Ash-Shu'ara · Makki · ayah 211 of 227

Ash-Shu'ara 26:211

وَمَا يَنۢبَغِى لَهُمْ وَمَا يَسْتَطِيعُونَ

“It is not allowable for them, nor would they be able.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The devils could not have brought the Quran: it is nothing their nature would ever go looking for, and nothing their strength could ever carry.

A reflection

If the devils wrote it, where are their friends' copies?

Makkah needed an explanation for the Quran, and the nearest one to hand was the soothsayer. Soothsayers claimed a jinn companion who whispered things to them. The commentaries record the charge plainly: Muhammad is a soothsayer, and what comes down on him is the same stuff the devils bring to soothsayers.

The previous ayah denied it outright. This one gives reasons. One classical commentator then raised a sharp objection against his own side. We only know the devils are barred from heaven because the Prophet ﷺ told us. Yet we trust the Prophet partly because the Quran's knowledge could not have come from devils. Is that not a circle?

His answer steps outside the circle. Everyone knows, he says, that people favour their friends over their enemies. The Prophet ﷺ cursed the devils and taught people to seek refuge from them. The idolaters, by contrast, were their natural allies. If the devils were handing out knowledge of this calibre, their friends should have received more of it, and earlier. They never did. The challenge to bring a single surah like it went unanswered (2:23). It stayed unanswered even with men and jinn invited to work together (17:88).

Think of a rumour in a small town. A young cook, it is said, stole his famous dish from the head chef across the street. But that head chef has a loyal kitchen of his own, cooks who have worked beside him for twenty years. Not one of them can produce the dish. At some point the rumour has to explain why the supposed source's own people come away empty-handed.

That is the question this ayah plants. The surah itself describes what the devils' clients received. The devils descend on every sinful liar, passing on what they hear, and most of them are liars (26:221-223). Scraps mixed with falsehood never reshaped a people's law, prayer and conscience.

What remains open is a different charge. A sceptic may grant that no devil wrote it and say the Prophet ﷺ composed it himself. The Quran answers that elsewhere. This ayah closes one door only, the door of the soothsayer's jinn. It closes it with two bolts: they would not want to, and they could not.

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.