An-Naml · Makki · ayah 13 of 93

An-Naml 27:13

فَلَمَّا جَآءَتْهُمْ ءَايَـٰتُنَا مُبْصِرَةً قَالُوا۟ هَـٰذَا سِحْرٌ مُّبِينٌ

“But when there came to them Our visible signs, they said, "This is obvious magic."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Allah's signs came to Pharaoh's people giving sight, and they answered with a label: this is plainly magic.

A reflection

Our signs, and a court that could not lose

A celebrated wine critic is invited to a blind tasting. He fails to recognise his own favourite vintage, the one he has praised in print for twenty years. When the label is revealed, he does not laugh at himself. He announces that the bottle must have been tampered with.

His palate did not fail him. His pride did.

The ayah says āyātunā, Our signs, with the pronoun of majesty. One commentator notices that it does not say 'when Musa came to them with Our signs'. It says the signs themselves came to them. He suggests the wording points to signs beyond Musa's own power. They belonged to Allah, and they arrived carrying His weight.

Pharaoh's court was not short of intelligence. It had skilled magicians and the administrators of a great kingdom. What it could not do was lose. A throne built on the claim 'I am your lord, the most high' (79:24) cannot admit that something greater has entered the room. So the court did what wounded pride always does. It renamed the evidence.

That is the ego's oldest defence. When something proves us small, we call it a trick.

Someone might ask whether this insistence on 'Our signs' is a demand for recognition. It is not. Allah loses nothing when a court refuses Him, and gains nothing when it bows. The signs are sent for the people who see them, as a road sign is put up for the driver, not for the road.

His majesty does not depend on whether a court accepts His signs. Nine signs labelled 'magic' were still His signs. The label changed nothing in them. It only revealed the people who used it.

We do this too, on a smaller scale. A truth that humbles us becomes 'just a coincidence', 'just their opinion', 'just a phase'. The word 'just' is often the sound of a bruised ego.

Next time you feel the urge to wave something away, ask whether it is false or simply makes you smaller. Then let it make you smaller. That is where His signs begin to be seen.

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.