Innaka la tahdee man ahbabta walakinna Allaha yahdee man yashao wahuwa aAAlamu (surah Qasas: 56)

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

(28:56) O Prophet, you cannot give guidance to whom you please, but Allah gives guidance to whom He pleases, and He best knows those who would accept guidance. *79 They say, "If we follow this guidance with you, we shall be snatched away from our land *80

Innaka laa tahdee man ahbata wa laakinna laaha yahdee mai yashaaa`; wa Huwaa`lamu bilmuhtadeen

*79) The context shows that the object of addressing this sentence to the Holy Prophet, after mentioning the affirmation of the Faith by this Christians from Habash, was to put the disbelievers of Makkah to shame, as if to say. "O unfortunate people, what wretches you are! People from far off places are coming to benefit from the fountainhead of blessings that has been made available in your own city, but you are wilfully depriving yourselves of it." But the same thing has been said like this: "O Muhammad, you wish that your clansmen and your kinsfolk; and your near and dear ones should benefit from this life-giving nectar, but your willing alone cannot avail. To give guidance is in the power of Allah: He favours with it only those whom He finds inclined to accept guidance. If your kinsfolk lack this inclination, how can they be favoured with this blessing?"
According to Bukhari and Muslim. this verse was sent down with regard to the Holy Prophet's uncle, Abu Talib. When he was about to breathe his last, the Holy Prophet tried his utmost that he should affirm faith in La ilaha illallah, so that he might die as a Muslim, but he preferred to die on the creed of `Abdul Muttalib; that is why Allah said: "You cannot give guidance to whom you please.." But this is a well-known method of the traditionists and commentators that when they find that a particular verse applies to an event of the Prophet's time, they regard it as the occasion of the verse's revelation. Therefore, it cannot be necessarily concluded from this and the other similar traditions that have been related in Tirmidhi, Musnad Ahmad, etc. on the authority of Hadrat Abu Hurairah, Ibn `Abbas, Ibn `Umar, etc. that this verse of Surah Al-Qasas was revealed on the occasion of Abu Talib's death. This only shows that the truth of its meaning became most evident only on that occasion. Though the Holy Prophet sincerely wished that every man should be blessed with guidance, the person whose dying on disbelief could cause him the greatest anguish and of whose guidance he was most desirous on account of personal bonds of love and affection, was Abu Talib. But when he was helpless in affording guidance even to him, it became evident that it did not lie in the power of the Prophet to give guidance to one or withhold it from another, but it lay wholly in the power of AIlah. And Allah bestows this favour on whom ever He wills not on account of a family or tribal relationship, but on the basis of one's sincerity, capability and inclination of the heart.
*80) This was the most important excuse which the unbelieving Quraish made for not accepting Islam. To understand fully we shall have to see what was the position of the Quraish historically which they feared would be affected if they accepted Islam.
The importance that the Quraish gained initially in Arabia was due to them being genealogically the descendents of the Prophet Ishmael, and therefore, the Arabs looked upon them as the children of the Prophets. Then, when they became the custodians of the Ka`bah through Qusayy bin Kilab's sagacity, and Makkah became their home, their importance grew, because they were the attendants of the most, sacred shrine of Arabia, and its priests too. Therefore, every Arab tribe had to have relations with them on account of the annual pilgrimage. Taking advantage of this central position the Quraish started gaining prominence as a commercial people, and to their great good fortune, the political conflict between the Eastern Roman Empire and Iran helped them to gain an important place in the international trade. Iran in those days had blocked entrance to all the trade routes between Rome, Greece, Egypt and Syria in the north and China, India, Indonesia and eastern Africa in the south-east. The only exception was' the Red Sea route. This also was blocked when Yaman fell to Iran. After this no way of the transit of trade goods remained except that the Arab rnerchants should transport merchandise of the Roman territories to the harbours of the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf, and then lift trade goods of the eastern countries from these harbours and transport them to the Roman territories This sort of arrangement made Makkah an important center of the international trade, and the Quraish were its monopolists. But the chaotic conditions prevailing in Arabia did not allow smooth transit of the trade goods unless the Quraish had had pleasant relations with the tribes through whose territories the trade caravans passed. For this the religious influence of the Quraish was not enough; they had had to enter into treaties with the tribes concerned, pay them dividends from their profits, and make gifts to the tribal chiefs and other influential people. Besides, they traded in money-lending also on a vast scale, which had ensnared the merchants and the chiefs of almost all the neighbouring tribes.
Such were the conditions when the Holy Prophet gave his message of Tauhid. More than the prejudice of ancestral religion what caused the Quraish the greatest provocation against it was that in it they saw their own interests in jeopardy. They thought that even if polytheism and idol-worship were proved wrong and . Tauhid right by rational arguments and reasoning, it was ruinous for them to accept Tauhid. For as soon as they did so the whole of Arabia would rise in revolt against them. Then, they would be ousted from the custodianship of the Ka'bah, and alI their bonds and pacts of friendship with the polytheistic tribes would be severed, which alone guaranteed the safe transit of their trade caravans through their territories. Thus, the new Faith would not only put an end to their religious influence but also to their economic prosperity, and they might even be forced by the Arabs to quit Makkah.
This , presents a strange phenomenon of the lack of insight on the part of the world-worshippers. The Holy Prophet tried his best to make them believe that if they accepted his Message, the whole world would yield and submit to them. (See also Introduction to Surah Sad). But they saw their death in it. They thought that the change of the Faith would not only deprive them of their wealth and prosperity and influence but would render them so completely helpless in the land that the birds of the sky would pick and eat their flesh. They could not foresee the time when a few years afterwards the whole of Arabia was going to be ruled by' a central government under the Holy Prophet himself. Then even during the lifetime of their own generation Iran and `Iraq and Syria and Egypt were going to fall, one after the other, to the same central authority and within a century of this utterance by them Caliphs from the clan of the Quraish itself were to rule over vast territories, from Sind to Spain and from Caucasus to the coasts of Yaman.