Al-Kawthar · Makki · ayah 3 of 3

Al-Kawthar 108:3

إِنَّ شَانِئَكَ هُوَ ٱلْأَبْتَرُ

“Indeed, your enemy is the one cut off.[2002]”

Saheeh International

Essence

They called him cut off; Allah answered that hatred is what cuts a person off, while his name and his good would keep flowing.

A reflection

When grief was mocked

The Prophet's sons al-Qāsim and ʿAbd Allah died young in Makkah. The reports say that a leading man of Quraysh began to call him abtar, cut off. Leave him, he would say; he has no son, and when he dies his name dies with him.

One account places it at a doorway of the Sacred Mosque. The Prophet ﷺ was coming out and this man was going in; they spoke for a moment. Inside, the chiefs asked him who he had been talking to. 'That abtar,' he said. One commentator notes that the remark was made privately among themselves, and yet Allah brought it into the open.

Other reports name other mockers: Abu Jahl, ʿUqba, even his uncle Abu Lahab. The insult was common enough that many may have used it.

Picture a grieving father at the funeral, hearing a joke about his line ending. That was the wound.

The reply did not come from a friend or a poet. It came from Allah Himself. One commentator notes that this is how love behaves: when someone insults the one you love, you answer for him yourself.

And the surah closes a ring. It opened with al-kawthar, overflowing good. It ends with al-abtar, the one cut off. The abundance belongs to him; the cutting-off belongs to his enemy. The mocker thought himself the one with numbers and standing. The ayah turns the picture round.

Today his name follows Allah's name in the call to prayer, carried from minarets across the world. The mocker's name survives mostly in the explanations of this ayah.

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.