Al-Isra · Makki · ayah 42 of 111

Al-Isra 17:42

قُل لَّوْ كَانَ مَعَهُۥٓ ءَالِهَةٌ كَمَا يَقُولُونَ إِذًا لَّٱبْتَغَوْا۟ إِلَىٰ ذِى ٱلْعَرْشِ سَبِيلًا

“Say, [O Muḥammad], "If there had been with Him [other] gods, as they say, then they [each] would have sought to the Owner of the Throne a way."[747]”

Saheeh International

Essence

Any god beside Him would need a road to the Owner of the Throne, to topple Him or serve Him; neither is a god.

A reflection

Every other seat has a challenger

Two dentists build a practice together over twenty years. Then they fall out. Neither will leave the building. So a partition wall goes up down the middle of the waiting room. Two receptions, two signs, two coffee machines. Patients sit on either side, listening to the arguments through the plasterboard.

Every human seat of power has a challenger somewhere. One reading of this ayah starts there. If there were other gods with Him, they would have sought a way to the Owner of the Throne, to contend with Him. Several concise commentaries read it so. They would seek to overpower Him and dispute His dominion, as the kings of this world do with one another. It is the argument made elsewhere: had there been gods in them other than Allah, both would have been ruined (21:22).

Notice the title chosen: Dhū l-ʿArsh, the Owner of the Throne. The root pictures something raised and roofed over. A king's seat, but also a shade of palm-sticks, or the wooden head of a well. Pull away the props from a well's head and it falls. So the Arabs said of a man whose power had collapsed: his ʿarsh was toppled. One commentator says naming the Throne, then His highness, is eloquence at its peak.

That is where the ego shrinks. Our thrones are small and propped up: a job title, a seat at the head of a table, standing in a family. We guard them anxiously, because each one has a rival somewhere. His has none. No god can even find the road to it. The ayah names the Throne plainly, and one lexicon says people know it only by its name.

Does a God who calls Himself Owner of the Throne need the title, as a king needs his crown? The title is not decoration. It tells us where all dominion actually rests. We are told so that we stop building partition walls inside a house we never owned.

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.