Al-Baqarah · Madani · ayah 166 of 286

Al-Baqarah 2:166

إِذْ تَبَرَّأَ ٱلَّذِينَ ٱتُّبِعُوا۟ مِنَ ٱلَّذِينَ ٱتَّبَعُوا۟ وَرَأَوُا۟ ٱلْعَذَابَ وَتَقَطَّعَتْ بِهِمُ ٱلْأَسْبَابُ

“[And they should consider that] when those who have been followed disassociate themselves from those who followed [them], and they [all] see the punishment, and cut off from them are the ties [of relationship],”

Saheeh International

Essence

On the Day, the followed disown their followers, and every rope that held them together, tied for anything but Allah, is cut.

A reflection

A cheque drawn on a bankrupt

A personal assistant gives eighteen years to one director. She guards his diary, covers his mistakes and knows how he takes his tea. Then he is removed overnight. The new director does not know her name. Everything she built was built on him, and he is gone.

A classical scholar uses almost the same picture for this ayah. People work hard for an official, a governor or a man of wealth, he says. When that man loses his post, all the work done for him simply vanishes. Nothing is left in the worker's hand but loss.

That, he explains, is what 'the ropes were cut' means. The ties people form for anything other than Allah snap at the moment they are needed most. A cause dies with its goal. When the goal turns out to be empty, every effort spent on it goes with it. 'Everything perishes except His Face' (28:88).

Then he gives an image from the market. In those days a debt could be transferred: the payment was drawn on someone else. The one who serves rivals to Allah has his payment drawn on a bankrupt, he writes, on nothing at all. The one who serves Allah alone has it drawn on the Rich, the Generous. How far apart those two drafts are.

This is not a call to stop working for people. Work for an employer, a family or a cause can be done for Allah's sake, and then it is never lost. The question is where the cheque is drawn. Ask it of your effort today: if this person, this company, this cause disappeared tomorrow, would what I did for it still count?

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.