Taha · Makki · ayah 97 of 135

Taha 20:97

قَالَ فَٱذْهَبْ فَإِنَّ لَكَ فِى ٱلْحَيَوٰةِ أَن تَقُولَ لَا مِسَاسَ ۖ وَإِنَّ لَكَ مَوْعِدًا لَّن تُخْلَفَهُۥ ۖ وَٱنظُرْ إِلَىٰٓ إِلَـٰهِكَ ٱلَّذِى ظَلْتَ عَلَيْهِ عَاكِفًا ۖ لَّنُحَرِّقَنَّهُۥ ثُمَّ لَنَنسِفَنَّهُۥ فِى ٱلْيَمِّ نَسْفًا

“[Moses] said, "Then go. And indeed, it is [decreed] for you in [this] life to say, 'No contact.'[852] And indeed, you have an appointment [in the Hereafter] you will not fail to keep. And look at your 'god' to which you remained devoted. We will surely burn it and blow it [i.e., its ashes] into the sea with a blast.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Musa's sentence falls in three blows: a life untouched, an appointment that cannot be missed, and a god burnt and scattered on the sea.

A reflection

A life no one may touch

Go. It is yours in this life to say: no touching. The word misās comes from m-s-s. Its picture, established in the lexicons, is a hand laid on a thing, so that the touch is felt. Lā misās means no touch at all. A concise commentary explains the sentence: you will live cast out, saying to everyone, I do not touch and am not touched.

A rhetorical commentary says there is no punishment more dreadful or more desolate. He was completely barred from mixing with people. They were forbidden to meet him, speak to him, trade with him, or face him: everything by which people live alongside one another. He became, it says, more desolate among people than a wild animal shying away in the open country.

It is a punishment aimed at the most human of needs. We are made for contact. A hand on a shoulder, a handshake, a child climbing onto a lap. A life with none of it is a kind of living death.

There is a terrible fittingness here. Al-Sāmirī had given the people a god that could be touched. It was solid gold, a body you could put your hands on. In return he was sentenced to a life in which he could touch no one.

Picture a man who has lied to everyone around him for twenty years. He has lied about his job, his money and his past. He cannot let anyone close, because closeness would expose him. On a winter holiday, he eats his dinner alone in a flat full of expensive things, phone silent. Nobody banished him. His deceptions built the wall for him.

The ayah is a stark warning, but it also points to its opposite. The surest protection against that isolation is a life with nothing to hide. Then people may come close, and above all you can come close to Allah. He is near to whoever calls on Him (2:186).

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.