The Overwhelming
IN THE NAME OF GOD, THE MOST GRACIOUS, THE DISPENSER OF GRACE[88:17]
DO, THEN, they [who deny resurrection] never gaze at the clouds pregnant with water, [and observe] how they are created?
* v.17 : Implying that a denial of resurrection and life in the hereafter renders the concept of a conscious Creator utterly meaningless; hence my interpolation of the words “who deny resurrection” in the first part of this verse. – As regards the noun ibil, it denotes, as a rule, “camels”: a generic plural which has no singular form. But one must remember that it also signifies “clouds bearing rain-water” (Lisān al-‘Arab, Qāmūs, Tāj al-‘Arūs) – a meaning which is preferable in the present context. If the term were used in the sense of “camels,” the reference to it in the above verse would have been primarily – if not exclusively – addressed to the Arabian contemporaries of the Prophet, to whom the camel was always an object of admiration on account of its outstanding endurance, the many uses to which it could be put (riding, load-bearing, and as a source of milk, flesh, and fine wool) and its indispensability to people living amid deserts. But precisely because a reference to “camels” would restrict its significance to people of a particular environment and a particular time (without even the benefit of a historical allusion to past events), it must be ruled out here, for the Qur’anic appeals to observe the wonders of the God-created universe are invariably directed at people of all times and all environments. Hence, there is every reason to assume that the term ibil relates here not to camels but to “clouds pregnant with water”: the more so as such an allusion to the miraculous, cyclic process of the evaporation of water, the skyward ascension of vapour, its condensation and, finally, its precipitation over the earth is definitely more in tune with the subsequent mention (in verses 18-20) of sky, mountains, and earth, than would be a reference to “camels,” however admirable and noteworthy these animals may be.