Tafheem-ul-Quran - Abul Ala Maududi

Ayah by Ayah

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Tafheem-ul-Quran - Abul Ala Maududi translation for Surah Al-Fath — Ayah 2

48:2
لِّيَغۡفِرَ لَكَ ٱللَّهُ مَا تَقَدَّمَ مِن ذَنۢبِكَ وَمَا تَأَخَّرَ وَيُتِمَّ نِعۡمَتَهُۥ عَلَيۡكَ وَيَهۡدِيَكَ صِرَٰطٗا مُّسۡتَقِيمٗا ٢
so that Allah may forgive you your shortcomings, whether earlier or later,1 and may complete His favours upon you2 and guide you to the Straight Way,3
Footnotes
  • [1] Qira’at: Nafieʻ read it as: “. . . preserved in a tablet .”
  • [2] Qira’at: All except for Ibn ʻAmer, ʻAsem, Hamza and Abu Jaʻfar read it as: “Every self has a preserver over it.”
  • [3] Here, this thing also should be understood well that for the weaknesses that might occur and remain in the struggle and endeavor that a group might be making for an object, the leader and guide of the group only is addressed. This does not mean that the weaknesses are the leader’s personal weaknesses. Those are, in fact, the weaknesses of the struggle that the group is making as a whole; but the address is made to the leader to tell him that his work suffers from such and such a weakness.
  • [4] However, as the address is directed to the Prophet (peace be upon him) and declared that Allah has forgiven him all his former and latter faults, the general words also give this meaning that Allah pardoned all the shortcomings (which were the shortcomings in view of his high position) of His Messenger (peace be upon him). That is why when the companions saw that he took extraordinary pains over his worship, they would say: Why do you subject yourself to such hardships when all your former and latter errors and shortcomings have been pardoned? the Prophet (peace be upon him) would reply: Should I not behave as a grateful servant? (Ahmad, Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Daud).
  • [5] The pagan tribe of Prophet Salih.
  • [6] If the context in which this sentence occurs is kept in view, one will certainly feel that the faults referred to here imply those shortcomings and weaknesses that had remained in the struggle that the Muslims had been making for the success and victory of Islam, under the leadership of the Prophet (peace be upon him), for the past nineteen years or so. These shortcomings are not known to any one because the intellect is absolutely helpless to find out any weakness in that struggle. But according to the highest standards of perfection in the sight of Allah there had remained some such weakness in it because of which the Muslims could not attain a decisive victory so soon over the pagans of Arabia. What Allah means to say is this: If you had carried on your struggle along with those weaknesses, it would have taken you much longer to subdue Arabia, but We have overlooked all those weaknesses and shortcomings and compensated for them only through Our grace, and opened for you at Hudaibiyah the door to victory and conquest which you could not have achieved only by your ordinary endeavors.