and trials at the hands of the Muslims to thunderbolts. The meaning is: ‘Or like people caught in a rainstorm.’ What is intended is the likeness of people overtaken by a storm of this description, who suffered what they suffered from it.”

He said: “The correct view, which scholars of rhetoric consistently uphold, is that both parables are composite comparisons, not comparisons between separate elements. There is no need to force a corresponding likeness upon each individual detail.

“This powerful statement and substantial approach may be explained as follows: the Arabs take individual things, isolated from one another and unconnected, and compare them to their counterparts—as occurs in the Quran, where a configuration arising from several things, brought so closely together that they become a single whole, is compared to another configuration like it. Thus Allah Most High says:

‘The example of those who were entrusted with the Torah and then failed to uphold it is like that of a donkey carrying books.’ (62:5)

“The purpose is to compare the Jews’ ignorance of the Torah in their possession and its dazzling signs to a donkey’s ignorance of the books of wisdom it carries. To the donkey, carrying books of wisdom is no different from carrying any other load: it perceives nothing beyond the additional toil and fatigue. Likewise, Allah Most High says:

‘And present to them the example of the life of this world: it is like rain which We send down from the sky, and the vegetation of the earth mingles with it, then becomes dry remnants scattered by the winds.’ (18:45)

“The point is that the splendour of worldly life endures as briefly as this vegetation. It is not a matter of comparing individual elements separately, without bringing them together into a single whole. Having described how the hypocrites fell into error and stumbled about in bewilderment and confusion, He likened their bewilderment and the severity of their predicament to what someone endures when his fire goes out after he has kindled it in the darkness of night. The same applies to someone overtaken by a rainstorm on a dark night, amid thunder and lightning and fear of thunderbolts.”

He said: “If you ask, ‘Which of the two parables is more forceful?’ I reply: ‘The second, because it conveys more powerfully their utter bewilderment and the severity and horror of their predicament.’ Likewise, their individual members progress in such matters from the milder to the harsher.”