Al-Mu'minun · Makki · ayah 103 of 118

Al-Mu'minun 23:103

وَمَنْ خَفَّتْ مَوَٰزِينُهُۥ فَأُو۟لَـٰٓئِكَ ٱلَّذِينَ خَسِرُوٓا۟ أَنفُسَهُمْ فِى جَهَنَّمَ خَـٰلِدُونَ

“But those whose scales are light - those are the ones who have lost their souls, [being] in Hell, abiding eternally.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The deepest loss is not money or status but the self: a life spent until nothing of weight is left to place in the pan.

A reflection

The trader who lost his own capital

A fishmonger on an open market on the hottest day of the year has no ice left. He watches his stock all afternoon. Nothing is stolen and nothing is broken. Every hour, it is simply worth a little less. By closing time he has lost the capital he came with, without a single dramatic moment.

The first hearers knew this picture in khasirū, they lost. The lexicons say the root has one meaning: diminishing. Its home is the market. Khusr is the shrinking of a trader's capital, the money he started with. But the lexicons widen it at once. A person can lose what he owns, like money and standing. He can also lose what he is: health, reason, faith and the reward of good deeds.

This ayah does not say they lost their wealth, or their families, or their chances. It says khasirū anfusahum: they lost their own selves. The capital was the person. One classical reading explains it beautifully. They wasted their selves by wasting the time in which those selves could have been completed. They cancelled their own readiness to reach what they were made for.

Another plain reading says they cheated their own selves of their share of Allah's mercy. A third, from the commentaries, says they lost even their places in Paradise, which passed to others.

That is why this loss is so quiet. No one goes bankrupt in an afternoon of the soul. It happens the way the fish spoils: hour by hour, through days that were neither wicked nor good, just spent. Scrolling instead of praying. Postponing the apology. Always meaning to begin.

The question this ayah puts to you is not about any single sin. It is about the stock on your stall. Your hours, your health, your mind and your faith are the only capital you were given. Are they worth more at the end of this day than at the start, or slightly less?

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.