Al-Furqan · Makki · ayah 63 of 77

Al-Furqan 25:63

وَعِبَادُ ٱلرَّحْمَـٰنِ ٱلَّذِينَ يَمْشُونَ عَلَى ٱلْأَرْضِ هَوْنًا وَإِذَا خَاطَبَهُمُ ٱلْجَـٰهِلُونَ قَالُوا۟ سَلَـٰمًا

“And the servants of the Most Merciful are those who walk upon the earth easily,[1035] and when the ignorant address them [harshly], they say [words of] peace,[1036]”

Saheeh International

Essence

The Quran's portrait of the Merciful's servants opens not in the mosque but in the street: how they walk, and how they answer provocation.

A reflection

Not a slow walk, and not a soft touch

Most people who know this ayah carry a picture with it. Someone walking slowly, eyes down, shoulders soft. Someone who says 'peace' and lets the world walk over them. Both halves of that picture are worth checking against the words.

Hawn is ease and composure. The commentaries describe it as calm and dignity, without arrogance and without swagger. They are just as clear about what it is not. It is not the walk of the sick, put on for show. The commentaries report that ʿUmar once saw a young man creeping along and asked if he was ill. Told he was not, he struck him with his stick and told him to walk with strength.

The Prophet ﷺ did not shuffle. Sahih Muslim records that when he walked he leaned forward. Al-Tirmidhi preserves ʿAli's description, graded ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ by al-Tirmidhi himself: as if he were coming down a slope. That is a purposeful, forward gait. It has no strut in it, and no performance.

There is a coach in a city office teaching a newly promoted manager to walk more slowly into meetings. Slowness, she says, reads as authority. The ayah is describing something else entirely. Hawn is not a technique for being taken seriously. It is what walking looks like when you no longer need to be.

The second half is misread in the same way. Salāman here is not the greeting. One careful reading notes the grammar: the word describes what they said, a word of safety. It is not 'they wished peace on them'. The commentaries gloss it as a sound word that keeps the speaker free of sin. Others call it a parting: no good between us, and no harm.

So this is not a doormat. It is a person who refuses to be dragged down to the level of the one shouting.

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.