Ash-Shu'ara · Makki · ayah 46 of 227

Ash-Shu'ara 26:46

فَأُلْقِىَ ٱلسَّحَرَةُ سَـٰجِدِينَ

“So the magicians fell down in prostration [to Allāh].”

Saheeh International

Essence

Men hired to win for Pharaoh were flung down by what they saw; their first act of faith was a prostration nobody had taught them.

A reflection

The crowd had promised to follow the winners

Only a few ayat earlier, the crowd gathered for the contest made a promise. Perhaps we will follow the magicians, they said, if they are the winners (26:40).

One classical commentator caught what is missing from that sentence. They did not say: we will follow the truth, whether it comes from the magicians or from Musa. They tied themselves to whoever won. The people, he observed, follow the religion of their king.

Now look at this ayah. The magicians, the very men the crowd had chosen as their guides, are face down on the ground before the Lord of the worlds. If the crowd had meant their promise, they would have followed. The Quran tells us elsewhere how many did. Only some youths of Musa's own people believed, in fear of Pharaoh and his chiefs (10:83).

So the crowd had never been following the magicians. They had been following their own comfort, and calling it the magicians.

A class sits a quiz. Half the room copies the answers of the boy who always comes top. On the last question he hesitates, crosses out his answer and writes another. Most of the copiers keep the first one. It was easier, and they had already written it down. They were never really following him. They were following their own first guess, with his name on it.

Ask honestly whom you follow, and why. Many of us say we follow the scholars, the elders or the experts. The test comes on the day one of them changes direction for a reason we would rather not hear. Do we follow them then? Or do we discover that our real guide was our own preference all along?

The magicians did not fall because a crowd was watching. They fell in spite of it. That is the only kind of following that would have saved anyone in that hall.

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.