Al-Anbya · Makki · ayah 66 of 112

Al-Anbya 21:66

قَالَ أَفَتَعْبُدُونَ مِن دُونِ ٱللَّهِ مَا لَا يَنفَعُكُمْ شَيْـًٔا وَلَا يَضُرُّكُمْ

“He said, "Then do you worship instead of Allāh that which does not benefit you at all or harm you?”

Saheeh International

Essence

Ibrahim took their own admission and asked a question for every heart: why serve, instead of Allah, what can neither help nor harm you?

A reflection

Knowing it, and doing it anyway

A-fa-taʿbudūna: do you then worship? The small fa, "then", carries the whole argument. One commentator explains it: do you know this, and still worship? They had just said aloud that the idols cannot speak. Ibrahim does not add a new proof. He simply asks how they can go on, knowing what they now admit. One commentator spells it out: knowing that something lacks what godhood requires obliges a person to avoid worshipping it altogether.

The gap between knowing and doing is one of the oldest human puzzles. People are rarely ignorant of what harms them. They know, and continue.

Picture a woman in her late twenties at a tanning salon. On the wall beside the reception desk is a poster about skin cancer, with photographs and plain warnings. She has read it every visit. She once told a friend that sunbeds are "obviously terrible for you". Today she books another course of twelve sessions, pays, and walks past the poster on the way in.

The poster has not failed to inform her. She is informed. Something else is steering.

Ibrahim's question walks straight into that gap. It does not say "you did not know". It says: you know. And then? For the reader, that is far more uncomfortable than being told something new. Most of us could list the things we know are empty, or harmful, or beneath us, and still serve. The question is not whether we have the information. It is whether we will let it rule us. The fa in this ayah asks each of us to close the gap between what we admit and what we do.

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.