An-Naml · Makki · ayah 41 of 93

An-Naml 27:41

قَالَ نَكِّرُوا۟ لَهَا عَرْشَهَا نَنظُرْ أَتَهْتَدِىٓ أَمْ تَكُونُ مِنَ ٱلَّذِينَ لَا يَهْتَدُونَ

“He said, "Disguise for her her throne; we will see whether she will be guided [to truth] or will be of those who is not guided."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Sulayman has the queen's throne disguised: will she find her way to the truth beneath the changes, or be one of those who do not?

A reflection

The heart's reflex against the unfamiliar

A young man travelling abroad walks into a mosque at Maghrib. The adhan is sung in a style he has never heard, longer and more ornamented than at home. His first feeling, before any thought, is that it is wrong. Then he listens to the words. They are the words he has known since he was born.

Nakkirū lahā ʿarshahā: disguise her throne for her. The root behind nakkirū is defined in an unusual way. One lexicon describes it by what it is not: the opposite of the knowledge a heart settles into. Something arrives that the heart cannot place, so the heart will not accept it and the tongue will not acknowledge it. From the same root comes munkar, what is refused.

So Sulayman's order works on the heart's own reflex. Make the thing unfamiliar, and see what she does. Will the strangeness win, or will she look past it?

This is one of the oldest obstacles to faith. Truth often reaches people dressed in something they do not recognise. A different accent, a different culture, a messenger from the wrong family. The Quran records a people refusing a message because they had not heard it among their forefathers (23:24). The content was never tested. The unfamiliarity was enough.

The reflex runs the other way too. We accept what looks familiar without checking it, because it wears our clothes.

The queen faced both pulls at once: her own seat, made strange. As the next ayah shows, she did not answer with the reflex. She neither rejected it as foreign nor rushed to claim it.

Next time something feels wrong before you have even understood it, pause. Ask what the words are, underneath the melody. The heart's first refusal is a reflex, not a verdict.

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.