Am AAindahumu alghaybu fahum yaktuboon (surah Tur: 41)

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

(52:41) Or is it that they have access to (the Truths in) the realm beyond sense-perception which they are writing down? *32

Am `indahumul ghaibu fahum yaktuboon

*32) That is, "What particular knowledge do you have to refute the truths that the Messenger is presenting before you, which you may present with the claim that you directly know the realities hidden behind the phenomenal world? Do you really have the knowledge that God is not One, but all those whom you have set up as deities also possess godly attributes and powers ? Have you really seen the angels and found that they are girls, and, God forbid, are begotten of God? Do you really know that the Revelation has neither come to Muhammad (upon whom be Allah's peace and blessings), nor it can come to any man, from God ? Do you really have the knowledge that no Resurrection will take place, that there is going to be no life after death, that there will be no Hereafter when man will be subjected to accountability and rewarded or punished according to his deeds? If you claim to possess any such knowledge, can you give in writing that you are belying what the Prophet says about the unseen realities on the ground that you have peeped into the hidden realities and seen that the truth is not that which the Prophet presents. " Here, one may express the misgiving that if in response to this, those people had given this in writing, in their stubbornness, will not this reasoning have become meaningless? But this misgiving is misplaced because even if they had given this in writing on account of their stubbornness, the common people of society in which this challenge had been given openly were not blind: everyone of them would have understood that the writing had been given out of sheer stubbornness, and no one, in fact, was refining what the Prophet said on the basis that he had the knowledge that it was false.