Al-Isra · Makki · ayah 72 of 111

Al-Isra 17:72

وَمَن كَانَ فِى هَـٰذِهِۦٓ أَعْمَىٰ فَهُوَ فِى ٱلْـَٔاخِرَةِ أَعْمَىٰ وَأَضَلُّ سَبِيلًا

“And whoever is blind[765] in this [life] will be blind in the Hereafter and more astray in way.”

Saheeh International

Essence

This blindness is of the heart, and it deepens: whoever ignores the signs he can see will see less of what is hidden.

A reflection

A blindness that comes in degrees

Read quickly, this ayah can sound cruel. Whoever is blind in this world will be blind in the next. A woman who has lost her sight, or the parent of a blind child, may hear a sentence passed on them.

The ayah itself rules that out, and its grammar does the work. Look at the second aʿmā. Many read it as a comparison: blinder, even more blind. The phrase after it confirms the reading: wa-aḍallu sabīlā, and further astray from the way.

One classical commentator made the decisive point. You cannot call one person blinder than another in the sight of the eyes. Eyesight that has gone does not come in degrees. Blindness of the heart does. It can thicken, layer upon layer. So the ayah speaks of the heart that turns away from what the eyes have already seen. Another commentator states it flatly: there is no doubt the eyes are not meant here.

You can even hear the difference in recitation. One of the canonical readers tilts the vowel of the first aʿmā and keeps the second open. A classical grammarian explained why. The first is a plain description, 'blind', and its vowel ends the word. The second is a comparison, 'blinder', and is spoken differently.

The root shows why the Arabs reached for this word. ʿAmā was first a covering: a thick cloud settling on the mountain tops, a land with no markers where every track disappears. Loss of sight is one kind of covering. The worst kind lies over the heart.

Picture a grandmother who lost her sight ten years ago. Every evening she asks her grandson to stand at the window and describe the sky for her. One evening he realises he has not looked at it in a month, except when she asked. Of the two of them, she is the one watching for it.

Elsewhere the Quran says it outright. It is not the eyes that grow blind, but the hearts within the breasts (22:46).

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.