Al-Qasas · Makki · ayah 53 of 88

Al-Qasas 28:53

وَإِذَا يُتْلَىٰ عَلَيْهِمْ قَالُوٓا۟ ءَامَنَّا بِهِۦٓ إِنَّهُ ٱلْحَقُّ مِن رَّبِّنَآ إِنَّا كُنَّا مِن قَبْلِهِۦ مُسْلِمِينَ

“And when it is recited to them, they say, "We have believed in it; indeed, it is the truth from our Lord. Indeed we were, [even] before it, Muslims [i.e., submitting to Allāh]."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Hearing the Quran, they recognised the voice of their own Lord and said: we were already given over to Him before this came.

A reflection

Muslims before the Quran was revealed

Read the last clause slowly. Innā kunnā min qablihi muslimīn: we were, before it, Muslims.

People who had never seen the Quran, describing themselves with its name for the faithful. How can that be?

One classical commentary answers in a single line. Islam, it says, is the description of every person who affirms Allah's oneness and believes revelation. A modern concise commentary says it even more plainly: Allah's religion is one, and it is Islam.

The Quran itself bears this out. Ibrahim says, 'I have submitted to the Lord of the worlds' (2:131). Yusuf prays to die musliman (12:101). The disciples of ʿIsa say, 'Bear witness that we are Muslims' (3:52). Even Pharaoh's magicians, in Musa's story, ask Allah to take them as muslimīn (7:126).

So the word is not, first of all, a label for a community that began in seventh-century Arabia. It is a description of a stance: the whole self handed over to Allah. Every prophet called people to it.

This answers a fair question a reader might raise. Does it mean every religion is 'Islam', and so nothing needed to change? The ayah shows the opposite. These people proved their earlier submission precisely by accepting the Quran when it came. Submission to Allah includes accepting His next word. Refusing it would have shown the earlier 'yes' was really to their own tradition.

Picture a woman in her thirties who has just taken her shahada in a small mosque. A kindly older man shakes her husband's hand and says: welcome to our religion. She smiles. 'Thank you,' she says. 'It feels less like joining something and more like coming home.'

She did not know this ayah. But she had found its meaning. The road was older than her arrival on it.

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.