Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
Surah Al-Anbya
Surah 21 · Al-Anbya · verse 2 of 112

Quran 21:2 · Al-Anbya

مَا يَأۡتِيهِم مِّن ذِكۡرٖ مِّن رَّبِّهِم مُّحۡدَثٍ إِلَّا ٱسۡتَمَعُوهُ وَهُمۡ يَلۡعَبُونَ

No mention comes to them anew from their Lord except that they listen to it while they are at play

Translation: Sahih International
Maulana’s commentary · Tazkirul Quran

Every man who is living in this world is nearer to death than life. In this respect he is virtually on the verge of coming face to face with his Day of Reckoning. But man is so reckless that he does not pay heed to any sort of reminder from God, whether given through a prophet or anyone else. He ignores the advice of the preacher of truth and dismisses it as something uttered by ‘a mere man’. When in Makkah the Prophet Muhammad started calling upon people to God by means of the Quran. The divine discourse enshrined therein moved people’s hearts. This became a serious matter for the Makkan leaders, because this jeopardized their leadership. The Quran urged people to accept the unity of God, whereas the great leaders of Makkah had maintained their supremacy on the basis of polytheism. In order to divert the attention of the people, they started spreading the notion that the effectiveness of the Prophet Muhammad’s message did not derive from its being the word of God; the force behind it was not that of Truth but of magic. It was all mere human rhetoric and was in no way to be considred a divine discourse. Albeit taking the name of God, those who indulged in such talk did not firmly believe that God was seeing and hearing them. Had they had real faith in God’s being all-knowing, that is, His being One who knows the unseen—they would never have uttered such insincere words.

Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, Tazkirul Quran

In the lectures

Maulana does not cite this verse in the lectures indexed so far. The verses of this surah Maulana does cite →