Al-Kahf · Makki · ayah 5 of 110

Al-Kahf 18:5

مَّا لَهُم بِهِۦ مِنْ عِلْمٍ وَلَا لِـَٔابَآئِهِمْ ۚ كَبُرَتْ كَلِمَةً تَخْرُجُ مِنْ أَفْوَٰهِهِمْ ۚ إِن يَقُولُونَ إِلَّا كَذِبًا

“They have no knowledge of it,[780] nor had their fathers. Grave is the word that comes out of their mouths; they speak not except a lie.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Nothing is known about it and nothing was known by their fathers, and the horror here is placed in the saying, not the thought.

A reflection

It got past the teeth

Why mention mouths at all? Everything anyone says comes out of a mouth.

One of the commentaries answers in a way that is hard to shake off. Much of what is whispered into a person's heart, and said inwardly, is never let out. A man will not loose his tongue with it. He holds it down out of shame at being seen to hold such a thing. So the phrase marks the crossing of a line. This one did not stay inside.

That is a real boundary and we all know where it is. There is a long gap between a thought arriving and a thought being said in a room with other people in it. Most of the harm any of us does lives in that gap, in both directions.

An enameller works with the same threshold all day. The ground is fired, the powdered colour laid on dry with a brush. Up to the last second it can be wiped away with a cloth, and nobody would ever know what she had intended. Then the piece goes into the kiln, and the door closes, and the colour is in the glass. There is no cloth after that.

The ayah is not saying the thought was harmless. It is saying that something which the mind itself recoils from was carried all the way out and said.

Keep that in view. It is a description of the only place where you still have a cloth.

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.