Al-Anbya · Makki · ayah 64 of 112

Al-Anbya 21:64

فَرَجَعُوٓا۟ إِلَىٰٓ أَنفُسِهِمْ فَقَالُوٓا۟ إِنَّكُمْ أَنتُمُ ٱلظَّـٰلِمُونَ

“So they returned to [blaming] themselves and said [to each other], "Indeed, you are the wrongdoers."”

Saheeh International

Essence

For one hopeful moment the crowd came back to itself and said the truth aloud: we ourselves are the wrongdoers.

A reflection

Coming back to yourself

Fa-rajaʿū ilā anfusihim: so they returned to themselves. The concise commentaries gloss it: by thinking, by reflection and contemplation. One says they returned to their minds. Another says they considered and remembered something obvious. A thing that cannot protect itself, or harm the one who breaks it, cannot protect anyone else either. So how can it deserve worship?

The phrase suggests they had been somewhere else. Swept up in outrage, in the crowd, in the noise of the trial, they had been away from themselves. Ibrahim's question did not bring new information. It brought them home to what they already knew.

Picture a father driving his family home on a busy Saturday. Another car cuts in. He leans on the horn, swears, and accelerates to tailgate, his face red. Then, in the rear-view mirror, he catches sight of his six-year-old in the back seat, eyes wide, clutching her toy rabbit, watching him. Something in him drops. He eases off the pedal, lets the other car go, and says, quietly, sorry, everyone.

Nothing about the traffic changed. He had simply come back to himself.

The Quran is full of such moments, because they are where change begins. A person is rarely argued out of error. More often they are startled back into themselves, and see what they had been doing. Ibrahim's people had that moment. The ayah records it with something like hope. Every reader has had such moments too. A glance in a mirror, a question from a child, a line of the Quran that stops the breath. They are gifts. The question is what we do in the seconds after.

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.