WashshuAAarao yattabiAAuhumu alghawoon (surah Shuara: 224)

Tafseer Tafheem-ul-Quran by Syed Abu-al-A'la Maududi

(26:224) As for the poets, they have.the erring people to follow them. *142

Washshu `araaa`u yattabi `uhumul ghaawoon

*142) That is, the people who follow and accompany the poets, are wholly different in, their characteristics, habits and temper from those who follow and accompany Muhammad (upon whom be Allah's peace). The difference between the two groups is so obvious that one group can be easily distinguished from the other. On the one side, there are the people who are characterised by the high seriousness, civilized and gentle behaviour, righteousness and fear of God, sense of responsibility and a high regard for the rights of others; people who are fair and just in their dealings, . who do not utter a word except in the cause of goodness, who have a high and pure ideal before them, which they pursue with single-minded devotion and for whose attainment they expend all their energies and capabilities. On other side, there are the people whose only pastime is to portray erotic scenes of love and wine-drinking, mocking and jesting, satirizing and eulogizing, or to arouse feelings of hatred and enmity and vengeance against others, or to describe charms of unchaste women to the brothel or of chaste ladies in the houses, only for the sake of pleasing the people and winning their applause. From the crowds who throng the poetic sessions and follow the "famous" poets, one cannot help forming the impression that those people are free from every moral restriction, who have no object in life except to gratify the lusts of the flesh like animals, and who have no idea whatever of the higher and nobler ideals and ends of life. The person who cannot see the obvious difference between the two types is indeed blind. But if in spite of seeing and knowing the difference, only for the purpose of suppressing the Truth, he says that Muhammad (upon whom be Allah's peace) and his Companions are no different from the poets and their followers, he is not only a liar but has also transgressed all bounds of modesty and decency.