Ali 'Imran · Madani · ayah 113 of 200

Ali 'Imran 3:113

۞ لَيْسُوا۟ سَوَآءً ۗ مِّنْ أَهْلِ ٱلْكِتَـٰبِ أُمَّةٌ قَآئِمَةٌ يَتْلُونَ ءَايَـٰتِ ٱللَّهِ ءَانَآءَ ٱلَّيْلِ وَهُمْ يَسْجُدُونَ

“They are not [all] the same; among the People of the Scripture is a community[145] standing [in obedience], reciting the verses of Allāh during periods of the night and prostrating [in prayer].”

Saheeh International

Essence

They are not all alike: among the People of the Book is a standing community, reciting Allah's signs through the night and prostrating.

A reflection

Do not smooth them flat

On a packhouse line a grader pulls individual apples out of a tray the machine has already classed as one batch. The machine is usually right. She is paid for the times it is not, and there are always times.

This ayah's first two words come immediately after the severest sentence in the whole passage. They are not alike.

And the word is worth taking literally, because the lexicons give this root as evenness and balance. To sawwā ground is to level it, the way earth is smoothed over a grave. The sawāʾ of a house or a valley is its middle, equally distant from every edge. Two goods that tasāwā weighed the same on the scale. That is established.

So the ayah is not merely conceding that some are better than others. It is forbidding the levelling. Do not smooth them flat.

And notice the position of the sentence. It is not a footnote at a safe distance. It is placed directly against the hardest thing the surah has said, and nobody reading in order can take the hard thing without taking this.

That should do something to the way any of us talk about a group.

The fair objection runs the other way, and it deserves an answer. If some of them are upright, why does the Quran speak so severely about the general case? Because both are true, and the Quran says both without softening either. The previous ayah counts; this one counts too.

What it will not do is hand you a single sentence that covers everybody. That is the sentence we all want, because it saves us from meeting anyone.

So set yourself one discipline from this. Whenever you catch yourself about to use the word they about any group of human beings, add the name of one real person from it. If you cannot name one, you have not earned the sentence.

The machine is usually right. She is paid for the exceptions.

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.