Al-Isra · Makki · ayah 48 of 111

Al-Isra 17:48

ٱنظُرْ كَيْفَ ضَرَبُوا۟ لَكَ ٱلْأَمْثَالَ فَضَلُّوا۟ فَلَا يَسْتَطِيعُونَ سَبِيلًا

“Look how they strike for you comparisons;[750] but they have strayed, so they cannot [find] a way.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Poet, sorcerer, madman, bewitched: Allah tells His Prophet simply to look at the labels, because each cancels the last, and the labellers are lost.

A reflection

Every label cancels the last

'Look how they strike likenesses for you.' The commentaries list the likenesses. They called him a poet. Then a sorcerer. Then a soothsayer. Then a madman. Then, in the ayah just before, a man bewitched.

Read the list slowly and it falls apart in your hands. A poet is a master of words, admired for control. A madman has lost control of his words altogether. A sorcerer is a skilled practitioner who works on others. A bewitched man is the victim of one. Each label quietly contradicts the one before.

The Quran records them actually fusing two of them. Are we to abandon our gods, they said, for a mad poet (37:36)? A poet in full command of his craft, and mad. The phrase defeats itself before it is finished.

One classical commentary says this is why they could find no way out. Their own words contradicted each other: mad, sorcerer, poet. Another describes their state as that of a man lost in a trackless waste. Every road he takes is a road of confusion, and he cannot settle on any.

Picture a small family restaurant that receives forty one-star reviews in a single night. One says the food was far too salty. The next says it was tasteless. One complains the portions were tiny, another that they were absurdly large. The owner reads them at two in the morning and slowly stops panicking. This is not a review. It is a campaign, and it cannot agree with itself.

Truth tends to be consistent, because it is describing one thing. Slander has to keep moving, because nothing it says will stick.

That is why the ayah needs no rebuttal. It only says: look. The contradictions are the refutation, and anyone who looks can see them.

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.