Al-Kahf · Makki · ayah 15 of 110

Al-Kahf 18:15

هَـٰٓؤُلَآءِ قَوْمُنَا ٱتَّخَذُوا۟ مِن دُونِهِۦٓ ءَالِهَةً ۖ لَّوْلَا يَأْتُونَ عَلَيْهِم بِسُلْطَـٰنٍۭ بَيِّنٍ ۖ فَمَنْ أَظْلَمُ مِمَّنِ ٱفْتَرَىٰ عَلَى ٱللَّهِ كَذِبًا

“These, our people, have taken besides Him deities. Why do they not bring for [worship of] them a clear evidence? And who is more unjust than one who invents about Allāh a lie?"”

Saheeh International

Essence

The young men do not refute their town, but ask it one question nobody in it can answer.

A reflection

A demand for evidence, from inside the Qur'an

There is a standing charge that religion asks for credulity and resents being questioned. It is worth noticing who is speaking in this ayah.

The heroes of the story demand evidence. Why do they not bring a clear proof for them, they say, meaning for the worship they are giving. One commentary reads the question as a demonstration of inability: a demand made precisely because it cannot be met. Another calls it a silencing, since bringing a proof for worshipping carved objects is impossible. And then it draws the general rule out loud. This is evidence for the corruption of blind imitation, and that in religion a proof is necessary before a thing can be sound and settled.

Another commentary goes further. It discusses whether the absence of evidence may be used to argue the absence of the thing. Some adopt that method, it notes, and cite this ayah.

Those are not the moves of a tradition nervous about being asked.

At a public inquiry a village claims an ancient footpath. Everyone knows it was always there. The grandmother remembers her father using it. None of that is accepted, and nobody involved thinks the inspector is being cruel. What is needed is twenty years of evidenced use, documented. Certainty that a thing is old is not evidence that it is a right.

What stays open is how a proof about God could be produced at all. The surah keeps answering that: by signs, offered for inspection.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.