Ash-Shu'ara · Makki · ayah 165 of 227

Ash-Shu'ara 26:165

أَتَأْتُونَ ٱلذُّكْرَانَ مِنَ ٱلْعَـٰلَمِينَ

“Do you approach males among the worlds[1057]”

Saheeh International

Essence

Lut puts a single question to his people, naming their practice with a covered word: out of all humankind, do you come to males?

A reflection

A covered word for an uncovered act

The verb Lut uses is taʾtūn, you come to. On its surface the word says nothing more than coming or arriving.

The classical commentators point out what it is doing here. Ityān, coming to, is a kināya: a covered way of naming intimacy without naming it directly. The Quran is rebuking the gravest public wrong of a whole town. It still does not reach for a coarse word. It names the act clearly enough that nobody can mistake it, and modestly enough that a child could hear it recited.

The sentence is also a question, a-taʾtūna, do you come to? The commentators call it a question of rebuke and disapproval. But a question still does something a verdict does not. It hands the listener a moment to look at what they are doing, and answer.

Now compare how people often talk about other people's sins. Two men on a late train are discussing someone they both know. His failing is real, and they turn it into a comedy. Every word is crude, and each joke is louder than the last. Across the aisle a grandmother puts her hand over her grandson's ear and looks out of the window.

Those two men had a point and lost it. The Quran has a far heavier point and keeps its dignity. It does not mock. It does not make the people a joke. It asks.

This matters most on this subject, where talk slides so easily into contempt, gossip or crude humour, as if the topic licensed it. Lut's own language refuses that. His aim was that they turn back, not that they be laughed at.

So when you must speak about a wrong, take the Quran's measure. Name it clearly. Do not soften it into nothing. And do not let your words become a second wrong laid on top of the first.

The full entry has 4 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.