Ash-Shu'ara · Makki · ayah 75 of 227

Ash-Shu'ara 26:75

قَالَ أَفَرَءَيْتُم مَّا كُنتُمْ تَعْبُدُونَ

“He said, "Then do you see what you have been worshipping,”

Saheeh International

Essence

Having heard 'our fathers did it', Ibrahim asks his people to look, truly look, at what they have spent their lives worshipping.

A reflection

The stain you stopped seeing

A man is showing a young couple round the flat he is selling. He has lived there eight years. In the bathroom the woman glances up and goes quiet. He follows her eyes. A brown stain spreads across the ceiling above the bath. He knows that stain. He painted over it twice. Somewhere in the fifth year, he stopped seeing it.

A-fa-raʾaytum: have you then seen? The lexicons give the root two kinds of sight. There is seeing with the eye, and seeing with the heart: knowing, judging, holding a view. The phrase itself is a familiar Quranic form for 'consider' or 'tell me'. One modern commentary glosses it: have you looked, with careful reflection? Another: have you contemplated, and so seen?

Ibrahim's people saw their idols every day. They tended them, sat with them, brought them offerings. That was the problem. Daily sight becomes no sight. The eye registers the object and the mind stops asking anything of it.

So Ibrahim does what the buyer did. He walks into the familiar room as if a stranger and points at the ceiling. Look at it, he says. Not at what your fathers said about it. At it. What is it? What has it ever done?

Every life has stains we have stopped seeing. A habit we excuse every morning. A grudge that has hardened into routine. A priority that slipped above our prayer so gradually it now feels like the natural order.

The ayah offers a simple practice. Once in a while, walk through your own life as a buyer would. Look up. Ask what you have been serving, and whether it deserves the space it takes.

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.