The verse admits that HE DOES, saying: ``Allah is not ashamed to strike a similitude about a gnat or some creatures above it.''

      Similitude is a means of manifesting some facts by comparison, and in order to despise and disclose the weakness and inability of the claimants, it is closer to eloquency to use irony, and to choose for the parable something of the weakest and of the lowest of the creatures as an instance of this we read in the HOLY QURÄN:

      ``O, People! A similitude is struck. Then listen to it. Those on whom you call apart from Allah, can never create a FLY, though they should all gather for it. And if the fly should snatch away anything from them, they are not able to take it back from it, weak are the SEEKER AND THE SOUGHT.''

QURÄN - S 22:73

      As for the meaning of the phrase: `OR ABOVE IT' in the verse NO. 26 the commentators have two ideas: One group understand it to mean: ``ABOVE THE GNAT IN WEAKNESS OR SMALLNESS.''

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      Some others believe it to mean: ``LARGER AND MORE POWERFUL THAN THE GNAT.'' We think the first idea to be the correct one.

      The verse is then continued defending its simile by saying:

      ``As for the believers, they know that it is the truth from their Lord.''But the unbelievers have thought it to be a cause of schism and separation by saying: ``What could Allah mean by this parable, by which He misleads many, and leads many?!''

      It is then immediately added as an answer to the unbelievers that stumbling and offence only occurs as the result of sinner's own choice of the wrong, and therefore, `none is misled by it save the evil-doers.'