Al-Qasas · Makki · ayah 65 of 88

Al-Qasas 28:65

وَيَوْمَ يُنَادِيهِمْ فَيَقُولُ مَاذَآ أَجَبْتُمُ ٱلْمُرْسَلِينَ

“And [mention] the Day He will call them and say, "What did you answer the messengers?"”

Saheeh International

Essence

On the Day He calls them, one plain question is put: what answer did you give the messengers?

A reflection

When the questioner becomes the questioned

A senior barrister has spent forty years asking the questions. He has taken apart witnesses with a raised eyebrow and a pause. Juniors still tell stories about his cross-examinations. Then, late in his career, he is called as a witness himself in a dispute about his own chambers. He stands in the box, and a younger lawyer rises to question him. His hands, steady for four decades, are not steady now. Nobody has asked him anything yet. Simply being on the other side of the question has undone him.

Wa-yawma yunādīhim fa-yaqūl: and the Day He calls them and says. On that Day, every person who ever asked questions is on the other side. The kings who interrogated prisoners. The experts who examined students. The managers who demanded explanations. All of them stand where the witness stands.

The classical commentators draw out something even more humbling. Another ayah describes the messengers themselves being asked. 'The Day Allah gathers the messengers and says: What response did you receive? They say: We have no knowledge. You are the Knower of the unseen' (5:109). One commentator reasons from this. The messengers are innocent of the charge, yet they falter and hand all knowledge back to Him. What, then, of those who rejected them?

That is the measure of His majesty. It is not that He shouts. It is that the best of creation, standing before Him, find their own knowledge too small to offer.

Let that shrink the ego a little today. Most of our pride rests on being the one who asks, judges and decides. The boss reviews; the critic rates; the commenter scores. We rarely picture ourselves in the box.

One day every person will be. Being questioned is not humiliation for the humble. It is only unbearable for the one who never expected to be asked.

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.