Quran Garden

Session 501

Chapter 3

Verse 175

This is only Satan frightening his allies, so do not fear them but fear Me, if you are believers.  (Chapter 3: Verse 175)

"The people have gathered against you, so fear them" was Satan's cry to intimidate the believers.  It is said that Satan shouts in the form of a human being or whispers to his human allies to spread his message loudly. 

Who are the Satan's allies?  In the context of Uhud, they were either the disbelievers of Quraysh, the hypocrites of Medina, or both.  "His allies" mean his beloved and the supporters of his ideology.  It is as if Allah wants you to understand that Satan was the source of the rumor: "The people have gathered against you, so fear them," while his allies took this message and tried hard to spread it throughout Medina.     

At first glance, you may say that Satan is supposed to frighten his enemies, not allies.  How do we make sense of the phrase "This is only Satan frightening his allies"?  Who is frightening who?  We know that Satan's goal was to frighten the believers from the forces of Quraysh.  In our daily lives, we say: "I frightened my little cousin of the monster."  Here, the devil tries to intimidate the believers, dissuade them from fighting, and scare them of his allies: the disbelievers and hypocrites.  In the Arabic language, there are situations where we can remove a preposition or pronoun while still maintaining the clarity of the meaning via context.  Let's look at an example from the Quran.  God says,  

And Moses chose his nation seventy men, to Our appointed time and place.  (from 7:155)

We understand that Prophet Moses, peace be upon him, chose seventy men from his people.  In the same manner, we read the verse under study, "This is only Satan frightening his allies."  Even with the pronoun omitted from the noble verse, we understand that Satan tried to frighten you of his allies.  This is further clarified by God's words, "so do not fear them but fear Me, if you are believers." In other words, the devil wanted to intimidate the believers by the forces of the hypocrites and disbelievers.  

Some scholars said that the phrase "This is only Satan frightening his allies" means that the devil wanted to scare his allies from injury and death so they would stay home and not join the fight.  We answer that such an explanation may apply to the hypocrites of Medina who abandoned the Muslim army on the way to Uhud, but cannot be applied to the second category of allies: the disbelievers.  The disbelievers amassed a large army and went out to fight against the Muslims.  Furthermore, we understand from Allah's statement, "so do not fear them but fear Me, if you are believers," that the devil's allies are not the ones he intended to scare, but rather the Muslims.  

God urges the believers to draw a comparison and then decide: Should they fear the devil's allies or fear disobeying the Almighty?  God is the All-Powerful who knows the evil schemes of the disbelievers.  He is capable of defeating the devil and all his allies.  Thus, the logical conclusion is to fear disobeying God and the Messenger more than all the forces of evil on earth.  God says,

Do not be grieved by those who are quick to disbelieve.  They will not harm God in the least; it is God's will that they will have no share in the Hereafter- a terrible torment awaits them. (3:176)