Ali 'Imran · Madani · ayah 165 of 200

Ali 'Imran 3:165

أَوَلَمَّآ أَصَـٰبَتْكُم مُّصِيبَةٌ قَدْ أَصَبْتُم مِّثْلَيْهَا قُلْتُمْ أَنَّىٰ هَـٰذَا ۖ قُلْ هُوَ مِنْ عِندِ أَنفُسِكُمْ ۗ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَىْءٍ قَدِيرٌ

“Why [is it that] when a [single] disaster struck you [on the day of Uḥud], although you had struck [the enemy in the battle of Badr] with one twice as great, you said, "From where is this?" Say, "It is from yourselves [i.e., due to your sin]." Indeed, Allāh is over all things competent.”

Saheeh International

Essence

When a blow struck you, having dealt twice as much, you asked where it came from: say, from yourselves.

A reflection

Nobody has ever been amazed by a lift

Nobody in a tall building has ever been amazed by the lift. On the one morning it stops, the whole place discusses it, reschedules around it, and asks who is responsible.

The ayah closes on power, and the commentaries insist on reading the word in both directions.

He is able to grant victory and able to withhold it. He is able to strike them through you at one time, and to strike you through them at another. One concise commentary ends on exactly that. Victory is from His power, and so is the withholding of it. He has requited you for your disobedience. Another lists the span: pardon and punishment, favour and retribution.

So the sentence is not a consolation tacked on. It is a correction of what power was assumed to mean.

And the root itself refuses the version we assume. The lexicons give it as the full measure of a thing: its amount, its extent, where it ends. A horse was called aqdar when its hind hooves landed exactly where its forefeet had stepped, as if every stride were measured out. That is established. From that everyday measuring comes qadar, and from the same root comes power: the ability to bring about exactly the measure intended.

Which is a different idea from force. A bulldozer has force. A measured thing has power.

Now the part that costs us something. The complaint in this ayah is not that Allah lacks power. It is the assumption that His power is on standby for our purposes, and that any outcome we did not want is therefore a malfunction. That is the lift. We never thank the mechanism; we interrogate it the day it does not go up.

There is a vanity in that, and it is almost invisible because it sounds like faith. I prayed, I tried, I was sincere, therefore the result was owed. The ego does not want to be godless. It wants to be accommodated.

And a Lord who was displaying power for its own sake would not have done it this way. The next ayah says what the day was for: so that He would make the believers known. The purpose given is about them.

So take the one outcome you are currently treating as a fault in the system. Say plainly: You were able to give this and able to withhold it, and You withheld it. Then ask what it was for, instead of asking who is responsible.

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.