An-Naml · Makki · ayah 49 of 93

An-Naml 27:49

قَالُوا۟ تَقَاسَمُوا۟ بِٱللَّهِ لَنُبَيِّتَنَّهُۥ وَأَهْلَهُۥ ثُمَّ لَنَقُولَنَّ لِوَلِيِّهِۦ مَا شَهِدْنَا مَهْلِكَ أَهْلِهِۦ وَإِنَّا لَصَـٰدِقُونَ

“They said, "Take a mutual oath by Allāh that we will kill him by night, he and his family. Then we will say to his executor,[1080] 'We did not witness the destruction of his family, and indeed, we are truthful.'"”

Saheeh International

Essence

Nine men swore by Allah to kill His messenger and his family by night, and planned their lie before their crime.

A reflection

Swearing by Allah to kill His messenger

Two business partners meet in a café. They have worked out how to squeeze their third partner out of the firm he helped build. The paperwork is ready. As they stand to leave, one holds out his hand. Wallāhi, he says, we stick to this. The other shakes it. Wallāhi.

Neither of them notices anything strange in the moment. The name of Allah has become a seal, the way a signature is a seal. It makes a promise feel solid. What the promise is for has dropped out of view.

The nine men in this ayah do the same thing on a larger scale. Taqāsamū bi-llāh: swear to one another by Allah. And what do they swear to do? To fall upon Allah's own messenger at night, with his family, and kill them.

It is easy to read past how strange this is. These men knew Allah's name. They held it solemn enough to swear by. One rhetorical commentary even notes that they took care to plan a statement they could call truthful afterwards. They were not people without religion. They were people whose religion had been reduced to vocabulary.

That is the real warning here. Disbelief does not always look like rejecting God's name. Sometimes it looks like using it. A name can be honoured with the tongue and contradicted with every plan. The Quran describes such people elsewhere: they swear by Allah their most solemn oaths (35:42). The oath is heavy. The heart behind it is light.

So the question for us is not whether we say wallāhi. Most of us say it every day. The question is what it is attached to. Is Allah's name sealing a promise He would be pleased with? Or is it being used to make something feel blessed that He would never bless?

Saying His name is easy. Submitting the plan to Him is the harder thing, and the only one that counts.

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.