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Wafa: To Cause To
Die, To Take in One's

Sleep, or To Take Back

[Jesus said], I said to them nothing but what
You ordered me to say: "Worship Allah, my
Lord and your Lord." I was a witness against
them as long as I remained among them. But
when You took me back to You [tawaffayta-
nee], You were the One watching over them.
You are Witness of all things. (Surat al-
Ma'ida: 117)

The expression used here comes from the
Arabic word wafa, which means the act of taking
the self back, not killing or death. In fact, in Arabic
commentaries it is not used in the sense of
death. The commentary of Islamic scholar al-
Qurtubi is one example of this; he used the ex-
pression "the taking away of the selves" for the
word in question. From the Qur'an again, we
understand that "taking the self back" does not
necessarily mean death. For instance, this word
is also used in another verse to describe the tak-
ing back of a person while he or she is asleep:

It is He Who takes you back to Himself
[yatawaffaakum] at night, while knowing the
things you perpetrate by day, and then wakes
you up again, so that a specified term may be
fulfilled. (Surat al-An'am: 60)
Allah states that the Prophet Jesus (pbuh)

Harun Yahya (Adnan Oktar)