Al-Isra · Makki · ayah 80 of 111

Al-Isra 17:80

وَقُل رَّبِّ أَدْخِلْنِى مُدْخَلَ صِدْقٍ وَأَخْرِجْنِى مُخْرَجَ صِدْقٍ وَٱجْعَل لِّى مِن لَّدُنكَ سُلْطَـٰنًا نَّصِيرًا

“And say, "My Lord, cause me to enter a sound entrance[772] and to exit a sound exit[773] and grant me from Yourself a supporting authority."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Before every door you enter or leave, there is a prayer: let the entering be true, the leaving true, and the strength Yours.

A reflection

A prayer for every doorway

The commentaries name many doors for this prayer. Madina, entered at the emigration, and Makka, left behind. The grave, and the rising from it. Prophethood itself, entered and then carried to completion. Even the prayer, begun and ended. One later commentary weighs them all and settles on the plainest reading. It covers every place and every matter he would enter and leave.

One classical scholar pushes it into ordinary life. Nobody leaves his house and enters his market, he writes, except with truth or with a lie. Every going out and every coming in is one or the other. He reports the habit of one of the early Muslims. Stepping out of his door, he would lift his head to the sky. He would say: O Allah, I seek refuge in You from going out where I am not under Your guarantee.

Picture a home-care worker with eleven visits on her morning rota. Eleven front doors, eleven key safes, eleven kitchens where someone is waiting for her. At the first she is fresh. By the ninth she is behind time and tempted to rush the medication round, tick the sheet and go. Each threshold quietly tests whether she enters as the person her badge says she is.

So she starts saying it on the doorstep, under her breath. My Lord, let me go in truly and come out truly. It takes four seconds. It changes the next forty minutes, because she has just asked to be found true inside.

The verbs are worth noticing. Adkhilnī: cause me to enter. Akhrijnī: bring me out. The one praying does not say I will enter. He hands the door to Allah, and then the next door, and the next.

Most of us cross dozens of thresholds a day without a thought. The office, the classroom, the ward, the front room of a grieving family. The ayah offers one short sentence for all of 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.