An-Naml · Makki · ayah 65 of 93

An-Naml 27:65

قُل لَّا يَعْلَمُ مَن فِى ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضِ ٱلْغَيْبَ إِلَّا ٱللَّهُ ۚ وَمَا يَشْعُرُونَ أَيَّانَ يُبْعَثُونَ

“Say, "None in the heavens and earth knows the unseen except Allāh, and they do not perceive when they will be resurrected."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Every forecast reads pebbles already counted; the closed hand of tomorrow, and the hour you will be raised, no one but Allah knows.

A reflection

The widest 'no one' the language allows

A satellite imaging company photographs every rooftop on earth, every day. Its archive can show a field in Kenya last Tuesday, or a Norwegian harbour at noon. The sales team calls it total visibility. It has not one picture of tomorrow.

The ayah draws a line that no archive crosses. Lā yaʿlamu man fī al-samāwāti wa-al-arḍi al-ghayba illā Allāh: none in the heavens and the earth knows the unseen except Allah. The concise commentaries name who is included. In the heavens, the angels; on the earth, people. One classical writer notices that 'heavens' is plural, so that no one in any one of them is left out. He reads the whole phrase as the strongest way of saying 'no one at all'.

That takes in the angels who carry revelation. It takes in the best-informed person who ever lived. The highest knowledge in creation stops at the same edge as ours.

Here the ego meets its limit. We have built a civilisation on prediction. Markets price the future, apps estimate arrival times, models project decades ahead. Some of it works, and it is good work. But all of it reads patterns already present. None of it holds tomorrow itself.

A fair question follows. Why would Allah keep this to Himself? Is that not the hoarding of a king who wants to be needed? The commentaries record a reason that points the other way. He hid His unseen from His creation, some said, so that none of His servants would feel safe from His plan. The veil keeps us awake. It serves us, not Him.

A human ruler hoards secrets to protect his position. Allah's position needs no protecting. A creature who knew its own tomorrow would soon stop turning to Him today.

So the humble posture is not to stop planning. It is to hold every plan as a guess, and to know whose hand holds the answer.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.