Ash-Shu'ara · Makki · ayah 112 of 227

Ash-Shu'ara 26:112

قَالَ وَمَا عِلْمِى بِمَا كَانُوا۟ يَعْمَلُونَ

“He said, "And what is my knowledge of what they used to do?”

Saheeh International

Essence

Nuh refuses to audit his followers' pasts or motives: his task is the call and their visible faith, not their hidden lives.

A reflection

What they used to be is not my file to keep

A man joins the Saturday clean-up at the mosque. He is quiet, works hard and stays late stacking chairs. Someone by the shoe racks murmurs that he only came out of prison last spring. Another volunteer answers without looking up. 'And what do I know about that? He's carrying chairs.'

That reply has almost the shape of Nuh's. The nobles have sneered at his followers. His answer is a question: 'And what is my knowledge of what they used to do?'

The verb sits in the past and continuous. Kānū yaʿmalūn: what they used to be doing. One reading takes it plainly. Whatever their trades or their pasts, I was not charged with investigating them. A modern commentary in the same line adds the point that matters. The weight lies on faith, not on lineage, crafts and occupations.

Another reading hears a different charge behind the sneer. Perhaps the nobles implied that these poor followers had come for gain, hoping for status or wealth. Nuh's reply then means: I have not seen their hearts. I have their outward, and that is all I was given.

Either way, the answer closes a door the nobles wanted open. They wanted a file on every follower. Nuh will not keep one.

This is a hard virtue in practice. Communities love a backstory. We like to know who someone was before they changed. Sometimes it is curiosity. Often it is a quiet way of keeping a person in their old place.

Nuh models a better habit. He receives people as they now stand. Their past is between them and their Lord. His task is the call, and the shape of their present faith.

The man stacking chairs is doing what believers do. The question is not what he used to be. It is whether the rest of us will let him become what he is becoming.

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.