Ali 'Imran · Madani · ayah 108 of 200

Ali 'Imran 3:108

تِلْكَ ءَايَـٰتُ ٱللَّهِ نَتْلُوهَا عَلَيْكَ بِٱلْحَقِّ ۗ وَمَا ٱللَّهُ يُرِيدُ ظُلْمًا لِّلْعَـٰلَمِينَ

“These are the verses of Allāh. We recite them to you, [O Muḥammad], in truth; and Allāh wants no injustice to the worlds [i.e., His creatures].”

Saheeh International

Essence

These are Allah's signs, recited to you in truth, and Allah wills no injustice to any of the worlds.

A reflection

The ledger you keep without noticing

A woman can quote, word for word, what was said to her in an office when she was nineteen. She can tell you the weather that day. She cannot tell you the name of the colleague who paid her train fare for three months that same year, when she had nothing.

One entry was filed with care. The other was not filed at all.

We all keep that ledger, and we keep only one column of it. Everybody can produce, at short notice, a list of things that were not fair. Almost nobody can produce the matching list.

And this ayah is addressing precisely that habit, because the claim underneath our unfairness list is an arrogant one. It says we are competent to audit Him. Few of us would ever say it aloud, and almost all of us live as though it were true. There is a pride in grievance that does not look like pride at all.

Read what He states here: He wills no injustice to the worlds. Not to you, specifically, as a reassurance. To the worlds, plural, all of them at once, and the word chosen for them is worth stopping on. The lexicons say an ʿalam is a landmark: what points the way to something. The ʿālamīn are everything by which the Maker is known. That is established.

So the claim is as wide as creation, and it is made in the same breath as the recitation of the signs. These are My signs, recited in truth, and nothing in them is a misplacement.

Now the sharpest objection, honestly put. Does He need to announce His own justice? That is usually the language of someone defending a record.

But look at who the sentence is for. He is not short of a verdict in His favour. The next ayah says everything in the heavens and the earth is already His (3:109). A being who owns the court does not canvass it. The statement is not evidence offered to us. It is information given to creatures who were about to assume the opposite, as we do daily.

So tonight, write the second column. Three things this year that were better than fair, and the names attached. It is a humbling page, and it is the honest one.

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.