Ali 'Imran · Madani · ayah 139 of 200

Ali 'Imran 3:139

وَلَا تَهِنُوا۟ وَلَا تَحْزَنُوا۟ وَأَنتُمُ ٱلْأَعْلَوْنَ إِن كُنتُم مُّؤْمِنِينَ

“So do not weaken and do not grieve, and you will be superior if you are [true] believers.”

Saheeh International

Essence

After a day that went against them they are told not to slacken and not to grieve, because the height is theirs on one condition.

A reflection

The height was the transmitter's

A community radio station runs out of the back room of a shop. Two volunteers, a second-hand desk, a kettle. Because a charity lets them share its transmitter on a ridge, they cover three counties. They get letters from farmers sixty miles off. After four years the volunteers talk about our listeners, our reach, and have a quiet opinion of the local newspaper.

The lease on the transmitter ends. The station now reaches the end of the street.

The ayah hands this community a word, and the word is not theirs either.

The root is height, and one lexicon says nothing in it strays from that. Al-ʿalyāʾ is the top of a mountain. The ʿāliya is the upper part of a spear. Even the everyday word taʿāla, come, is from here: it first meant come up to me. That is established.

A classical commentator makes the link that should stop the reader. Al-aʿlawn is cut from His own name, al-Aʿlā, the Most High; He is al-ʿAliyy. And he notes the honour in it: He addressed this community with what He had addressed His prophets with. To Mūsā: you will be the uppermost (20:68). To these people, wounded and burying their dead: and you are the uppermost.

Now watch what the sentence does not do. It does not say you are high. It says you are the higher ones, if. The loan and the condition arrive in the same breath, which is exactly what pride cannot hold. Pride needs a title that is simply true of it, owned outright, nothing pending.

And the same superlative sits in another mouth. Pharaoh stands up and says: I am your lord, the most high (79:24).

So a reader may fairly ask whether a Lord who keeps that word for Himself is vain, needing it said. Look at the direction of the giving. The ego hoards a title and audits who uses it. He takes the plural of His own name and hands it to a defeated band on the one afternoon they could least claim it. That is not a Lord collecting praise. That is a Lord lending His height to people who have just discovered they have none.

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.