Al-Mu'minun · Makki · ayah 34 of 118

Al-Mu'minun 23:34

وَلَئِنْ أَطَعْتُم بَشَرًا مِّثْلَكُمْ إِنَّكُمْ إِذًا لَّخَـٰسِرُونَ

“And if you should obey a man like yourselves, indeed, you would then be losers.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The chiefs swore that following the messenger would be a losing trade, and in calling it loss they exposed what they were afraid of losing.

A reflection

A market word for a matter of the soul

A financial adviser looks over a client's accounts. She points to a monthly payment to an orphans' charity. That, she says kindly, is money going down the drain. You could be compounding it.

The chiefs use exactly this kind of language. If you obey a man like yourselves, they say, you will be khāsirūn: losers. The lexicons place the root in the market. Khusr is the shrinking of a trader's capital, the money he started with. A deal that brings no profit is khāsira. But the lexicons widen it at once. A person can lose what he owns, and he can lose what he is: health, reason, faith, the reward of his deeds. That image is established.

Several commentators gloss the chiefs' word as maghbūnūn: cheated, swindled in a bargain. The chiefs present faith as a bad deal. You give up your gods, your habits and your standing, and get nothing back.

A classical theologian points out the irony. They called following the messenger a loss. They did not call worshipping idols a loss, though idols give nothing at all in return.

The Quran uses the same root to turn the accounting round. By time, the human being is in loss, except those who believe, do good, and urge one another to truth and patience (103:1-3). The capital that drains is life itself. It shrinks every hour whether we trade well or not. The only question is what we bought with it.

On that ledger, the chiefs had it backwards. The one who follows the truth spends his hours and receives something lasting. The one who refuses keeps his comforts and loses the capital anyway.

Look at one regular expense of time or money that others call a loss: a prayer, a charity, a visit. Ask what it is really buying.

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.