Ali 'Imran · Madani · ayah 100 of 200

Ali 'Imran 3:100

يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوٓا۟ إِن تُطِيعُوا۟ فَرِيقًا مِّنَ ٱلَّذِينَ أُوتُوا۟ ٱلْكِتَـٰبَ يَرُدُّوكُم بَعْدَ إِيمَـٰنِكُمْ كَـٰفِرِينَ

“O you who have believed, if you obey a party of those who were given the Scripture, they would turn you back, after your belief, [to being] unbelievers.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Believers: if you take the counsel of one faction of the people given the Scripture, they will hand you back to disbelief after your faith.

A reflection

Nobody argued with their faith

Two cousins have run a scaffolding firm together for nine years. At a wedding, a man who knows the family sits down beside them. With great sympathy he mentions a dispute between their fathers in 1987, and who really paid for what. Nothing he says is untrue. Within a month the firm is two firms, and both are worse.

The commentaries place this ayah in a scene almost exactly like that. The tribes of Madina, the Aws and the Khazraj, had a long history of war, blood and bad feeling. Then Islam came, and the fighting was put out. Then a man sat with one from each tribe as they talked. He kept reminding them of their old days and the enmity between them, until they insulted each other and came to blows. Each called his own people. They came out with weapons and formed up facing one another.

Read the method carefully, because it is the whole lesson.

He did not argue against the religion. He did not quote a text, raise an objection, or mention God at all. He reminded them of a wound. And the ayah's verdict on where that leads is severe: they will turn you back, after your belief, to disbelief.

The word for turning back, say the lexicons, has one meaning at heart: sending a thing back to where it was. A false coin handed back to the payer was radd. That image is established, and it stings. Their faith was not refuted. It was simply handed back to them, as if it had never been accepted.

And notice what the wound does to time. Men who had become brothers were, within an hour, standing where they had stood years earlier, with the same weapons and the same arguments. Grievance is the one thing that can move a person backwards faster than anything else can move them forwards.

So watch for the method rather than the messenger. You will rarely be argued out of your faith. You will be reminded of what your brother's father did in 1987.

The practical defence is unglamorous. When someone opens an old wound in your hearing, ask yourself one question before you respond: what does this person gain if I feel this? Then say, out loud, that you are not going back there. Grievance has no authority over you unless you pick it up.

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.