An-Naml · Makki · ayah 55 of 93

An-Naml 27:55

أَئِنَّكُمْ لَتَأْتُونَ ٱلرِّجَالَ شَهْوَةً مِّن دُونِ ٱلنِّسَآءِ ۚ بَلْ أَنتُمْ قَوْمٌ تَجْهَلُونَ

“Do you indeed approach men with desire instead of women? Rather, you are a people behaving ignorantly."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Lūṭ presses his question home: appetite alone drove them past what was made for them, and that is the folly of people who know better.

A reflection

Seeing, and yet ignorant?

This ayah returns almost word for word at 7:81, where its fuller treatment belongs. Here it does one particular job: it answers the line just before it.

A careful reader spots a puzzle. One ayah ago, Lūṭ said they act 'while you see', which the commentaries read as knowing full well it is foul (27:54). Now he calls them 'a people who are ignorant'. How can they know and not know?

Two classical commentators raise this very question and answer it three ways. They know, yet they act as the ignorant act. Or they are ignorant of where it ends. Or jahl here means folly and shamelessness, not a lack of facts. One early commentator adds: ignorant of Allah's great right over them.

All three point the same way. Knowledge that does not steer conduct is, in practice, ignorance. An electrician lectures his apprentices on isolating the circuit, then changes a light fitting at home with the power on. In that moment he is acting as one who never learned it.

The full entry has 2 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.