Al-Furqan · Makki · ayah 44 of 77

Al-Furqan 25:44

أَمْ تَحْسَبُ أَنَّ أَكْثَرَهُمْ يَسْمَعُونَ أَوْ يَعْقِلُونَ ۚ إِنْ هُمْ إِلَّا كَٱلْأَنْعَـٰمِ ۖ بَلْ هُمْ أَضَلُّ سَبِيلًا

“Or do you think that most of them hear or reason? They are not except like livestock.[1027] Rather, they are [even] more astray in [their] way.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Most of them neither truly hear nor reason; they are like cattle, and further astray, for cattle at least follow whoever tends them.

A reflection

Not an insult to intelligence, but to unused gifts

'They are like cattle' sounds, at first hearing, like a jibe about intelligence. As though the Quran were calling its opponents stupid.

The commentaries refuse that reading. One classical commentator raises the objection directly. If they cannot hear or reason, how can they be blamed, and why send them a messenger at all? Reason is the condition of being addressed. His answer: the ayah does not mean they lack reason. It means they do not benefit from it. It is like saying to someone who will not understand, 'You are blind and deaf.'

A later writer puts the comparison precisely. Allah did not give cattle hearts that reason or tongues that speak. He gave these to human beings. Then they made no use of the minds, hearts, tongues, ears and eyes they were given. That is why they are further astray than cattle.

So the charge is not low ability. It is high ability left idle.

Picture a professor of acoustics who designed a concert hall so precise that a whisper on the stage reaches the back row. He can explain every reflecting panel in the ceiling. In twenty years he has never once sat through a whole concert there. He knows exactly how the hall carries sound. He has never listened to what it carries.

That is the person in this ayah, and he is often brilliant. One concise commentary glosses 'hear' as hearing with reflection, and 'reason' as understanding what is heard. Plenty of very clever people never do either with the one message that matters most.

The ayah's real question is not how clever you are. It is what you have done with what you were given.

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.