445. Treating scripture as a commodity.
Verses (2:41, 2:174, 2:187, 3:199, 5:44, 9:9) of the Quran say the Almighty’s words are not to be bargained for pittance.
This does not refer to the printing and selling of the Quran or its translated versions.
Allah reprimanded the jews for bargaining His verses for a modicum. This does not refer to the printing and selling of their scripture, can be well comprehended.
This does not refer to printing and selling of books those days, because the technology to so was not available those days.
The phrase ‘Do not sell verses of the Almighty’ can be seen used not in the direct sense, rather it implies, the use of Almighty’s words in the midst of people in the true sense would bring in good returns for them in the hereafter. And hiding the true meaning of His words because of worldly gains is what is referred to as bargaining the words for a pittance, when compared to the huge gains in the hereafter.
Verse 3:187 of the Quran talks clearly about bargaining the words of God for paltry worldly gains.
Not delivering justice on the basis of scriptures and concealing the truth due to fear of people is referred to here as using the scripture as a commodity for selling.
This can be understood from the above cited verses of the Quran.
Printing of the holy Quran or its translated version or its teachings and selling it for a monetary value does come under ambit of the term ‘treating the scripture as a commodity’ because, in printing business, and in selling of books, investments are made in the form of salaries to printers, type setters, binders of books, ad in addition money has to be spent in safeguarding the printed books, and various other tasks involving a lot of financial activities
Hence it needs to be treated as a matter of financial activity and does not come under the term ‘Quran being treated as a trade commodity.
And moreover this is one of the ways the message of God reaches people. If there is a ban on printing, selling, and distribution of scriptures, they would never reach people these days.
