Ar-Ra'd · Madani · ayah 10 of 43

Ar-Ra'd 13:10

سَوَآءٌ مِّنكُم مَّنْ أَسَرَّ ٱلْقَوْلَ وَمَن جَهَرَ بِهِۦ وَمَنْ هُوَ مُسْتَخْفٍۭ بِٱلَّيْلِ وَسَارِبٌۢ بِٱلنَّهَارِ

“It is the same [to Him] concerning you whether one conceals [his] speech or publicizes it and whether one is hidden by night or conspicuous [among others] by day.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Whispered or shouted, hidden in the dark or walking in daylight, you are equally known: hiding changes nothing for Him, only for you.

A reflection

Hiding from people, never from Allah

The ayah uses a heavy word for hiding. Mustakhfin is not simply 'hidden'. The form means seeking concealment and working at it. One commentary says it describes someone going to great lengths to hide, as if hiding were his whole project.

Picture a man who drives to a supermarket two towns away to buy his lottery tickets. He does not want anyone from the mosque to see him at the counter. He checks the car park before getting out. He has planned the route. All this effort, and the only audience he is avoiding is the one that matters least.

The Quran describes this precisely in another place. 'They hide from people, but they do not hide from Allah. He is with them when they plot by night what He does not approve' (4:108). The irony is complete. We spend our most careful energy on the watchers who count for nothing.

That is what ego often is: the management of an image. Pride makes us more afraid of a neighbour's raised eyebrow than of the gaze of our Lord. It turns the opinion of people into the main audience of our lives.

This ayah dissolves the whole project in one word: sawāʾ, the same. The man at the far supermarket and the man at the local counter are exactly the same to Allah. There is no 'two towns away' for Him. The effort to hide changes nothing in His knowledge. It only changes us, into people who live for the wrong audience.

The humbling question is not what you are hiding. It is whom you are hiding it from, and why they matter so much to you. If the honest answer is 'people', the ayah has found the throne your pride has given them. Take them off it, and the hiding starts to lose its point.

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.