Yâ Sîn
IN THE NAME OF GOD, THE MOST GRACIOUS, THE DISPENSER OF GRACE
[36:66]
NOW HAD IT BEEN Our will [that men should not be able to discern between right and wrong], We could surely have deprived them of their sight, so that they would stray forever from the [right] way: for how could they have had insight [into what is true]?


* v.66 : Lit., “We could surely have effaced their eyes”: a metaphor for “We could have created them morally blind” and, thus, devoid of all sense of moral responsibility – which, in its turn, would constitute a negation of all spiritual value in human life as such. (Cf. 2:20 – “if God so willed, He could indeed take away their hearing and their sight.”)
* In this instance – as, e.g., in 20:96 – the verb basura (“he became seeing” or “he saw”) is obviously used in its tropical sense of “perceiving [something] mentally.” According to Ibn ‘Abbās, as quoted by Tabarī, the phrase annā yubsirūn signifies “how could they perceive the truth.”