Al-Baqarah · Madani · ayah 99 of 286

Al-Baqarah 2:99

وَلَقَدْ أَنزَلْنَآ إِلَيْكَ ءَايَـٰتٍۭ بَيِّنَـٰتٍ ۖ وَمَا يَكْفُرُ بِهَآ إِلَّا ٱلْفَـٰسِقُونَ

“And We have certainly revealed to you verses [which are] clear proofs, and no one would deny them except the defiantly disobedient.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Allah has sent down signs that are plain to see, and only those who have broken out of every bound reject them.

A reflection

A date slipping out of its skin

At sixteen, a boy comes home an hour after the agreed time. His parents let it pass. At seventeen it is midnight, then later. At eighteen he has not been home for three nights, and his phone is off.

The ayah says that no one rejects these clear signs 'except the fāsiqūn'. Translations struggle with the word: 'the defiantly disobedient', 'the evildoers', 'the sinners'. The Arabic carries a picture.

The Arabs used the verb of a ripe date splitting out of its skin. A classical theologian describes the stone slipping out of the fresh date as it falls. Fisq is leaving the casing that held you: going out beyond the bounds set for you. The Quran uses it of Iblīs, who 'went out from the command of his Lord' (18:50).

That theologian sets it beside a related word, fujūr, from bursting a dam. Both, he says, are used only for a serious breach. Someone who scratches a small hole in a riverbank has not burst the river. An early scholar of Basra said the same of fisq. Used of any kind of sin, it means the gravest form of it.

So the ayah is precise. Rejecting signs this clear is not a first step. It is where a long slipping-out ends.

A classical commentator adds a striking observation. Those who rejected were those who had already left the obligations of their own scripture. Those who held to their own book and followed its rulings recognised the Prophet ﷺ, and believed.

That is the warning for us. Faith is rarely lost in one leap. It slips out an hour at a time: a prayer delayed, a boundary nudged, a habit excused. The moment to notice is the first hour late, not the third night.

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.