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And We have indeed sent down to you clear signs; and none reject them except those who transgress the bounds.
After speaking of Gabriel and the delivery of revelation, the Qur’an turns attention back to what has been sent down:
“And We have indeed sent down to you clear signs”; We have truly sent clear revelations down to you.
The description “clear” in “clear signs” comes from the root B Y N, with its semantic field of separation, becoming evident, and boundaries becoming clear. The Qur’an does not place all verses at the same level of clarity, but it does speak of verses that are clear signs: truth is expressed in them in such a way that one cannot repeatedly pass them by with a claim of ambiguity.
The next sentence is very explicit:
“And none reject them except those who transgress the bounds”; no one rejects them except those who step outside the bounds.
Here, rejection of truth is directed specifically at the clear signs. Clear truth stands before a person, yet it is covered over or pushed aside. The Qur’an calls this very conduct transgressing the bounds.
“Transgressing the bounds,” from the root F S Q, conveys going outside a limit or boundary. Someone who covers over a clear verse of The God and steps outside the boundary it establishes encounters the very description the Qur’an itself uses in this verse.
This criterion is not limited to the Qur’an’s historical audience. A mufti, a religious cleric, a source of religious emulation, a hadith scholar, a jurist, or any other religious lawgiver who sets aside His clear ruling and imposes a contrary ruling on people in His name does not change the nature of that act through their religious title.
A clear example is stoning.
Surah An-Nur opens with this declaration:
“A surah that We have sent down and made obligatory, and in which We have sent down clear signs.”
It is a surah that We have sent down, made obligatory, and in which We have sent down clear signs.
The ruling on unlawful sexual intercourse follows immediately:
“The woman and the man who commit unlawful sexual intercourse: flog each of them a hundred lashes.”
Give the woman and the man who commit unlawful sexual intercourse a hundred lashes each.
The verse itself makes no distinction between married and unmarried people, nor does it leave the punishment ambiguous. Nevertheless, jurisprudence based on transmitted reports prescribes stoning to death, in contradiction with the Qur’anic ruling, for a group within those same women and men who commit unlawful sexual intercourse.
This is no longer an explanation of a word or clarification of a ruling’s details. A ruling written in the Qur’an has been set aside for part of the very category it addresses, and a different punishment has taken its place in His name.
The central question is very simple: Which verse of The God has authorized such a change?
If the answer is a transmitted report, the disagreement is no longer only about stoning; it concerns what has the right to determine His law. Should reports be measured against the Qur’an, or should the Qur’an be restricted and changed in deference to reports?
The article Stoning: A Qur’anic Ruling or a Rule Derived from Reports? examines this subject separately through Qur’anic evidence: from the explicit ruling in Surah An-Nur to the spouses’ reciprocal oaths in an accusation of adultery, the punishment’s divisibility by half in An-Nisa 4:25, the report of a “stoning verse,” the question of abrogating recitation, and the reports concerning stoning. The conclusion of that examination is clear: stoning is not the Qur’an’s ruling for unlawful sexual intercourse, and a lethal ruling that The God has not written in His written law cannot be imposed on a human life in His name.
This is precisely where the importance of “clear signs” becomes apparent. Had the Qur’an remained silent on an issue, one could discuss how to fill that gap; but a surah that itself declares that clear signs have been sent down within it also states the ruling with a defined subject and a specified number. Covering over such a ruling with a contrary one confronts us with the very issue against which Al-Baqarah 2:99 warns: rejecting the clear signs.
The concept of “clear signs” is also connected with the broader field of clarification and making clear. The Qur’an presents itself as a Book that makes truth clear and commissions the Messenger to deliver it clearly. For a fuller examination of this connection and the meaning of “making clear,” see Al-Mubin and the Clear Delivery.
The great danger begins when a religious system dominates our thinking so thoroughly that we read a verse through jurisprudence developed later rather than on its own terms. If we call a verse clear and evident when it agrees with our inheritance, but find a way to restrict it, narrow its scope, or set it aside when it conflicts with an inherited ruling, the Qur’an is no longer our measure; our inheritance has become the measure of the Qur’an.
In such a situation, transgression should not be sought only in the history of the Children of Israel.
“And none reject them except those who transgress the bounds.”
The clear signs have been sent down. If we cover over His clear truth to preserve a human-made ruling and then impose that construction on people’s lives in His name, we have placed ourselves before the same criterion that this verse states.
No turban, religious verdict, report, denomination, or scholarly record can turn the covering of clear signs into obedience to The God. What the one true deity has made clear cannot be covered over in the name of that same deity.