Al-Qari'ah · Makki · ayah 9 of 11

Al-Qari'ah 101:9

فَأُمُّهُۥ هَاوِيَةٌ

“His refuge[1977] will be an abyss.[1978]”

Saheeh International

Essence

What you run to in fear becomes a kind of mother to you; for the one whose scale is light, that mother is a fall with no floor.

A reflection

Where you run when frightened

It has been a bad day. A man parks outside his house after work and does not go in. For forty minutes he sits in the car with the engine off, playing a game on his phone, while the kitchen light burns a few metres away. He is not doing anything terrible. He is hiding. The phone has become the place he runs to when life frightens him.

Everyone has a place like that. The word for it in this ayah is startling: umm, mother.

The early explanations read fa-ummuhu hāwiya in several ways, and one of the most widely held takes umm as his refuge: the place he returns to and shelters in. The Fire, named al-hāwiya, becomes his mother. An early report gives the reason. It became his shelter, as a woman shelters her son, and he had no shelter but it. One classical commentator sharpens the picture. The mother is the one to whom a frightened child runs, and to no one else.

Hold that image, because it is meant to unsettle. A mother is where you run when you are afraid. Whatever you run to in fear, again and again, becomes a kind of mother to you. It holds you, soothes you, shapes you. And it can be something that does not love you at all.

For some it is a screen. For others a bottle, a shopping basket, a bitter story told over and over, a person who uses them. Each promises a mother's embrace. The ayah shows where that road ends for the one whose scale was light: at a 'mother' that is a pit.

That is why the Quran teaches us to run somewhere else. Its last two surahs open with the same words: qul aʿūdhu, say, I seek refuge. The refuge is not a thing but a Lord: 'the Lord of daybreak' (113:1), 'the Lord of people' (114:1). The one who learns, in small fears, to run to Allah will not find a pit waiting when the great fear comes.

Notice your refuge honestly this week. When you are anxious, what do your hands reach for first? Next time, before you reach, pause and say: I seek refuge with the Lord of people. Then decide.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.