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One Straight Path Among Many Others

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One Straight Path Among Many Others

Hizb 15 closes Al-Anam with a striking passage on human stubbornness, arguing that even if angels were sent down to disbelievers, or the dead were made to speak to them, they still would not believe unless God willed it, a rebuke of the demand for ever more spectacular proof already raised earlier in the sura. It restates prohibited foods, carrion, blood and swine among them, and pushes back against pre-Islamic Arabian customs that dedicated portions of crops and livestock to idols by unwritten local convention.

The hizb includes one of the Quran's most frequently quoted ethical summaries, an extended list of core obligations: associating nothing with God, honoring parents, not killing children out of fear of poverty, avoiding indecency, not taking a life unjustly, safeguarding an orphan's property, giving full and honest measure in trade, speaking justly even against one's own relatives, and fulfilling one's covenant with God, introduced and closed with the statement that this is a straight path to be followed rather than the many other paths that lead a person away from it.

Al-Anam ends by describing humanity as made successors on the earth, each person raised in rank above another as a test of what has been given them, closing the sura's long argument on the note of accountability it opened with.

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