Al-Qasas · Makki · ayah 66 of 88

Al-Qasas 28:66

فَعَمِيَتْ عَلَيْهِمُ ٱلْأَنۢبَآءُ يَوْمَئِذٍ فَهُمْ لَا يَتَسَآءَلُونَ

“But the information[1117] will be unapparent to them that Day, so they will not [be able to] ask one another.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Asked how they answered the messengers, they find every excuse gone dark, and no one even turns to ask another.

A reflection

When the words cannot find their way to you

She was a national debating champion at nineteen. She could argue either side of any motion with three minutes' notice. Then one Sunday her father sits down across the kitchen table. He asks, quietly, where the money he sent for her tuition has gone. She opens her mouth, and nothing comes. Every skill she has is still there. None of it can find its way to this question.

The ayah describes that, multiplied beyond measure. Fa-ʿamiyat ʿalayhimu al-anbāʾ: the news went blind for them. The lexicons picture the root concretely. A thick cloud settles over the land, and every track disappears beneath it. Nothing is destroyed; it is simply covered.

One commentator points out how strange the sentence is. We would expect 'they went blind to the news'. Instead the news itself goes blind. The answers cannot find their way to the people who need them. It is an inversion for emphasis. If even the replies are lost, how lost are the ones waiting for them?

What are these anbāʾ? The early commentators said: the arguments. Other commentators said: excuses, or any report that might have saved them. One explains why none came. Allah had already carried the warning to them as far as it could go. Proof after proof had reached them. There was simply no argument left to find.

This is worth sitting with. Most of us have a lawyer in our heads. When we do wrong, a voice drafts the defence before we have finished. 'I was tired. Everyone does it. Nobody was hurt.' The ayah describes the day that voice falls silent. Not because it is silenced by force, but because the fog has come down over every road it knew.

The kindest thing you can do for yourself is to let that lawyer lose a few cases now.

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.