Al-Kahf · Makki · ayah 38 of 110

Al-Kahf 18:38

لَّـٰكِنَّا۠ هُوَ ٱللَّهُ رَبِّى وَلَآ أُشْرِكُ بِرَبِّىٓ أَحَدًا

“But as for me, He is Allāh, my Lord, and I do not associate with my Lord anyone.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Standing inside another man's garden with nothing of his own, he answers an inventory with a creed, and ends on the number one.

A reflection

A sentence that empties the room

The last word of this verse is the word for one. The lexicons describe it carefully. One that cannot be divided, counted or matched. Used in that sense of Allah alone. And in a negation it sweeps a whole kind, leaving no exception: anyone, no one.

So the sentence does not say he avoids worshipping idols. It says there is nobody, of any description, in the space beside his Lord.

One commentary notices that the construction here is the same device used at the opening of the chapter on Allah's oneness. The pronoun is the pronoun of the matter itself: the case is this, Allah is my Lord.

Hold that against what has just been said to him. Two estates. Gold and silver. Sons. A clan that turns out.

He does not reply to any of it, and this is where pride finds nothing to grip. A boast needs a rival. It is built for a room with two people measuring. The word one removes the room.

In the old assize chests there was a single sealed standard weight. Every weight in every shop in the county was eventually brought to it. The point of the standard was not that it was heavy. It was that there was only one of it, and nothing was ever weighed against another shop's brass.

Arrogance is always a comparison, which means it is always a measurement taken against the wrong thing. A man who has genuinely said this sentence has nothing left to be arrogant with.

He is poorer than the man he speaks to, in the middle of that man's property. The vanity in the conversation is entirely on the other side.

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.