Ar-Ra'd · Madani · ayah 36 of 43

Ar-Ra'd 13:36

وَٱلَّذِينَ ءَاتَيْنَـٰهُمُ ٱلْكِتَـٰبَ يَفْرَحُونَ بِمَآ أُنزِلَ إِلَيْكَ ۖ وَمِنَ ٱلْأَحْزَابِ مَن يُنكِرُ بَعْضَهُۥ ۚ قُلْ إِنَّمَآ أُمِرْتُ أَنْ أَعْبُدَ ٱللَّهَ وَلَآ أُشْرِكَ بِهِۦٓ ۚ إِلَيْهِ أَدْعُوا۟ وَإِلَيْهِ مَـَٔابِ

“And [the believers among] those to whom We have given the [previous] Scripture rejoice at what has been revealed to you, [O Muḥammad], but among the [opposing] factions are those who deny part of it [i.e., the Qur’ān]. Say, "I have only been commanded to worship Allāh and not associate [anything] with Him. To Him I invite, and to Him is my return."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Some People of the Book rejoice at this revelation; others deny part; the Prophet's task is only to worship Allah and invite to Him.

A reflection

A worship that wants nothing back

The word translated worship here, abuda, comes from a root picturing a road worn level by the feet of travellers. They passed over it so often it stopped resisting them, a muabbad road, like a camel broken in and made easy to ride. The abd, the servant, takes the same name. He is someone who has yielded, the way a path yields to feet or a camel yields to its rider. It sounds, on the surface, like a demand made on the servant for the master's benefit. It can seem as if Allah commanded this yielding because He needed something from it. The Quran is explicit elsewhere that He does not. He is rich beyond every need of His creation. The command I have only been commanded to worship Allah is not, then, a job assigned to supply something Allah lacks. It is closer to a doctor prescribing rest to a patient who does not understand why they are so exhausted. Yielding, this root suggests, is not a loss of strength. It is the condition under which a road finally stops fighting every foot that uses it. It becomes genuinely useful, to itself as much as to anyone walking it. A person has spent years resisting every form of surrender. To a boss, to a diagnosis, to a relationship that needed humility instead of being right. He often discovers that the exhaustion was never really about the specific fight. It was the cost of being permanently unyielding. Worship, on this reading, answers a need the worshipper has, not one Allah has. A modern life starved of anything worth yielding to finally meets something worth the yielding. The person doing it is the only one who gains.

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.