Sūrat al-Anʿām: A Refined Society That Knows Its Limits, and the Surah of the Civil State

Occasion: Transcription of a Fajr khatira delivered on 29 April 2026 Source: A transcription of a video khatira by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — Watch the original video on YouTube

O Allah, keep our hearts sound for us, preserve for us the soundness of our sight and our insight, and keep us firm with the firm word in this worldly life and in the Hereafter and on the day the witnesses arise. Amen, O Lord of the worlds.

The truth is that in reciting Sūrat al-Anʿām there is a special effect on the souls of the believers who praised Allah, blessed and exalted, at the beginning of the sūra for having created the heavens and the earth and created everything. However, the legislation in the sūra addresses a number of groups.

Groups the Sūra Addresses

There is the believing group, especially in relation to kinds of food, glory be to Allah the All-Powerful, and that is among the distinctions in the noble sūra: what do we eat and what do we not eat? Then we find ourselves before an address specific to the people of faith, who do not eat of that over which the name of Allah has not been mentioned. Then you see these polytheists who forbade themselves what the Lord of the worlds, glory be to Him, the Exalted, had not forbidden them, and made partners for Allah in what they ate. Then you see an address specific to kinds of food when we speak about the Jews: ﴿وَعَلَى ٱلَّذِينَ هَادُوا۟ حَرَّمْنَا كُلَّ ذِى ظُفُرٍ﴾ (And to those who were Jews We forbade every animal with claws)^[1].

The Place of the Sūra After al-Māʾida

The secret of this variety and its fit with the sūra's position is that Sūrat al-Anʿām came after Sūrat al-Māʾida, which in essence spoke about fulfilling contracts, and the first of these contracts most deserving of being kept is the contract with Allah, blessed and exalted, the contract with the Lord of the worlds, glory be to Him. For this reason you see Sūrat al-Māʾida in general speaking about how the Muslim society deals with the societies around it, the mechanisms of cooperation and its methods, and so on. Then Sūrat al-Anʿām comes to dive with you into what you should do in your daily life, and then it turns to a higher level of establishing faith inside people's souls; you hear, for example, that Allah is the One who splits the grain and the date-stone, brings the living out of the dead and brings out the dead from the living^[2], and the Lord of the worlds, glory be to Him, speaks of how crops grow from the earth and the kinds of these products, and how the one water with which the crops are watered brings forth different kinds.

The System of Commandments

However, it concludes with us, glory be to Allah the All-Powerful, with a group of principles which we began speaking about today at the Fajr prayer: ﴿قُلْ تَعَالَوْا۟ أَتْلُ مَا حَرَّمَ رَبُّكُمْ عَلَيْكُمْ ۖ أَلَّا تُشْرِكُوا۟ بِهِۦ شَيْـًٔا﴾ (Say, "Come, I will recite what your Lord has forbidden you: that you not associate anything with Him")^[3]; this is the first clause of the clauses of this contract between Allah and His servants: that you not associate anything with Him, and that you be good to your parents. This is the system of rules, or as we call them the Ten Commandments which the Lord of the worlds, glory be to Him, the Exalted, set out in Sūrat al-Anʿām, addressing in truth a refined society, a society that knows its beginning from its end, knows limits for itself and walks within their framework, and lives in the world not randomly.

So if we want today to learn a lesson, in brief: Sūrat al-Anʿām came to deal with a very refined level of the kinds of human beings who live on the earth, who know what enters their stomachs, what goes on in their minds, how their steps move, where they set out to, when they will arrive, and so on. This arrangement in this form is not speaking to a mob society, but to a civilized society.

The Qur'an as the Maker of Civilization

So if we are told one day: where is your Qur'an in relation to civilization? Then we tell people with utmost strength that our Qur'an is the maker of civilization in the world. And if we are told: does your Qur'an care about details, or does it care about punishing the polytheists from time to time? We say: our Qur'an has ordered our steps in life step by step, and has made for us that path within whose framework we move and from which we do not depart, and has ordered for us the laws of legislation literally.

And always, when we speak about such verses ﴿قُلْ تَعَالَوْا۟ أَتْلُ مَا حَرَّمَ رَبُّكُمْ عَلَيْكُمْ﴾ (Say, "Come, I will recite what your Lord has forbidden you"), you see what corresponds to them in Sūrat al-Isrāʾ: ﴿وَقَضَىٰ رَبُّكَ أَلَّا تَعْبُدُوٓا۟ إِلَّآ إِيَّاهُ وَبِٱلْوَٰلِدَيْنِ إِحْسَٰنًا﴾ (And your Lord has decreed that you worship none but Him, and that you be good to parents)^[4] and so on. And I call this sūra the sūra of the civil state; how it came with a system of legislation which literally resembles the points or clauses of a constitution in any very great state. So you see the Noble Qur'an laying down the clauses for you as though they were constitutional clauses that preserve the entity of the community.

The summary of what I wanted to say, as I draw inspiration for these meanings from Sūrat al-Anʿām while it is being recited to us: that the Lord of the worlds, glory be to Him, the Exalted, has placed us in an ordered framework, in a civilized framework, with which we taste the meaning of the terms of civility in their literal sense, and it is not fitting for a Muslim to live randomly in any circumstance, nor in any of the societies. I say this and I seek Allah's forgiveness for myself and for you.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: Sūrat al-Anʿām, verse 146; the speaker mentioned the verse's segment in summary, so we recorded what he mentioned. ^[2]: Editor's documentation: Sūrat al-Anʿām, verse 95; the speaker conveyed the meaning of the verse, so we did not record it in the body text verbatim. ^[3]: Editor's documentation: Sūrat al-Anʿām, verse 151; we recorded from the verse as much as the speaker mentioned. ^[4]: Editor's documentation: Sūrat al-Isrāʾ, verse 23; we recorded from the verse as much as the speaker mentioned.