Al-Mu'minun · Makki · ayah 93 of 118

Al-Mu'minun 23:93

قُل رَّبِّ إِمَّا تُرِيَنِّى مَا يُوعَدُونَ

“Say, [O Muḥammad], "My Lord, if You should show me that which they are promised,”

Saheeh International

Essence

Allah gives His Prophet words for the day the promised reckoning comes: not a wish to watch it, but a plea to be kept safe.

A reflection

Words given before they were needed

A father whose teenage son is about to face a hard conversation with a teacher sits him down the night before. He does not tell him what to feel. He gives him the exact first sentence to say. The boy walks in the next morning with words already in his mouth.

The ayah begins qul, say. Allah does not only command His Prophet ﷺ to pray. He gives him the words. One commentary puts it simply: He taught him what to supplicate with.

The context is serious. The deniers had been promised punishment, and they mocked it. One early scholar, quoted in two commentaries, explained the background. Allah told the Prophet ﷺ that there would be a reckoning for his community's deniers. But He did not tell him whether it would come in his lifetime or after his death. So He commanded him to make this supplication.

Think about what that means for the Prophet ﷺ. He was living among the very people who were warned. Many were his own relatives. Some were enemies, some were family, and some, in time, became believers. He did not know when or how the promise would be fulfilled.

In that uncertainty, he was given a sentence. It begins: my Lord, if You are to show me what they are promised. It continues in the next ayah: do not place me among the wrongdoing people. Two short lines, enough for a lifetime of not knowing.

One concise commentary reads the promised punishment as including what came at Badr. Another reads it more widely, in this world or the next.

The Prophet ﷺ was taught to meet an unknown future with a prayer. That is a gift passed on to every believer. When you cannot see how something will end, you do not have to invent a plan or a prophecy. You can borrow the words Allah gave.

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.