Al-Kahf · Makki · ayah 57 of 110

Al-Kahf 18:57

وَمَنْ أَظْلَمُ مِمَّن ذُكِّرَ بِـَٔايَـٰتِ رَبِّهِۦ فَأَعْرَضَ عَنْهَا وَنَسِىَ مَا قَدَّمَتْ يَدَاهُ ۚ إِنَّا جَعَلْنَا عَلَىٰ قُلُوبِهِمْ أَكِنَّةً أَن يَفْقَهُوهُ وَفِىٓ ءَاذَانِهِمْ وَقْرًا ۖ وَإِن تَدْعُهُمْ إِلَى ٱلْهُدَىٰ فَلَن يَهْتَدُوٓا۟ إِذًا أَبَدًا

“And who is more unjust than one who is reminded of the verses of his Lord but turns away from them and forgets what his hands have put forth? Indeed, We have placed over their hearts coverings, lest they understand it, and in their ears deafness. And if you invite them to guidance - they will never be guided, then - ever.”

Saheeh International

Essence

One Companion compared the covering on these hearts to a quiver: the arrows are inside, and nothing else is getting in.

A reflection

The one instrument you cannot tune yourself

The sentence that unsettles people in this verse is the one where the speaker changes.

Up to that point a man is being described. He was reminded. He turned away. He forgot what his own two hands sent ahead. Then, with no warning: indeed, We have placed over their hearts coverings, and in their ears a load.

The ego has nowhere to stand in a sentence like that. Not because it is told off, but because it is not consulted.

A man can arrange his own reading. He can arrange his schedule, his resolutions, the hour he gets up. What he cannot arrange is the thing all of that is done with.

In an organ loft a voicer spends a fortnight on a single rank of pipes. He eases the metal at each mouth until the note speaks cleanly. The organist who plays there every week does not attempt it and knows better than to try. He can practise for forty years and the pipe will still say only what it has been made to say.

Pride assumes that understanding is an achievement. The verse puts understanding somewhere else entirely.

And this is not as bleak as it first sounds, because the hands that place a covering are the hands that lift one. The commentaries note that the verse immediately after this one turns to forgiveness. They add that He sometimes brings some of these very people from straying round to good sense.

So the honest response to a verse like this is not alarm about other people. It is a request, made quietly, about your own hearing.

The vain response is the opposite, and it is the one most of us make without noticing. We assume our own reception is fine. We read the verse as information about a group we are confident we are not in.

A man who believes his own understanding is self-generated has already described himself accurately. He is holding an instrument he did not build, insisting that he tuned it.

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.