Overview (Verses 40 - 42)

To Whom Judgement Belongs

At this point Joseph makes his final and decisive point, making it clear to his interlocutors where all power and judgement lie, and to whom obedience is owed and how it must be acknowledged. Or, in short, to whom worship should be offered: “All judgement rests with God alone. He has ordained that you should worship none but Him. This is the true faith, but most people do not know it.” (Verse 40)

Judgement and authority belong to no one other than God. It is He who is the Godhead, with authority to legislate and judge. Indeed, sovereignty, belongs to Him, for sovereignty is one of God’s basic attributes. Whoever claims any right to it is indeed disputing God’s power, whether the claimant be an individual, a class, a party, an organization, a community or an international organization representing mankind. Anyone who claims this very basic attribute of God’s for himself disbelieves in God. His disbelief is in the form of denying a part of faith which is essentially and universally known as a fact.

Usurping the rights of sovereignty which belong to God alone does not come in one form only. For a person to claim the basic characteristic of Godhead, which is sovereignty, he need not be so crude as to say, ‘I know no God whom you may worship other than myself,’ or, ‘I am your Lord, the Most High,’ as Pharaoh did. He actually claims these rights disputing God’s authority when he starts to derive laws from any source other than God’s law, declaring that the source of power and authority belongs to some institution or being other than God. Even when that institution is the whole nation or all humanity, the result is the same. In the Islamic system, the nation selects the ruler, giving him the authority to govern in accordance with God’s law. The nation, or the community, is not the source of sovereignty which enacts the law and gives it its power. The source of sovereignty is God. Many are those who confuse the exercise of power and its source. This confusion is found even among Muslim scholars. What we say is that human beings, in their total aggregate, do not have the right of sovereignty. They only implement what God has legislated. What He has not legislated has no legitimacy. It does not carry God’s sanction.

Joseph (peace be upon him) justifies his statement that all sovereignty belongs to God alone by saying: “All judgement rests with God alone. He has ordained that you should worship none but Him.” (Verse 40) We cannot understand this justification as the Arabs did at the time of the revelation of the Qur’ān unless we understand the meaning of ‘worship’ which can only be offered to God.

The meaning of the verb, `abada, or ‘to worship’ in Arabic is ‘to submit or surrender’. In the early days of Islam it never meant, in Islamic terminology, only ‘to offer worship rituals’. In fact none of the worship rituals was as yet imposed as a duty. So the statement was rather understood in the manner it was meant linguistically, and this later became its Islamic meaning. What it meant then was submission to God alone, and obeying His orders and commands, whether they related to worship rituals, moral directives or legal provisions. To submit to God in all these was the essence of worship which must be addressed to God alone. It could never be addressed to any of His creatures.

When we understand the meaning of worship in this light, we understand why Joseph stated that worship can only be addressed to God as his justification for saying that all judgement and sovereignty belong to Him alone. Submission to God will not become a reality if judgement and sovereignty belong to someone else. This applies to matters where God’s will is done by the laws of nature which God has set in operation in the universe, and to matters where human beings have a choice with regard to their actions and practices. True submission to God applies in both areas.

Once more we say that to dispute God’s right of sovereignty takes the disputant out of the religion of Islam altogether. This is a basic rule of Islam that is essentially known to all. This is because disputing God’s right and authority means a rejection of worshipping Him alone. It is essentially an act of associating partners with God, which means that those who dispute God’s rights of sovereignty are not Muslims at all. The same applies to those who approve their claims and obey them without rejecting, even mentally, their action of usurping God’s right and authority. The claimant and those who obey him are the same in the Islamic view.

Joseph (peace be upon him) states that the true faith is that which assigns all judgement to God alone in implementation of His being the only one to be worshipped. “This is the true faith.” (Verse 40) This is a statement of limitation. No faith can be true unless it gives all sovereignty to God and makes this a practical implementation of worshipping Him alone.

“But most people do not know it.” (Verse 40) The fact that they do not know does not make them followers of the true faith. A person who does not know something cannot believe in it or implement it. If people do not know the essence of faith, it is illogical to say that they follow it. Their ignorance is not an excuse for describing them as Muslims. Rather, their ignorance bars them from that characteristic in the first place. To believe in something presupposes knowing it. That is a basic, logical fact.

In a few clear words Joseph (peace be upon him) outlines his faith completely, showing all its constituent elements and shaking to the core the foundations of disbelief, polytheism and tyranny.

Tyranny cannot take place in any land without its claiming the most essential quality of Godhead, namely His lordship over people’s lives. This is the right to make people submit to its laws and orders, and implement its ideology. Even if it does not say so in words, it actually practises it. Tyranny does not exist unless the true faith has been removed from people’s thoughts and lives. For only when people firmly believe that all sovereignty and judgement belong to God alone, because worship belongs to Him, is there no room left for tyranny in their lives.

At this point Joseph has completed his task of preaching God’s faith to them, having attached it initially to the matter which preoccupied them. He therefore reverts to that point and interprets their dreams for them, so that their trust in what he says is strengthened, and they are more amenable to what he preaches: “My two prison companions! One of you will give his lord wine to drink. The other will be crucified, and the birds will eat from his head.” (Verse 41) He does not point out directly who will be released and who will meet the depressing end as he does not want to confront anyone with bad news. He stresses that he is certain of the knowledge imparted to him by God: “The matter on which you have sought to be enlightened has thus been decided.” (Verse 41) It will only be as God has decreed. There is no escape from it.

Joseph was an innocent prisoner, jailed on the strength of false accusations, without any proper investigation of his case. It may be that the incident of the Chief Minister’s wife and the other women was portrayed to the King in a way that totally misrepresented the facts, as often happens in such cases. It was only natural then that Joseph wanted his case to be put to the King in the hope that he would order that it be looked into properly. Hence, Joseph “said to the one whom he believed would be released: ‘Remember me in the presence of your lord.’“ (Verse 42) He actually asked him to mention his case and situation to the King and to tell him of the truth he had seen in him. He describes him as his lord because he was the ruler to whom he submitted. The term ‘lord’ here means ‘master, ruler, a person of acknowledged authority and a legislator’. This re-emphasizes the meaning of lordship in Islamic terminology.

At this point, the sūrah leaves out mentioning that the two prisoners’ dreams came true in exactly the manner Joseph described. There is a gap here, as well as an implication that it is sufficient for us to know that all this took place. The prisoner whom Joseph felt would be released was actually released, but he did not act on what Joseph requested. He forgot all the lessons that Joseph had taught him. He forgot to remember his true Lord as he was distracted by the demands of life in the palace after he returned there. Indeed, he forgot all about Joseph: “But Satan caused him to forget to mention Joseph to his lord, and so he remained in prison for several years.” (Verse 42)

The pronoun ‘he’ in the last clause refers to Joseph. God wanted to teach him a lesson so that he would sever all ties in favour of his tie with God Himself. Hence, He did not make the achievement of what he wanted dependent on any human being or on anything relating to a human being. This is an aspect of the honour God gave Joseph. God’s true servants should be totally dedicated to Him. They must leave all decisions concerning their lives to God alone. When human weakness initially makes this impossible, He bestows on them His grace and makes them unable to adopt a different attitude so that they know its blessing. They are then able to accept it out of love and obedience to God. He then gives them more of His blessings and grace.