Al-Ma'un · Makki · ayah 2 of 7

Al-Ma'un 107:2

فَذَٰلِكَ ٱلَّذِى يَدُعُّ ٱلْيَتِيمَ

“For that is the one who drives away the orphan”

Saheeh International

Essence

A heart that expects no reckoning shows itself not in a creed but in a shove: the fatherless child pushed from what is his.

A reflection

Not a refusal, a shove

The ayah could have said he refuses the orphan, or ignores him. It chose yaduʿʿu: he shoves him, roughly, with harshness and rebuke. The lexicons describe daʿʿ as a push with a jolt in it. It is the same word used for the Day when people are shoved into the Fire (52:13).

Notice the doubled consonant. One classical reading hears in it a habit, not a single lapse. This is someone for whom pushing the weak aside has become normal. So the one who does wrong once, and regrets it, is not the one being described. A believer's slip, the same reading says, is like a passing shadow: it comes and does not stay, because regret follows it. The denier is the one who settles into it.

The shove has more than one form, and the commentators list them. It can be taking the orphan's share: pushing him away from his right and his wealth. It can be withholding the comfort he needs, even where nothing is strictly owed. It can be the rebuke and the contempt: the sigh when he asks, the tone used only with people who cannot answer back.

One ancient reading gives yadaʿu, with a lighter consonant: he leaves him alone, he leaves him out. Everyone else is invited to the meal; the orphan is not. Another reading describes inviting the orphan only to use him, to show off, or to make him serve. A shove does not always need hands.

That widens the ayah uncomfortably. Very few of us would strike a grieving child. Many of us have used a tone with someone because we knew no one would take their side. Many of us have forgotten to include the one person at the gathering with nobody to bring them.

The ayah is not asking whether you are a monster. It is asking where, in your ordinary week, the jolt has crept into your dealings with the weak. The harshness that has become normal is the one you no longer hear.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.