulfill what it requires.”

Allah knows all that people conceal and all that they do openly, all that they have left before them and behind them, and He gives everyone what they deserve. On the Day of Reckoning everyone will bow in reverence before Allah, who has no beginning and no end, who created everything by His knowledge and established its order, and whose existence depends on nothing; they will await in anxiety the recompense for what they did, and in the end those who turned away from Allah’s call and ended their worldly lives as guilty sinners will be the losers.

But those who believe in Allah’s call and fulfill their responsibilities will meet His reward.

O Prophet! We have sent this Quran down to you in words made up of the letters of your clear Arabic language, in which you speak and understand one another, read and write, so that your people may fully understand and grasp the warnings, guard against associating partners with Allah, and take no lords and gods other than Him.

O Prophet! While the messages of Allah, the Creator of everything, the Exalted Lord and God, the true Sovereign, are being revealed to you, do not hasten to pass judgment on any matter before they are complete! Allah is the true, exalted Sovereign, the Possessor of absolute judgment and dominion. Pray, saying: “My Lord, increase my knowledge.”

Before this We had conveyed Our command to Adam and made known to him that he must observe the prohibition We had set for him, but he forgot it. We did not find him resolute and firm in obeying Our command; so you too beware of being like that.

When We told the angels to show respect to Adam and be ready to serve him, all of them except Iblis made it known, by prostrating to Us, that they would carry out Our command; but Iblis refused to obey Our command.

Thereupon We warned Adam: “O Adam! Know that Iblis is an enemy to you and your spouse. Never fall into the traps he will set to drive you out of Paradise, and keep away from him, or you will be most remorseful and wretched.” Then We said: “You and your spouse, live in Paradise at the height of happiness, without suffering hunger or thirst, and without being oppressed by the heat of the sun.”

Although the truth had been made known to them so clearly, Iblis, who had become a devil, whispered into their hearts, saying, “O Adam! Shall I show you the way to a life and a kingdom that will make you immortal and so never come to an end? Look, here is the forbidden tree, and its fruit, that will make you immortal!” And so he brought them close to the tree they had been forbidden to approach and persuaded them to eat of its fruit; and when they broke this prohibition, their private parts, of which they would be ashamed before each other, suddenly became visible to them; finding themselves naked, they were bewildered, and at once began to cover themselves with leaves they gathered in Paradise. Thus Adam and his spouse disobeyed their Lord, fell into a grave error, and sinned.

Later Adam repented, asked his Lord for forgiveness, and expressed his remorse. Thereupon his Lord chose him, set him apart, and guided him to the right path. Then He said: “You no longer deserve to stay in Paradise; leave it, all together, as enemies to one another; and from now on, when guidance to the right path comes to you from Me, whoever follows it will not be left bewildered, nor will he be sorrowful and unhappy.”

But whoever turns away from My Reminder (the Noble Quran, the system of life whose limits Allah has set) will be condemned to a life of great hardship in this world, and on the Day of Resurrection he will be brought to the place of gathering blind. Then he will say to Us, “My Lord! Why have I been brought here blind, when in the world I was someone whose eyes could see?” And Allah will say to him: “Our verses came to you while you were in the world, but you acted as if blind to them and ignored them. That is why today you too will be led in this way to the punishment you deserve.”

Thus do We punish those who stop their ears to Our verses and pretend not to hear; the punishment they will suffer in Hell will be far more severe and lasting than that of this world.

Do such people never reflect, as they pass over the dwellings of those before them, on the reasons why those were destroyed? Yet there are many lessons to be learned from their fate. Had it not been for a term your Lord set beforehand for punishing those who associate partners with Allah and deny the truth, it would have been inevitable that these too be punished at once.

O Prophet! For now, be patient in the face of their attacks on you and on the system and morality to which you invite; before the rising of the sun and before its setting, in part of the night, and at both ends of the day, keep your Lord’s greatness in mind (glorify Him, tasbih), so that you may find peace.

And do not look with longing at the means We have given some of those who associate partners with Allah in the life of this world in order to test them; the blessings your Lord will give you are far finer and more lasting.

O Prophet! Command the members of your family and your community (ummah) to perform the prayer. And keep at it patiently yourself! We do not want you merely to chase after provision. It is We who create your provision; do not forget that happiness, justice, and peace can be attained by living an Allah-centered life.

Despite all these truths, the deniers still say, “If Muhammad is a prophet, should he not bring a miracle and show it?” Say to them: “Does the Quran not tell you how those before you were destroyed for rejecting the call, even though they had been warned with miracles?”

Had We destroyed them without sending a prophet, they would then have said, “Our Lord! Had You sent us a prophet, we would not have fallen into this state; we would have followed Your prophet.”

Say to people: “Value the call I am making in Allah’s name while it is reaching you, and do not forget that in the end everyone will meet what they deserve. So now you too wait and see; when the day comes, you will learn who are those on the right path.”