Al-Mu'minun · Makki · ayah 115 of 118

Al-Mu'minun 23:115

أَفَحَسِبْتُمْ أَنَّمَا خَلَقْنَـٰكُمْ عَبَثًا وَأَنَّكُمْ إِلَيْنَا لَا تُرْجَعُونَ

“Then did you think that We created you uselessly and that to Us you would not be returned?"”

Saheeh International

Essence

You were not made as a jumble with no plan: you were made on purpose, by the King, and you are going home to Him.

A reflection

Made on purpose, by the King

Notice who is speaking, and how. Khalaqnākum: We created you. Ilaynā: to Us. The plural of majesty runs through the ayah. The One who shaped every human from a drop of fluid asks, as a King, whether anyone truly imagined He did it for nothing.

One classical scholar draws a striking argument from a parallel passage. 'Does the human being think he will be left neglected? Was he not a drop of fluid emitted, then a clinging clot, which He then formed and proportioned?' (75:36-38). He did not leave the drop to itself, the scholar says, but turned it stage by stage into a complete human being. He will not abandon the finished human with no aim. The care taken over the beginning testifies to the seriousness of the end.

The same scholar adds a point that should make any pride shrink. Whoever imagines that Allah created people with no command, no prohibition and no accounting has not estimated Allah as He deserves (6:91). It is a small view of the King.

There is an ego hidden in that small view. The self-made person likes to believe he answers to nobody. He came from nowhere, built himself, and will go nowhere. It flatters the ego to be its own author. This ayah removes the flattery. You did not make yourself. You will not unmake yourself. Someone made you, deliberately, and is waiting for you.

That is humbling, but it is not crushing. To be made on purpose by the King of all things is the highest dignity a creature can have. The arrogant self wants to be important on its own terms. The humble self discovers it already is, on His.

So when you feel either worthless or self-sufficient, read this ayah slowly. You were not an accident. You are not your own. Both truths, held together, are the beginning of humility and of peace.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.