Ash-Shu'ara · Makki · ayah 27 of 227

Ash-Shu'ara 26:27

قَالَ إِنَّ رَسُولَكُمُ ٱلَّذِىٓ أُرْسِلَ إِلَيْكُمْ لَمَجْنُونٌ

“[Pharaoh] said,[1047] "Indeed, your 'messenger' who has been sent to you is mad."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Unable to answer, Pharaoh tells his court that this 'messenger of yours' is mad, and in mocking him still names him as sent.

A reflection

Mad, meaning: not like us

A family dinner, the plates cleared. A niece home from her second year at university has started praying again, and wearing a headscarf. Her uncle asks why. She answers him carefully, with reasons. He listens for a minute, then laughs and turns to the table. 'They've got to her. That university has scrambled her head.' Everyone smiles uneasily. Nobody answers anything she actually said.

Pharaoh's line is the same move in its oldest form. Inna rasūlakumu lladhī ursila ilaykum la-majnūn: this messenger of yours, sent to you, is surely mad.

The commentators explain why the charge came so easily. A narration-based commentary says Pharaoh called him mad because he spoke words they did not know and could not follow. In their minds there was no lord but Pharaoh. A man who spoke of another simply made no sense to them. Another commentary puts it more sharply. In their view, anyone who did not believe what they believed was not of sound mind.

That is worth sitting with, because it is not only Pharaoh's habit. Most of us measure sanity by distance from ourselves. Ideas close to ours sound reasonable. Ideas far from ours sound unhinged, before we have weighed a single reason. 'Mad' becomes a word for 'unfamiliar'.

The test of a claim is not whether it sounds like home. It is whether it is true. Musa's next words were not wild. They were calm, reasoned and plain: the Lord of the east and the west, if you would only reason (26:28). The man accused of madness was the one appealing to reason.

So when you feel the word rising in you, mad, crazy, brainwashed, pause. Ask whether you have answered the person, or only measured how far they are from you.

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.