Al-Qasas · Makki · ayah 87 of 88

Al-Qasas 28:87

وَلَا يَصُدُّنَّكَ عَنْ ءَايَـٰتِ ٱللَّهِ بَعْدَ إِذْ أُنزِلَتْ إِلَيْكَ ۖ وَٱدْعُ إِلَىٰ رَبِّكَ ۖ وَلَا تَكُونَنَّ مِنَ ٱلْمُشْرِكِينَ

“And never let them avert you from the verses of Allāh after they have been revealed to you. And invite [people] to your Lord. And never be of those who associate others with Allāh.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Three commands for a man under pressure: stay with the revelation, call people to your Lord, and never join the other side.

A reflection

Turned aside by a slope, not stopped by a wall

The verb here, yaṣuddu, has a landscape inside it.

One lexicon says most of this root comes back to turning away and swerving. Close by sit physical words. A ṣadd is the flank of a valley, or a mountain side. Streams cannot climb it, so they run somewhere else. And when a hard climb faced a traveller, and he left it for another road, the Arabs said: ṣadda al-sabīl.

The commentaries on this ayah quote an old line of poetry using the same root. It describes men who kept others away with the sword. They turned people aside the way water channels swerve away from the muzzles of thirsty camels.

Notice the picture. Nobody blocks the stream with a wall. The ground simply tilts, and the water goes where the slope sends it.

That is how most people are turned from the ayat of Allah. Not by one dramatic refusal. By a gradient. A little ridicule here, a little inconvenience there, a little warmth from people who would rather you were quieter.

Think of a driver who trusts his sat-nav without looking up. It reroutes him once to avoid traffic, then again, then again. Each change is small and sensible. After an hour he is in a different town from the one he set out for.

The ayah says: do not let them turn you. It speaks to the Prophet ﷺ, in the strongest form Arabic has, with a doubled emphatic ending.

For a reader, the lesson is to watch the slope, not only the walls. Ask each month which way the ground has been tilting, and whether you have been running with it.

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.