Al-Mu'minun · Makki · ayah 7 of 118

Al-Mu'minun 23:7

فَمَنِ ٱبْتَغَىٰ وَرَآءَ ذَٰلِكَ فَأُو۟لَـٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلْعَادُونَ

“But whoever seeks beyond that, then those are the transgressors -”

Saheeh International

Essence

Whoever goes looking behind the boundary for what lies out of sight has crossed from a guarded life into aggression against it.

A reflection

The pull of what lies out of sight

This ayah repeats one in Surah al-Ma'arij (70:31), where the image of the horse running past its marker is explored in full. One small word here rewards a second look: warāʾa, beyond.

The lexicons trace its root to the fire-stick, the zand. The fire seemed hidden inside it until it was struck. From that hiddenness the root came to mean covering, and warāʾ came to mean what lies out of sight: behind, or sometimes ahead. The image is established in the lexicons. The commentators explain the phrase here as 'other than that', or 'what lies past that'.

Picture a man in a good marriage who installs a dating app one evening, telling himself it is only to see who is out there. He has no plan. He is not unhappy. The pull is simply the pull of what lies out of sight, the fire that might be hidden in a stick he has not yet struck.

The ayah names that pull precisely. It is a seeking, ibtighāʾ, aimed at whatever lies behind the boundary drawn in the previous ayah. The one who acts on it, the ayah says, has become one of the transgressors.

The full entry has 2 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.