Ash-Shu'ara · Makki · ayah 226 of 227

Ash-Shu'ara 26:226

وَأَنَّهُمْ يَقُولُونَ مَا لَا يَفْعَلُونَ

“And that they say what they do not do? -”

Saheeh International

Essence

The poets' third mark is a gap between tongue and hand: they describe deeds they never do, while the Messenger did everything he said.

A reflection

Not a verdict on poetry, but a test of the gap

Many readers carry one idea away from the end of this surah: Islam distrusts poetry, and perhaps art itself. Picture a fourteen-year-old who keeps a notebook of her own verses in her school bag. At a family lunch an uncle quotes 'the poets are followed by those who stray'. That evening the notebook goes to the back of a drawer.

The words aim somewhere narrower and sharper. This ayah is the third of three marks, and none of them is about rhyme or metre. The first was who follows the poets. The second was their wandering in every valley. The third is a gap: they say what they do not do. The commentaries spell it out. They boast 'we did this, we did that', and they did nothing of the kind. They praise generosity and run from it. They condemn meanness and live in it.

The marks exist because Quraysh had called the Prophet ﷺ a poet. The reply is not an insult traded back. It is a test anyone in Makkah could run: lay a man's words beside his life. His words and his life were one road, from the first day to the last.

Poetry itself is treated as speech, judged by what it carries. The Prophet ﷺ said that some poetry is wisdom (al-Bukhari). He called one half-line the truest word a poet ever spoke: everything other than Allah is bound to pass (al-Bukhari, Muslim). He also warned that a belly filled with pus is better than one filled with poetry (al-Bukhari, Muslim). The warning is about being filled. One chapter heading in al-Bukhari's collection names it: poetry so dominant that it crowds out remembrance of Allah, knowledge and the Quran.

So the girl's notebook was never the problem. The question this ayah would put to her is a different one. Do your verses say anything your life is unwilling to do?

The old Arabs had a turn of phrase for this. A man 'said with his hand' when he took something or pointed at it. Speech, in this root, could reach past the tongue. The poets' tongues said a great deal. Their hands said nothing at all.

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.