Al-Mu'minun · Makki · ayah 33 of 118

Al-Mu'minun 23:33

وَقَالَ ٱلْمَلَأُ مِن قَوْمِهِ ٱلَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا۟ وَكَذَّبُوا۟ بِلِقَآءِ ٱلْـَٔاخِرَةِ وَأَتْرَفْنَـٰهُمْ فِى ٱلْحَيَوٰةِ ٱلدُّنْيَا مَا هَـٰذَآ إِلَّا بَشَرٌ مِّثْلُكُمْ يَأْكُلُ مِمَّا تَأْكُلُونَ مِنْهُ وَيَشْرَبُ مِمَّا تَشْرَبُونَ

“And the eminent among his people who disbelieved and denied the meeting of the Hereafter while We had given them luxury in the worldly life said, "This is not but a man like yourselves. He eats of that from which you eat and drinks of what you drink.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The chiefs who had been given every comfort dismissed their messenger for being ordinary: he eats what you eat and drinks what you drink.

A reflection

Spoiled by a gift

A man grows up above his father's corner shop. He prays at the small mosque on the street every evening. Twenty years later his business takes off. He moves to a gated house with a pool on the edge of the city. Nobody at the old mosque can say exactly when he stopped coming.

In the middle of describing the chiefs, the ayah adds four words. Wa-atrafnāhum fī al-ḥayāti al-dunyā, and We had given them ease in the life of this world. The lexicons give t-r-f a domestic picture. A turfa is a special treat, the delicacy kept for a favourite child. The mutraf is the pampered one, handed whatever he craves. One lexicon carries it further: the man whom wide living has made insolent. That image is established.

One commentator gives the chiefs' condition plainly. We widened the blessings of this world for them until they grew insolent. Another notices the sting in the grammar. Read as a circumstance, the clause means they said all this while We were being good to them. That, he says, is the stronger condemnation. It is answering kindness with harm.

There is a sober warning here for anyone who has been given much. The comfort itself was a gift from Allah. Nothing in the ayah says wealth is evil. But comfort does something to people if they are not careful. It softens the muscles that faith uses: need, gratitude, the sense of being dependent.

The question is never whether we have been given ease. Most readers of this page have, compared with most of history. The question is what the ease is doing to us.

List three comforts you have today that your grandparents did not. For each one, ask: has this made me more grateful, or less in need of Allah?

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.